How to Buy a HUD House: October 1995

Almost every Sunday, the Journal Gazette had a listing of HUD houses for sale. Some were priced as high as $40,000, but most were well below $20,000. Most were in the inner city, but not all. I looked at one that was near Shoaff Park in the N.E. area of the city.

I’d been watching the HUD houses for about a year now, and had noticed something interesting. A house would rarely be listed for more than three weeks in a row, then it was removed. This gave the impression that it was sold. But very frequently, after a short break, the same house would reappear at a lower price.

For the past three months, I went to inspect any house that was listed below $10,000. Originally, I only walked around the property and peaked inside the windows. One house had been gutted from a fire, and even the skeletal remains of the internal walls looked ready to crumble. I wanted something that I could move into immediately and do the work while living there.

Eventually I began letting myself into houses that were not secured and often found large holes in the walls, ceilings and floors. Some had so many personal items inside that I wondered if someone was squatting there. I decided to contact a realtor, but found that many do not handle HUD homes because the commissions were too low and the paperwork too cumbersome. Feichter Real Estate was very helpful in showing me a couple of houses and giving me more information about the HUD homes.

Somehow I ran across Ed Barker. He was a semi-retired broker, and used Karen’s Kitchen on Bluffton Rd. as his office. My house was listed at $4,000 when I first noticed it. Ed Barker showed me inside the house and we both agreed that, structurally speaking, about the only thing wrong was a crumbling foundation on part of the basement wall. Although it needed a lot of cosmetic work, it was a pretty solid house.

Twice during the next week I returned to look at the house and the neighborhood. It was obvious that this was a predominantly African-American area, but I saw nothing to indicate that it was a bad neighborhood. No menacing crowds were gathered on the corner, no one was staring at me or offering to sell me drugs. There was one person that approached me. He was a tall, slender, elderly African-American gentleman. He asked in a pleasant manner, but with a suspicious look in his eye, what I was doing here. When I told him I was considering buying the house, the suspicion left and the pleasantness took over. Eventually I would come to consider this man, Arlen, as one of my most trusted friends.

I decided to put in a bid of $2,500 on the house. Ed Barker said he was certain they’d reject it if I didn’t offer at least $4,000. I told him it looked to me that HUD was desperate to sell. After my bid was rejected, the house was de-listed. A few weeks later it was re-listed, at $2,500. I submitted a new bid of $2,600, just in case this lower price had attracted some attention, and it was accepted. A month later, I was moving in.

Join the fun, buy your own HUD house!