Thru out much of the U.S. there are homes that have been abandoned. ... for what ever reason. SOME of those homes are beyond repair, BUT many of them could be salvaged. In order to increase the number of available homes, the city/bank or whom ever, could put them on the market at little or no down payment . Moreover, there are 10's of thousands of people who have the skills necessary to refurbish those homes.
Why don't people who want an affordable home seek out the owners of some of these properties and make a reasonable offer? It's kind of silly to expect the owners to surrender their properties just because they're not using them at the moment.
I don't expect anyone to surrender abandoned homes, BUT many of those homes are owned by a bank. Rather than let those homes sit there and rot, it seems reasonable to make "special offers" to people who can refurbish them.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned in another thread about the empty house / squatter issues that are happening all over the U.S. People see an empty house that is either abandoned or waiting for a buyer or renter and move in. The issue of course are the legal actions that the actual owners or a bank have to take in order to evict the squatters. In some cases, the squatters actually spend some money fixing the house up whilst others totally destroy the residence but either way, it costs the owner a bunch to legally get rid of the squatters.
A lot of people have homes or land that they're not using, either because they inherited it or because they have moved. If they don't perceive the property to be worth much money, they'll often hang onto it rather than put it on the market through a realtor. Or maybe they'll list it with a realtor but if it doesn't sell, it will be taken off the market. Before we bought our house, we drove through more than half of the towns and unincorporated communities in Maine looking for empty homes. We talked to people who lived nearby to find out who owned the property. In small towns and rural areas, neighbors are often related. You can also consult plat maps or the town hall if the houses are in an incorporated municipality. Still, we didn't bother with that, although you should keep in mind that municipal tax sales are an excellent way to get an affordable home. My neighbor's daughter bought a perfectly good two-story home with a basement for $600 on a tax sale, and that was only a few years ago. This house was in much better shape than the one we bought for $14,500 several years earlier. This did involve tracking down and talking to a lot of people who weren't interested in selling or who wanted more than we were willing to pay. When we couldn't find an owner, we talked to realtors in the area, and the house we ended up buying was one that was suggested by a realtor but wasn't advertised as being for sale. Keep in mind that realtors generally advertise their more expensive listings because they don't earn much of a commission on a $14,500 home. We had talked to her about a couple of other places, and, my wife being the way she is when it comes to meeting people, had become friends with the realtor, and she looked through some of the less expensive ones for us, calling us about the place we ended up buying in one of the towns we hadn't visited during our trip. When we wanted to buy some wooded land, we knew we wanted to buy something in the northern part of the state, so we didn't do a statewide search, but we drove around looking at properties. While we were up north, we stayed at a bed and breakfast. I had done a website for free for the town that the B&B was in, as I had for several small towns in the area, and, since the woman who managed the B&B was active in the community, she offered us a room for free. I also developed a website for the B&B. We stayed there for a week and got to know her well enough that we later attended the church that her husband pastored in the same town. She knew of a hundred acres that a woman had inherited and didn't want because she had moved to the southern part of the state. She had apparently listed the property for sale a few years previous but, since it didn't sell, it was taken off the market. She called the owner and, indeed, she was still interested in selling it. She was only asking for $37,000 for a hundred acres of woodland that included a five-acre potato field that was leased to a potato grower for about the amount of money required to pay the taxes on the one hundred acres. She agreed to self-finance with no added finance charges, and we paid that off pretty quickly with double payments whenever possible. People who have no money whatsoever aren't going to be able to maintain a home anyhow, and there's no reason for anyone to give someone something for nothing, particularly when they aren't even ambitious enough to look for something they can afford. If they don't feel like going out and looking for something, they're probably not going to feel like doing any of the repairs and maintenance that are likely to be necessary for an inexpensive home. Far too many people think they're owed a living, and they just want to sit back and let the government or someone else give them what they want for free, and then they'll probably complain about it as they let it go to pot.
I've always liked my farm. It was lovely and was in an area that would eventually be developed although that was not what we wanted. The owner had an insanely high price on it, thinking of the future. Of course the future was years away. And no one would pay their price. It was up for a long time. I went in with a very low offer in relation to the asking price. My realtor was worried that the seller would be insulted. I was not worried. It was only worth a small farm price at the time. Not a commercial development. I think the seller's realtor had led him astray with a big price that no one would pay. Anyway, if a property is up for sale for a lonnnnnnnng time, go in with an offer that you consider right. All they can do is say no. The realtor might not like it cuz their commission is going to be low but, Hey!
This ^^^ By June 2022, large hedge funds and institutional investors held approximately 574,000 single-family homes, according to estimates by the Urban Institute. 75% of all the purchases that these investors are making are now in the single family housing area. These investors often maximize profits through high rent increases, fees, and deferred maintenance, resulting in a decline in housing quality over time. This began big time during the 2008 recession, when they started buying houses and rental property cheap, because of loans granted to buyers that weren't qualified financially to handle them. Maybe we should give these big investment companies more tax breaks, so they can let the savings trickle down to the public trying to find affordable housing.
The gov't should be giving tax breaks to those who build new housing. Unfortunately, the population growth is far exceeding the number of available houses up for sale. Across the nation there are millions of vacant houses that have been abandoned and banks and various local gov'ts own them. There are also millions of people who could/would renovate them if they were given fair prices and interest rates. Unfortunately, too many of those houses sit empty and they deteriorate until they eventually literally fall apart. Also, I call on Habitat for Humanity to VASTLY increase their production of new housing. If a President and Congress got together with all local and state gov'ts and launched a massive new housing program, reasonably priced housing could be dramatically increased.
But for decades, the birth rate has been below Replacement Level, meaning our native population has been declining. Where has the growth come from?
In 2020 the U.S. population was 331.4 million, an increase of 22.7 million from 2010. The migration of aliens to the U.S. accounts for much of that increase.
That is only native born Americans. The U.S. population is growing, and available housing is not keeping up with demand.
We are on the cusp of the great reset if Trump does not make it back in. Blackrock etc are indeed buying up properties for good prices, removing them from supply. Biden is pushing the green agenda 30. Laws will require so much improvement on existing houses that most can't afford to do. So they will be demolished and the big guys can rebuild 'low income housing' paid for by government options. They want us in condensed hubs with no one in rural areas except factory farms, Our carbon foot prints will be small while the elites will still fly in private jets. I found they want heat pumps for us instead of furnaces and wood stoves. Uhmmmmmm Solar does not adequately work in Wisconsin. Nor do heat pumps. They might help but the expense does not justify the energy produced. Personal experience.
If Donald Trump is about anything at all, he all about favoring big business. Why would anyone think anything else? He is a businessman. He would tell you himself, he would be a fool not to take advantage of big business loopholes in taxes and other legislation. But did he ever mention closing those loopholes? Or ever try? The first thing he did was preside over one of the biggest tax cuts to business and wealthy people ever passed by the Republicans in Congress in 2019. Two Trillion dollars. Did any of those cuts trickle down to consumers? His main accomplishments were executive orders, many to cut regulations on big business. So why would he ever be against investment companies buying up single family dwelling units? His main business ventures were in real estate.
Housing is being built here as fast as they can throw it up and anyone who has been here for a few years hates what the population increase is doing to the city. They don't like the growth, the increased traffic and crime. They were sure the old mayor was in the pocket of the developers and I agree that he was but I still voted for another conservative. They disliked it so much that a long tradition of conservative Republican mayors was broken this last spring when the majority voted for a Democrat funded Nigerian immigrant as mayor. We even had to have a runoff and he still won. I know that sounds like an email scam but that's who he is, an immigrant from Nigeria who claims to have no political allegiance winning an election in a conservative Republican city. But he fooled the ignorant voters and now we are off tripping through never-never land and the building continues. There is increasingly more housing now but it is always more expensive. People still have to hold a good job to afford it, whether they rent or buy, or they have to depend on taxpayers to finance their occupancy of it. Nothing is free whether you occupy new build or the taxpayers buy an old house for you and pay to fix it up. The only difference is some of us buy our own and then we finance a place for someone else, maybe an illegal alien, through the magic of tax and spend.