I wish my crystal ball wasn't broken. In the city (county seat) I have most of my rentals (and this city has the strictest city code in the county), it looks to me like 85% of the sales of SFH's are going under $15,000-some are less than $1000!

These aren't the best areas, of course-the better areas are still commanding decent prices, however-

in addition to this, almost all of the 85% are being purchased by non-owner-occupants.

Interesting!

Usually, when we find a sfh for sale in that price range-- and even though we live in an undesirable area, that's nowhere near going market rate-- it's because of Personal Circumstances. Illness, or inheritance, or stress, or I-found-my-dream-land-and-need-to-raise-money-fast, or whatever. The #1 impression is that it's really weird that, in presumably an ordinary town with an ordinary economy and an ordinary population, that the market rate for all of these houses are in the basement.

The #2 impression is that it's weird that your town/city is attracting all of this investor money. Has this investor money always been in your area, to one extent or another? Or is this investor money from a distance? If you check the appraisal district, are there just one or two big players who are snapping up all the deals, or are there dozens of investors all converging on your market?

If it's any consolation, Berkeley or San Jose or Los Angeles in CA have very tough city codes in the country, and I feel a bit better knowing that your area in Ohio indeed is very tricky as well.

It certainly feels like a bubble is going to happen or at least foreign investors who partner with huge behemoth corporations like Blackstone are flush with cash and want to hedge their bets on Blackstoneish investments. I heard that Blackstone buys swaths of real estate and basically acts like a landlord on of course a huge scale with the best of the best, including attorneys and strategists. If your area is still extremely affordable but being bought out heavily by investors versus homeowners, then I'd guess that someone super powerful feels that your area's values will appreciate and sees tremendous growth, infrastructure and businesses soon opening up and improving due to their speculation research?

I hope so much for you things will work out great. Best of luck and please share what unfolds as it happens.

I don't believe most of the LLC's etc are from out-of-town. All our county's records are all online and available for anyone to see @ the click of a mouse, so I could find out. (And our local paper ha a real estate portion of Friday's paper where all the county sales are listed each week).

There is NO WAY all of these are tax sales! (I am personally acquainted with one landlord who's purchase was recorded this week-he bought his property for $7000).

Ahh, then that might be a big part of it.

With many major employers going out of business, you have a number of people who are realizing that opportunity is elsewhere right now. So they're wanting to scramble and get a small amount of cash now, so they can relocate elsewhere fast, rather than hang on to their house/try to find another local job/try to get full selling price.

Also-what I find interesting is that most of the properties are being paid for with cash (guessing here-but who gets a mortgage for $7000)?

OK so people are not paying their property taxes or water or other fees and are losing their homes at tax sales. I suspect they may be heading south as the economy improves there.

OK 85%, you say, of the houses selling for under 15K, are going to non owner occupants. Do you mean non occupant owners? Those might be the people who held the lien on the homes for which people were not paying taxes and fees.

Ally-THESE ARE NOT TAX SALES!

It definitely sounds like the poor local economy has impacted the housing market. If the economy picks up the housing market will improve. Are you aware of any future job growth? Are you close to PA that Shell Cracker plant can have an impact?

I'm in Western PA and believe the Cracker plant is going to have a tremendous impact on the rental market. The actual construction of the plant is just starting.

Susan,

Maybe it's the wall painter selling off, titling the stats!