• February 13, 2012

WE HAVEN’T HIT BOTTOM YET: “With a winning bid of just $1.75, a Chicago woman has won an auction for an abandoned home in Saginaw.” [AP/Yahoo]

{ 43 comments }

CivicHoliday October 1, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Wow. I gotta start going to these auctions. I bet the copper wiring I could strip from the basement would be worth at least $40-50.

magic titty October 1, 2008 at 1:42 pm

Suckerzzz!!!

thefrontpage October 1, 2008 at 1:44 pm

I’ll buy that for a dollar-seventy-five!

Trinkett October 1, 2008 at 1:44 pm

What’s the monthly payment on a 30-year subprime mortgage for a $1.75 house?

NotUrEvryDayWEzl October 1, 2008 at 1:45 pm

[re=116870]CivicHoliday[/re]: And the heating costs you’d save by burning the timber this winter would be astronomical.

Lionel Hutz Esq. October 1, 2008 at 1:46 pm

She over paid.

Tommy Says Soooo October 1, 2008 at 1:46 pm

It’s in Saginaw. You might make make a few bucks recycling the crack pipes strewn about. There is no copper wiring. Or cats. The Chinese restaurants figured out the cheapest way to add to the menus.

ManchuCandidate October 1, 2008 at 1:46 pm

I think she over paid (based on having driven thru Saginaw, once.)

SayItWithWookies October 1, 2008 at 1:47 pm

And she instantly increased the house’s value tenfold when she had a pizza delivered there.

capt. tim October 1, 2008 at 1:47 pm

it says something that i was born there, and wouldn’t buy a house there, even that cheap.

well. maybe i can be a michigan slum lord without ever having to go there…

NoWireHangers October 1, 2008 at 1:49 pm

Sure $1.75 plus the property tax, cost to keep looters away, and pay the upkeep. I’m assuming she won’t be moving to Saginaw since it’s a shithole and all. Therefore, she’ll have to pay someone else to sit on the front porch with a shotgun and “regulate”.

grendel October 1, 2008 at 1:49 pm

[re=116877]Trinkett[/re]: Doesn’t matter, there’s no one writing mortgages anymore (which is why home prices are limited to the cash people have in their pockets)

WIDTAP October 1, 2008 at 1:49 pm

It’s called a cheap summer cabin.
When do the auctions start in West Virgina and the Delaware seashore?

El Bombastico October 1, 2008 at 1:50 pm

The catch? It’s haunted by the ghost of the last resident who stuck his head in the oven after his balloon-payment Countrywide ARM kicked in.

SuperRounder October 1, 2008 at 1:52 pm

SagNasty!

NotUrEvryDayWEzl October 1, 2008 at 1:52 pm

I suppose she could redevelop the property into a greenhouse bomb shelter and grow food for the coming apocalypse away from the hordes.

Cape Clod October 1, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Who would want to live in Saginaw? I remember one guy saying that it took him three days just to hitchhike to that dump.

Special Agent Jack Mehoff October 1, 2008 at 1:54 pm

In a week or two you won’t be able to get your hands on a piece of realestate for less than $40 trillion American paper dollars of toilet paper, or 6 schillings. Great buy!!

btwbfdimho October 1, 2008 at 1:54 pm

That’s all I’d bet for that mansion in Arizona.

shortsshortsshorts October 1, 2008 at 1:58 pm

[re=116891]NoWireHangers[/re]: We’re talkin’ about $1,500 to get the whole thing wrapped up, but then again, being that it’s Saganaw, they should probably just go ahead and pay her to live there.

slappypaddy October 1, 2008 at 2:01 pm

if she’d a-tripled her bid. they’d a-thrown in a cup o’coffee… that’s smart investin…

facehead October 1, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Not a smart move. If a house is selling for that low, chances are the area is an economical crapstain, and so the house has probably already been looted (copper wiring, fluffy toilet seat, loose mr. potato head limbs), and so the house is a loss, and if somebody comes to the house to smoke a doob and gets hurt, you get your ass sued off. Have a nice house.

wheelie October 1, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Wow that’s only a fraction of what I just paid for a major property in New York today on eBay! Although mine’s a bridge and bridges are more expensive.

slomojoe October 1, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Wait, someone owed $850 back taxes and cleanup costs for this uninhabitable dump in one of the most hopelessly economically depressed places in the US, managed to unload it and the related debt for $1.75, and THE BUYER is the one who people think got a deal? No wonder the real estate market has collapsed.

slappypaddy October 1, 2008 at 2:10 pm

o an as if things jess coold not get worse, bollywood has gone on straike… i saw it on one o’them furrin web sites, right next to a story bout th’wall on that street in new york fallin down an crushin all th’investment critters… here, so y’know i ain’t makin it up…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7646404.stm

o jeezuss marie, iss all over now…

Giant Robot October 1, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Saginaw? Shit, I thought it said Saskatchewan. Is there any mooses or salmons I can hunt in Saginaw?

JadedDIssonance October 1, 2008 at 2:25 pm

I figure you could get a nice pair of shoes for that there equity!

Tommy Says Soooo October 1, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Fromunda is free, however.

jasonarewhy October 1, 2008 at 2:37 pm

“I am going to try and sell it,” she told the newspaper.

Hahaha, you dumb woman. I am from Saginaw and the economic crisis has been there for my entire lifetime. Half of the (segregated) east side is abandoned.

She could have just walked up to the house and written her name on it and saved herself the ebay fees.

PoliticalGraffiti October 1, 2008 at 2:39 pm

thats about as much as a 40 costs

Borat October 1, 2008 at 2:43 pm

[re=116877]Trinkett[/re]: the mortgage calculation works out to be 10 trillion zimbabwe dollars per month. But the good the good news is that is $1billion of US dollars

V572625694 October 1, 2008 at 2:46 pm

[re=116892]grendel[/re]: Yeah you’d think nobody’s writing mortgages any more, except they are. Look at any bank’s web site. And the mailboxes are full of credit card offers

Borat October 1, 2008 at 2:48 pm

[re=116927]facehead[/re]: Are those loose Mr. Potato Head limbs on ebay yet? I’m willing to pay $3.25 (including unreasonable shipping and handling), 2x the cost of the house. She’s already doubled her money…

Borat October 1, 2008 at 2:52 pm

[re=116936]slomojoe[/re]: $850 property taxes? My god, and the call Mass. ‘Taxachuttsets’. That’s nearly 500% property taxes. Damn, they must have some real ritzy government spending there.

Serolf Divad October 1, 2008 at 2:58 pm

Wait… Saginaw’s a real place? I thought it was some fictinonal made up name that fit the meter in that Simon and Garfunkel song.

JadedDIssonance October 1, 2008 at 3:00 pm

I find it fascinating how Americans frequently forget that Ghost Towns are a reality. You can always fix something up or wait for the next boom or this will be worth something someday! (fucking beanie babies.) What’s interesting about this round of gold deposits running dry is that the gold will be abandoned in the suburban jungle this time.

WIDTAP October 1, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Yeah! Well while all of you smirk at current economic condition of Saginaw, this lady has got her answer for Global Warming.

WIDTAP October 1, 2008 at 3:48 pm

[re=117048]Serolf Divad[/re]: I thought it was some weird religious cult or gang. People from there always make a strange hand gesture, pointing to the skin web between their thumb and index finger whenever you ask them where they are from.

middleamerican October 1, 2008 at 4:13 pm

I’ve been to Saginaw, and, having grown up in the Flint area (the reigning capital of despair and economic hardship), I can authoritatively say that she paid well over the market price for that little gem. Anything less than someone paying YOU to take it off their hands is highway robbery.

middleamerican October 1, 2008 at 4:15 pm

Oh, and if you want to see a mecca of abandoned homes in the midst of a metropolitan “city”, take a trip to Detroit. It’s quite depressing, given many of the houses now in abandoned disrepair were such beautiful residences less than 50 years ago.

bitchincamaro October 1, 2008 at 5:06 pm

[re=117284]middleamerican[/re]: One next door to my mother on Detroit’s west side sold last month for the comparatively enormous sum of $ 3,000. My mother just paid 12 grand for new roof. WTF.

sanantonerose October 1, 2008 at 5:56 pm

Wow! Here’s my opportunity to purchase a getaway home in the North so’s I can escape the deadly heat of summer.

nurple October 1, 2008 at 6:10 pm

It’s strange how many commentors are from Saginaw, Scranton, Utica, Trenton. Is anyone here from Palos Verdes? Short Hills?

Me neither…

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