House Hunting

I can now cer­tain­ly afford a house in Cleve­land. Whether I can afford a house in Tremont is anoth­er mat­ter. I’ve done some research in the past [1, 2] and the prog­no­sis was­n’t good. There is an upcom­ing Tremont-wide open house that might be a good chance for me to find some­thing, but it still looks like most of the places are more than I can afford. I don’t want to spend over $80k for a home or $110 for a duplex, but most of what I’ve seen on the mar­ket is going for twice that.

Even the tini­est of hous­es in the trendy part of Tremont are sell­ing for $85k. This one looks much more promis­ing, although the crime in that part of Tremont is pret­ty bad. There is a duplex on W.10th, right around the cor­ner from where I live that I’d like to look at, but I can’t find the list­ing for it any­where. There are plen­ty of options actu­al­ly, but with prices so inflat­ed in this area, I won­der what the catch is. Nonethe­less I can look and learn all I want.

Here are some that I’ve found in just brief bouts of look­ing:

• 1054 Holm­den
• 2603 W. 15th. [More than I want to spend on a sin­gle fam­i­ly, but I could afford it.]
• 2481 Thur­man Ave. [Might have some pos­si­bil­i­ties, but many hous­es on Thur­man are com­plete­ly bombed out, and this price for a 2‑family makes me think it might be.].
• 2165 Colum­bus [I can’t decide if prox­im­i­ty to the VTR is a good or bad thing.]

I tried to nav­i­gate the Howard-Han­na Smythe-Cramer site, but it is com­plete­ly use­less in terms of search­ing. I polled my neigh­bors for rec­om­men­da­tions for a good real­tor and will also look in to the FSBO places. One of my neigh­bors also offered to help draw up the con­tract if I find a FSBO that suits me.

Sure I want to have my cake and eat it too, but main­ly I want a good price on a sol­id house that isn’t going to require mas­sive amounts of reha­bil­i­tat­ing. The house that I looked at across the street from where I cur­rent­ly live was on the mar­ket for $40k had no fur­nace or duct­work, exposed wiring and lath­ing and rot­ten sid­ing and ceil­ings. The guy who bought it prob­a­bly put that much if not more into it to make it liv­able again. That’s what I want to avoid.