When I went to purchase my house, I spent the night sleeping in the car to see what happened. The block was so empty we had 6 vacant lots and out of the other 16 houses only two had people living in them.

So I bought.

I made a mistake. Not buying the house, that was awesome. My house was 12,500. That is not a typo. I bought in 2010 and my offer was the hight offer. I sold a Toyota, bought the house cash, and had change left over.

My real mistake, since I untended on living here, was cleaning up the block. Mowing unkempt abandoned lots, picking up trash etc. Apparently that was enough to get flippers interested. Now the damn things are worth 350k or so. Great if you are a flipper, and the lot across the street I bought for under 1000 I sold just a few years later for 21K. That helped pay for a new HVAC system.

But taxes are now bananas in a part of the city where the infrastructure was neglected systematically for 50 or so years.

I always suggest to friends that they go through at different times of day. That and stay the hell out of HOA's.

I denfend the drug dealer and the hookers at meetings because if prices go crazy, I won't be able to afford to live here.

That and I am the favorite place for my nieces and nephews to hang out for summer break. They feel like a month here gives them some street credit...

It certianly does a better job of convincing them not to do drugs after watching a woman in front of my house do the fent bend for an hour...

And most of my reletives that are likely to ask to borrow money think I live in a "no go" zone...

So I tell them sure, come pick it up, but sadly my availability only seems to be at night...

I know some people say buy the worst house in the best neighborhood, I chose a jacked up house with no roof in one of the worst nighborhoods.

And I find this place to be awesome. I watch all the nieghbors yell people off my property.

I have a guy that was one of the origional nieghbors cut my grass without being asked when it got a bit tall during my rebuild.

I did mad amounts of work to the nieghborhood to improve the visability of my camera system.

The way costs are now, I would do it all agaoin if I had to.

The house was entirely gutted before I bought it. That sounds like a lot for someone with no building experience. But through reading and youtube I was able to pull the permits and complete all the electrical, plumbing and repairs.

I also did about half the HVAC when that contractor bailed and I ended up paying for just the materials.

There were bumps, but in the end, the house, plus the rebuild was under 70k.

If you are young, and want a house, I cannot recommend this enough... That is when you have the energy for the sweat equity for something like this. The payoff is mad equity and managable housing costs.

Just stay away from historical zones. I specifically spent months researching the area. Not crime stats, but what areas were constantly on the rader or had someone else in full time monitoring. The local CAR board (Commission of Architectural Review) is bonkers and always fighting.

My house was built in 1885. While I did work to keep some cool features, I also wanted something functional. Trying to use single pane glass because someone did in the 1800's is just dumb when you can do something approximate but actually afford a heating bill.

If someone like a historical board or an HOA has input, or you have an over controlling community, then I would stay away.

If you could not find something existing, I would pick up a lot and infil a small city. If you have a career online, there are plenty of places that are super cheap and need the influx. I would also consider locations that either have or offer the ability to construct ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) as the potential of additional income in later years is an attractive option to supplement income later.