Houses in Chicago for Less Than $5,000? Yep.

I was looking through CNN Money the other day and found an article about houses for sale for less than $1,000. They called them Radical Cheap homes. The article mentioned that there were 18 listings in Flint, MI that were under $3,000, 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and the eye-popping number of 709 in Detroit.

The reason for these amazing prices was chalked up to banks dumping the properties that they had foreclosed on. According to Money’s experts, banks would rather dump the properties at extremely low prices than become property management firms.

This got me wondering about Chicago. So, I did a search in the MLS for properties in the city of Chicago under $1,000. The count was zero. I tried $3,000 and still got no results. So, I upped it to $5,000 and was surprised to find eight properties for sale. The low price was $3,900, the high was $5,000, and the average was $4,668.

The lists mention that seven of the eight properties are bank owned, corporate owned, or REO (Real Estate Owned by Fannie Mae, a bank, or a corporation). The eighth listing hinted strongly, but didn’t say, “bank owned” outright. Most of the listings mentioned that no disclosures would be furnished and that there was considerable damage, often from fire. Three of the listings mentioned to bring a flashlight to see the inside as there was no electricity. All the properties were in South Chicago. They ranged from 5700 south to 12200 south.

Will we see more of these in more neighborhoods?