The vacant house next to mine finally sold!

[MineralMan]

The house next door to ours in Saint Paul, MN finally sold. It had been foreclosed on two years earlier, and no active marketing was done. This year, it finally got a sign out front, but the price was set far too high, since the house needed considerable rehabbing. Finally, a guy bought it, though, once the lender-owner accepted a reasonable bid for it. The rehabbing has already begun, starting yesterday.

For my wife and I, this is a great thing. We share a driveway with that house, and it is in terrible condition, and has been since we bought our house 6 years ago. The guy who owned the house then simply couldn't afford to pay for his half of the driveway, and we couldn't afford to repave the whole thing.

Now, the driveway crew is showing up next week, and we'll get a brand new asphalt driveway before the first snow falls. We can't really afford it, but it has to be done.

The neighboring house's buyer isn't moving in. He's flipping the house, so it will be for sale shortly...just as soon as it's fixed up. There were a lot of people who looked at it, and I think it's going to be a quick sale, so we'll finally have neighbors again.

To celebrate the new driveway, I painted the garage yesterday. Can't have a funky-looking garage at the end of a new driveway.

I take this sale and the rehabbing as a very positive sign. In St. Paul, there are tons of foreclosed houses, but they're starting to sell and get fixed up these days. That can't be bad. The situation isn't fixed, but it looks like some folks are willing to put money back into these vacant houses and get people living in them again!

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Are you going to help pay for the driveway?

Seems only fair.

[MineralMan]

3. Of course. I'm paying exactly half of the cost. The driveway's

24' wide, but flares out to both garages. It's 70' long, since the garages are at the back of the lots. It's going to cost us each about $3000-3500.

There are lots of these shared driveways in the neighborhoods that were built here in the 1950s. They work just fine, as long as both neighbors cooperate, but that's not usually a problem.

[pnwmom]

2. Happy for you, MineralMan! n/t

[malaise]

4. Was it foreclosed or stolen from your neighbors

This is scary - from another thread

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38654717/Class-Action-vs-Mortgage-Electronic-Registration-Systems-Gmac-Deutsche-Bank-Nation-Star-Aurora-Bac-Citi-Us-Bank-Lps-Et-Al

[MineralMan]

7. It was foreclosed. My neighbor simply couldn't make the payments,

and had borrowed on the equity until he owed more than the house was worth. He just gave up on it and walked away. He's doing fine. Since he left, he got a good job and bought another house in a real estate auction and has gotten it back in shape already.

[sandnsea]

11. Bought another house?

How did he buy another house after wrecking his credit with a foreclosure? Just curious. A house kitty-corner to me sold a few months ago, and one across the street too, now that I think about it. I think these are places that were so overpriced a few years ago that there was no lending for them. Now that everything has fallen, and people are looking for honest mortgages that reflect the entire principal and interest, these lower income places are exactly what people can afford. Actually, they're just normal homes, not the McMansion young people thought they were going to live in a couple of years ago.

[MineralMan]

13. I don't know how he did it.

[Phentex]

5. That's cool!

Hope you get good neighbors! :)

[Upton]

6. You actually WANT neighbors?

[MineralMan]

8. Sure. Neighbors are good. Odds are very strong that it will be a

Hmong family, since Hmong families own about half the houses on this block already. They're very good neighbors, in general...very respectful of boundaries and meticulous in caring for their homes. Big gatherings sometimes, but the food's great, so having a Hmong family as neighbors means I'll get invited. That rocks!

[proteus_lives]

12. Clint, is that you?

;-)

[MineralMan]

14. Get off my lawn, you rotten kids!

[Warpy]

9. Let's hope the loan wasn't a crooked one and the house was foreclosed

without forged paperwork. If not, the new owner will find himself with a quitclaim deed and an unsellable property.

Still, it will be wonderful to have a neighbor instead of an adjacent firetrap and potential crank house, and eventually this mess will be sorted out, probably by the time your new neighbor pays off his mortgage.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. nice! congrats

[azmouse]

15. Similiar things are happening in my neighborhood too.

A house on the next street has been for sale for almost 3 years. It finally sold last week! Nothing wrong with the property that I could see but it may have been overpriced for the market.
It's good to see things improving across the country.

[glinda]

16. We moved here four years ago in middle MN and there was one house

for sale. Now there are six along our road. All nice homes and older. None have sold. We want to sell but husband is having a hissy fit that we would loose our down-payment. I say "welcome to the real world dear".

[MineralMan]

17. Yah, I think things are picking up in the cities first. People are not

thinking so much about the suburbs these days. Living in the city cuts down on the expense of commuting. I believe the suburbs and outlying areas will be the slowest to recover. That's just a sense I'm getting, and I have no numbers to support it, but I'm seeing more and more houses selling in St. Paul right now. People are making their move before winter sets in, I think.

[glinda]

18. maybe we will never recover as we are in a "hamlet"... er small city.

We are not a suburb.