Free houses in Oakland

[Susie Wyshak]

How much of a house hacker are you really? :) Here are a bunch of free houses that the taker has to move. https://www.hollandresidential...

I emailed them to ask what's still available!

Backstory about the buildings in this article: https://oaklandside.org/2021/0...

Oakland has a refreshingly clear process outlined for moving houses. It seems like a "bucket list" type of project. 

Anyone going for it or have you checked out these houses?

[Chris Mason]

Realistically the way to put a "deal" together with one of these, assuming you don't want to do the whole project cash, would be to already own vacant land with the appropriate residential zoning, availability of utilities, etc. I barked up this tree a while back and learned that you could use a renovation loan (FHA 203k) to relocate the home, the sticker is going to be that you need a place to put it. It's actually a selling point for vacant land; there's always free or $1 Victorian homes available in Oakland, it's the ownership of appropriately zoned land that's scarce. But people want to see the specific pretty home because we are a simple minded species, so no one does it (it's sufficiently rare that the last time someone did it, in San Francisco, the video of the Victorian being moved went low key viral on the bay area subreddit [see below]). Gotta buy the land first (typically a cash transaction), figure out which house to put on it after, in that order. The developers unloading the Victorians aren't going to wait for you identify the vacant land, etc, they will have already torn the Victorian down. Land first (cash), then the $0-$1 Vic. The moving and setting up the home, that total budget, is what the famous FHA 3.5% down would be on, after paying cash for the land and waiting for the right $0 to $1 house to be available.