what was your cheapest property?

[Stephan Haas]

I am curious how realistic it is to be an investor with a $5k per door limit in purchase price? My first duplex was $5500+ $4000 rehab cost. The second is in the works and is a 4 unit under contract for $13,800 needs paint and new doors and floor coverings, It could also be converted to a student rental...

[Jeff Kehl]

These all seem like fairly happy stories of inexpensive houses... I suspect there are way more unhappy stories but those are not the ones that get told so here's a few.

I bought a house at tax sale for $400 thinking I would hold it and try a rehab of it in a few years. The next year the city cited me for 2 dozen code violations. They dropped the case when I spent $5k to have it torn down. I still own the lot but can't build in that area profitably.

I spent about $7k total at tax sale for two abandoned/failing down houses I thought I could rehab. Although my lawyer says there is a legal right-of-way to access the property, the two neighbors dispute it. I would likely have to take them to court to establish my rights and there's not enough profit there to even start the process.

I bought a duplex for about $2500 at tax sale. When we got into the rehab we found that just about everything needed to be replaced, roof, electrical, plumbing, hvac and there was a lot of framing that was bad. Total rehab cost around $40k. It rents for a total of $700 so not too bad but I had it appraised to pull cash out and the appraisal only came in at $20k because of the neighborhood it's in.

These properties were all cheap for a good reason and I would have been much better off saving my money for a downpayment on the nice properties I normally buy.