My kind of stimulus plan

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/02/real_estate/carpentersville-foreclosure/index.html

Basically this guy is buying up foreclosed properties, fixing them up, and either selling them for cost or renting them for cheap. He pretty much makes his money back, but he puts money in the pockets of the tradespeople who he hires, and thus back in the local economy.

From an investment standpoint it is a terrible deal. Put X dollars in, get exactly X dollars out. But from a long term perspective he may end up with a more productive work force.

That's really awesome!

It is of particular interest to me, because I have just jumped into a similar venture.

Not that I personally have the kinds of resources he has, but I have teamed up with a group of small time investors, we have identified a neighborhood we can turn around, and collectively we doing a very similar thing.

I am doing everything I can to roll up my sleeves and turn this for good!

Inspiring. Thank you.

SVreX wrote: That's really awesome! It is of particular interest to me, because I have just jumped into a similar venture. Not that I personally have the kinds of resources he has, but I have teamed up with a group of small time investors, we have identified a neighborhood we can turn around, and collectively we doing a very similar thing. I am doing everything I can to roll up my sleeves and turn this for good! Inspiring. Thank you.

Build thread please!

"I can't let this town become Detroit."

AngryCorvair wrote: "I can't let this town become Detroit."

SHHHH! I won't tell them where Canton is if you don't!

I should clarify...

I LIKE what he is doing, and want to EMULATE what he is doing, but I am not quite as altruistic as him.

I am looking to bring back neighborhoods, but I still have a profit motive. It's a fair and reasonable one, but I can't sell at cost like he is.

Maybe we will eventually figure out how to do that.

I wasn't trying to boast or over play it.

To bad he is an evil rich 1%er.... Or this story would get some real play in the media!

|No seriously.. it isn't often I will throw a kudos to CNN... trust me...

but on this one... Durn right...

We need to demand more of this from the media.. There are plenty of these guys around!

Awesome!

I was employed from 2009-2011 with a local architect drawing up plans for projects functionally very similar to this. It was a part of the 2008 and 2009 stimulus called the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, and I'm guessing from the snarky title of this post, you never even knew it existed. How it worked was that local housing authority agencies were given federal grants as seed money to purchase and renovate foreclosures in areas with high foreclosure rates, with the intent that the agencies would sell on the renovated properties while losing as little money as possible and roll the money over into new projects until it was gone. We typically spent slightly more than a developer/house flipper would have on a similar project because we specified more durable finishes, higher energy standards, and strict code adherence rather than doing everything as cheaply/simply as possible, but the end products were always modestly priced houses ready for worry free ownership. I worked on over a dozen of these projects over this period, and the effort really prevented the neighborhoods we worked in from sliding further downhill, and often spurred on investment by existing residents and private rehabbers in other homes in the neighborhood.

I think it's great that this guy is doing this in his community, but it's not something you could ever expect developers to do on their own, especially when the risk of losing money outweighs the limited potential for profit. On the other hand, the collective loss that would have occurred to other properties in these neighborhoods if the properties we rehabbed had continued to sit abandoned and deteriorating FAR outweighed the seed money it took to get the project rolling.

In reply to Josh:

There have always been government efforts. Community Development Block Grants, etc. I worked in the non-profit sector doing it for a decade.

I don't think there was anything snarky about the title. It was simply a thumbs up to a guy doing a great job from the private sector.

Government (and non-profits) will NEVER be able to do what a local based connected effort can accomplish, and they will ALWAYS push the costs up significantly.

He has created an admirable model which could be repeated in other communities, and has the potential to far outpace any government or non-profit model on a small scale.

The only problem with the local private sector efforts is that they usually run out of money before they run out of work.

Josh wrote: ...I'm guessing from the snarky title of this post, you never even knew it existed.

Snarky? Man I loved those things:

Trust me, if I was getting snarky you'd know it.