The fire sale of Homewood real estate continues. Three examples:
1. A house near the end of my block, 7211, sold in April. I had noticed the house in the Realtor listings, which said that it's been divided into two apartments. I had also observed that it has a fairly new roof, which is always a good thing.
I might have considered buying that house myself, except that ... well, whenever you hear about a shooting in the 7200 block of Race Street, it's usually at the house right next door to this one. I never persuaded myself that I could get, and keep, decent tenants there with so much bad stuff happening next door.
The buyer may not know about all that bad stuff, because he or she (I can't tell from the name) lives in Jamaica, N.Y. Then again, the buyer may have known, and that may be why the house sold for only $5,000.
2. On Saturday, the list of real estate sales that the PG publishes each week (by RealSTATs, a real estate info provider) revealed that a house one block over, 7203 Monticello, has been sold. Like 7211 Race, it also had been listed with a Realtor for quite a while. It's a 2 1/2 story brick number with a side lot attached. I stopped by to take a look at it once, and saw something I'd never seen before: The second story has two windows facing the street, and the bricks betweeen the two windows were missing, revealing the planking underneath.
But even with that damage, and even though I knew the house was a foreclosure, I would not have guessed that it would sell for $2,750. But it did.
At that price, the buyer can use the equity in the house, owned free and clear, to finance its rehab. And while the 7200 block of Race could be called ground zero for Homewood's bad stuff, the 7200 block of Monticello is much nicer, and may be a likelier location for decent tenants. I can imagine the new owner having success with that property, and insofar as that would imply having good neighbors, I hope he does.
3. One of the largest buildings still standing in what used to be the commercial district of North Homewood Avenue is going up for sheriff's sale this morning. It's a three-story brick structure designed for first floor retail with office or residential above.
The price listed in the sheriff's sale notice, which is the minimum that a person could bid to acquire the property, is $2,179.84.
I'm going to the sheriff's sale.
First Published: July 2, 2007, 1:30 p.m.
