Cheap home sweet home sweeter with work

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Luke Eising wanted to buy a house. He searched and found one in Grand Rapids that sold last year for $63,000, according to county records.

He paid $9,000 for it.

"The tub is going to need work, I was going to replace the walls, but it's doable stuff, it's not going to be a mansion, but a good place to live," buyer Luke Eising said. "I was so lucky when I picked this up, I could probably turn it around real quickly and sell it for a gain."

Before he does that, Eising wants to live in the house for about three years with his fiancee, fellow Calvin College student Caitlin Beardsley.

He purchased the home at a foreclosure auction, and had to come up with the $9,000 in cash. For Eising, it was not an issue.

"College students have a hard time getting mortgages, so I ended up borrowing the money from my father," Eising said.

It was the first dirt-cheap house he found in a "nice-enough" neighborhood.

"There were houses that people seemed to live in that were kept up and people walking down the street, I don't know, it was a friendly enough place," Eising said.

But he has a lot of fixing up to do. His budget is $2,000.

"You save a lot doing things yourself, I enjoy it, so it's not like a hardship," Eising said.

Agent Tony De Bartola sells a number of these low-cost foreclosed properties, and he is not shy about the pitfalls.

"The biggest thing you run into is frozen plumbing in this kind of property," De Bartola said. "Another thing, copper is stolen and furnaces come up missing."

Eising said so far all of his 'house encounters' have been manageable. It helps that he his bride-to-be has been a support.

Beardsley has stuck by Eising and supported the new house.

"I really wanted green shutters, so we got it, that's all you care about, that's kind of all I cared about," she said. "But I also wanted a house that was sound and didn't have too many problems."

The Grand Rapids home has lead pipes that need replacing, including the main water line from the street. Eising is replacing the
windows, the kitchen appliances, the paint, the carpeting and the porch that was falling apart.

So why not just rent for three years?

"Most of the rentals are $200 a month, that's a good deal, if you add that up, you're still not better off," Eising said. "If you own a house, and at the end of that, I have something to sell, so if I have to buy a new home, I have a starter."

Deb Wheeler is a real estate agent who works with first-time home buyers. She says there are plenty of buyers like Eising, and "you get what you get." The banks, who usually owned the properties first, are reluctant to make repairs.

"(Because of) liability. If they have someone fix the furnace and they get it wrong, you come back after the bank," Wheeler said. "They just want it sold and done and (to) move on with the next foreclosed property."

Of course, buying these cheap properties is not for everyone.

A Kentwood home required thousands of dollars in plumbing work. There was a $1,000 bill just for leaking water. One house in Forest Hills looks like a steal - until you learn the owner faces about $100,000 in tax liens, a problem for a potential buyer.

There still are a number of similar-type homes being auctioned off at sheriff's sales each week.