Every cloud has a silver lining and the foreclosure crisis is no different. The down side of the foreclosure crisis is the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their homes. The upside is the ability for the country’s leading real estate housing charity, Habitat for Humanity, to purchase properties below market value. Many Habitat for Humanity chapters across the US are snapping up dozens of empty lots and unoccupied homes — some for as little as half price.
“The down real estate market is a wonderful opportunity for all Habitats,” said Gage Yager, executive director of Trinity Habitat for Humanity in Fort Worth. “As prices drop, we have the opportunity to acquire at prices that just weren’t available a few years ago.”
Habitat offers affordable housing to low income families. The charity uses volunteers to rehab these newly acquired foreclosed properties or in extreme cases, tears them down and rebuilds.
Some criticize that Habitat is taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune, but renovating an already vacant property is far better than leaving it abandoned, resulting in higher crime rates and lower property values.
For example, in Fort Worth, Habitat is negotiating to buy part of a 160-lot subdivision that a developer left unfinished. The plan is to purchase 50 of the remaining 100 vacant lots at a 30-40% discount and put single-family homes on them. In Dallas, another Habitat affiliate has acquired approximately 150 lots at a roughly 50 percent discount which is incredible for Dallas real estate.
Legislation before Congress might help Habitat and nonprofit housing agencies take even greater advantage of bargains in real estate. One bill would provide $15 billion to the hardest-hit states for the purchase and improvement of foreclosed real estate. States could then make those properties available to nonprofits such as Habitat.
Tags: dallas, foreclosure crisis, fort worth, habitat for humanity
This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Charity, Dallas Fort Worth, Foreclosure, Housing Market, Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.