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Business Insider Looks For The Mythical $100 Detroit House

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The real deal? Real, but hardly a deal? Business Insider has a round up of a concept that has contributed to local Detroit lore for the past few years. They have 13 examples of the $100 house. (Make that $100 or less. This myth just went to the next (lower?) level!) The $100 Detroit home's big press moment traces back to Toby Barlow's 2009 Op-Ed in the NY Times about Jon Brumit and Sarah Wagner's purchase. After extensive renovations on the once fire-burned property, the couple does now live just North of Hamtramck in Detroit (call it No Ham or Banglatown) but as they'll tell anyone: a $100 house is a ton of work and certainly not move-in ready. Real estate agent Ryan Cooley of O'Connor told Boat Magazine last summer that the myth that you can buy a house for $100 makes things more difficult for agents that have to explain that anything under $15,000 needs a lot of work. So for all practical purposes, the $100 home is more like the $100 tear-down or the $100 shell-of-a-house that needs to be entirely rebuilt for about $10 K. But nonetheless, there's an American fascination with the concept akin to ruin porn which means we just can't look away when an entire home gets listed for a sum we can withdraw from an ATM and likely blow at Roast later that same night. Behold, 13 real estate train wrecks that dared to make a go if it on the market, but that will likely be demolished.

· 13 Detroit Houses You Can Buy For Less Than $100 [Business Insider]
· For Sale: The $100 House [New York Times]