But there’s no way to get in without a crowbar. The 106-year-old, 1,390-square-foot house has been sitting on the city’s nuisance property list since March 22, 2008. It’s had to be re-secured after break-ins twice this year alone, according to city records. And it’s on track to join the city’s demolition list, which means it may not be standing much longer.
But there it is on eBay with one bid on its opening price of $7,000.
The house shows what a crazy market exists in some Dayton neighborhoods. A little over a year ago, the house changed hands for $5,375, when a buyer based in New Jersey purchased the home. A James Davidson then bought it in January for $56,300, according to Montgomery County records.
It’s not clear if the seller on eBay — listed under the name “reinvestor523” — is Davidson. The description of the house, however, and the neighborhood around it, is definitely generous. It’s a “handyman special” in a “modern, middle-class neighborhood,” according to the eBay description — perhaps a bit kind for a block that has its share of overgrown lots and vacant houses.
At least the picture of the house shows it’s boarded up. That’s not always the case, observers say.
“Oftentimes, we see these investors, once they see how much it’s going to cost to do these repairs, they just walk away,” said Donna Martin, president of the nonprofit Preservation Dayton. “They stop paying taxes. They stop paying insurance. They try to resell it, but it just doesn’t work out.”
Aaron Sorrell, housing and neighborhood development manager for the city of Dayton, said he sometimes hears from disgruntled online buyers, but it’s hard to muster sympathy for people who buy these houses sight-unseen, without doing due-diligence research on their purchases.
“Often when they call me, they are either looking for cash, or they’re looking for the city to somehow solve their problem,” Sorrell said. “In some cases they bought half of a lot, or the house is no longer standing because it had been in our nuisance program and we demolished it at some point in time, and they were not told that.”
You can’t trust the pictures, Sorrell said. Of one eBay house he investigated recently, he said: “The seller put online the best-looking picture he could possibly Photoshop.”
New Hampshire handyman
Paul Young had something like that experience.
The 73-year-old retired electrician from New Hampshire paid $11,000 cash for his house on Lorenz Avenue in the city’s Westwood neighborhood from another online auction site, Bidassets.com, in 2007.
After looking at the house in person, he figured he could have gotten it for half that.
“They had an old picture, which was a lot better than the house was,” Young said. “When I came, I saw there was a lot of stuff ripped out.”
Still, Young said he’s not the kind of person to back down from a challenge. He did enough work to get the electricity turned back on, moved into the house and began fixing it up.
It was in reasonable condition, he said. The windows were intact. The furnace worked. None of the bathroom or kitchen fixtures were stolen. It was paradise compared to some he’s seen since.
“I’ve been in a couple of places on the street,” Young said. “People have broken in and stolen stuff out of there for scrap. The druggies live in them, and trash them. There’s dog crap all over the place and cats and clothes strewn all over.
“You’d have to get a crew in there to really clean it out if you get one of those.”
Not quite three years into his project, he’s got the exterior almost done, the front porch completely rebuilt, the roof and siding replaced, the second floor refinished with attractive laminate floors and some landscaping in. He’s about to take on the first floor and figures he’s got another year of work to do. When he’s done, he estimates he’ll have about $50,000 invested.
At that point, he said, he’ll probably try to sell it. He’s gotten reports of houses selling nearby for more than $50,000. The house next door was purchased by a contractor, lightly renovated and sold for $58,000, he said.
But that was in 2006 — four very long years ago in this housing market.
If he finds a buyer, Young said he’d look around for another, cheaper, purchase. He’s hoping the county or the city will declare a “special category” with lower taxes for abandoned houses.
“If I could pick up a couple of these old houses cheap enough, I would hire a couple of people who are not working and fix them up,” he said.
But, he points out, he doesn’t have to earn a living at it, like local contractors.
“They have to get their money out of a house,” he said. “And if houses are not selling, they’re not going to fix them up.”
New Mexico landlady
If Young can’t sell his house, Nancy Roberts says he should consider renting.
She should know. The Santa Fe, N.M., resident said she’s purchased eight houses in Dayton, most of them on eBay.
Roberts, 54, may not be the typical online real estate investor, however. She doesn’t try to flip the house on the market for a quick buck. Instead, she’s renovated seven of them and rents them with the help of a local property manager.
“I rent them out, and it’s a very good return, and I have very happy tenants,” Roberts said.
Generally, she doesn’t want to sell in Dayton, “because there’s no market there.”
But she’s listing her latest purchase — a home at 128 N. Decker Ave. — on eBay. Bidding on the house, which ends today, June 6, started at $1. By late Friday, 23 bids had brought the price up to $2,175. She paid $5,655 for it in March.
Roberts, who has been in real estate for 30 years, said she had trouble with a contractor and decided she didn’t want to keep the house.
She has nothing but good things, however, to say about her experience in Dayton.
“I feel like it’s been the best investment I’ve made in my life,” she said. “And I’ve made hundreds of investments.”
The New Jersey native said she got involved in Dayton real estate by accident. She was fooling around one night on eBay, and somehow found herself looking at houses in the city. Her mother, who was from Greenville, left her some money and she decided to invest.
“It was inexpensive enough to say, ‘I’m just going to dive in and take the chance,’ ” she said. “I felt like I was reinvesting in my mother’s hometown, almost, right? It felt like the right thing to do with the money.”
If the sale doesn’t go through on the North Decker house, Roberts figures she’ll bite the bullet, come back to Dayton and get busy.
“I’ll probably be going out there and rehabbing it myself,” she said. “I’ll be hiring people, but I’ll be overseeing it myself and doing some work.”
If you do the math and get the right house, she said, you can see it’s a great investment.
If she kept the North Decker house, she said she’d put about another $15,000 in it, and would be able to rent it out for $600 to $650 a month, so that’s at least $7,200 a year. Figure $2,000 for taxes and maintenance and her property manager, and she’s still clearing at least $5,000 a year.
She’s got $20,000 invested, so that’s a 25 percent return, and in four years the house is paid off. And that’s a very conservative analysis, she said, because you could charge more for rent or put less in the house.
“I just make my houses very nice,” she said.
Roberts has been to Dayton four times, and likes the city.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “I think it’s charming. Downtown is kind of coming around.”
She said her son came out to visit and got excited about the market.
“He called his brother and said, ‘Hey, we could buy a house here.’ They come from New Mexico and California, and they have this idea that everything is $300,000 to start.”
As much as the housing market is suffering in Dayton, Roberts said, the kinds of deals she’s been making could be its future.
“I don’t think young people have a lot of hope in this economy,” she said. “How are they going to get their foot in the door? So I feel like, if you can just hang on, people will get the word out, and Dayton will become a thriving community again.”
Let the buyer beware
Donna Martin, the Preservation Dayton president who is also vice president of the Five Oaks Neighborhood Association, agrees good values can be found in Dayton.
But, she says, you have to know where the house is.
“Even in the stable neighborhoods, like Five Oaks, for instance, which is primarily a pretty stable neighborhood, you have areas at either end that are horrible,” said Martin, a property investor herself. “They’re part of our demolition plan, but those are the houses that go up for sale.”
In her neighborhood, homes in the small historic district in the 7000 block of Kenilworth Avenue range in value from $100,000 to $130,000, she said. But one block over, the houses are selling for $20,000.
“Unless you live here, you don’t know that,” she said. “That’s where people get into trouble.”
Martin, who posted a video on YouTube several years ago about investors who get bilked buying online, said having a local property manager or partner is critical in making the right decisions.
“There are great deals to be had in really really good stable neighborhoods right now — lots of them,” she said. “But it’s a crap shoot if they’re on a street where 50 percent of the houses are vacant and boarded up.
“You’re not going to rent on that block.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2393 or kmccall@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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