Getting Your Philly Of A Deal

Residential investors and rehabbers have what looks to be a great opportunity coming up on Tuesday (7/16) in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority is ready to, for only the third time, allow for as many as 196 vacant homes (or residential lots) to be auctioned off. Winning bidders receive special benefits for handling the rehab work and are being given up to five years to resell.

The PHA has even allowed the auction company handling this to publish a map of each available property and encourage potential bidders to check out the property BEFORE bidding.

For a contractor which specializes in specific forms of rehab, this could literally be a gold mine, with as many as five days to scope out those properties which they could "fix" with the least amount of challenges for them.

Better yet, the Housing Authority has a link to all of the information, as well as providing links to the map of where these properties are:


http://www.pha.phila.gov/pha-news/pha-news/2013/max-spann-to-auction-200-pha-properties.aspx



If I were a home owner in Philly, I'd be checking back to see what nearby plots sold for after this auction, to see if my home could have more to offer, and faster, to a potential buyer for the area. Even if the sale price of a nearby "fixer" is much lower than years, if you can be in the ballpark with what currently exists, this could create a near future sale opportunity for you.

And if I were a realty agent in the area, I'd be on top of property values surrounding these homes to see where the best deals could be. It wouldn't hurt to alert investors who are clients. After all, they would be buying to sell off, and somebody needs to handle that transaction when the time comes.

Hopefully more cities will do this, instead of ignoring eyesore properties and not helping the real estate market at all.