The middle of nowhere calls to you friend! The urge to get one of these places as long as they have internet… it is strong. It calls to me like a siren. But I have friends and girlfriend and who knows if there are any good stores near some of these place. Ugh.

I mean… a lot depending on location? The land out in the region this is at is like 10-20k. But some lots in the middle of nowhere with no services are like 1-5k since Utah is 90% middle of nowhere.

Where I live in Utah Valley, you will not find an empty lot under 200k.

Oh yeah weird typo on my part, sorry 40k.

Honestly I just wish it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. But basically anything under (or close to) 100k is nowhere near where jobs are or even stores. So people who enjoy being away from it all or off the grid are being financially encouraged to do so.

It has to have some kind of structural problems or water damage to be that low. The next cheapest house has entire chunks missing out of the exterior walls and that one is 30k.

For $1000 just tear it down and build a new one. Developers would have snapped that up in 2 seconds flat here and had the lot parceled up by noon.

No “owning” a house that is 80% owned by a bank?

That’s not how mortgages work. Your name is on the title/deed? You own it, for realsies.

If you have not paid in cash, the property may also be used as collateral for the loan acquired to purchase it. When this is the case, the title/deed has a lien placed on it, so that when the property is sold, the lienholder is repaid first from the proceeds of the sale - again, because the property is being used as collateral.

If you fail to meet the terms of the loan, the mortgage holder (probably not a proper bank) can take possession of the property, for the purposes of selling it to recover the unpaid portion of the loan. If the sale of the property recovers more money than the outstanding balance of the loan, the original owner gets the difference. This is foreclosure, and mortgage holders do not want to do this, for a number of reasons.

• When the mortgage holder forecloses, they now bear the expense of selling the property. This means making it ready for sale, paying a realtor fee, being responsible for property taxes, HOA dues, lawn maintenance, any necessary repairs. (If they don’t pay for these things outright, there will be concessions given to the buyer to cover them.)
• Foreclosed properties often sit empty for a good period of time. Maybe the original owner moved out before the foreclosure was completed, and the property will often sit before going to market, then after as well. Until the property is sold, it is a pile of potential money, which nobody is repaying a loan for.
• In order to reduce the amount of time this asset is on the books, the mortgage company is likely to sell the property for less than it would get if it was being sold by a homeowner.
• Foreclosure is far more likely to happen when a mortgagee (homeowner) has bought the property when the market is high, and is unable to repay the loan at a time when the market is low. If things were the other way around, they would simply sell the property, pay the balance of the loan, and take the difference in cash. A mortgage holder does not want to take possession of a home that is worth less than what is owed on it (also taking into account all of the foreclosure costs above); they would much prefer to continue to receive mortgage payments.