I never believed there were some houses to live in dreadful and terrible places but have worthy prices. At first, i saw this article in yahoo buz and linked it to New York Times.
The morale i could take after read it was wherever, whatever and however the houses people would do anything to make their houses fitting with their own until reach to the top convenience and off course money couldn't count in.
Gwynn Griffith lives in a former shoe factory in a section of San Antonio where it is not uncommon to hear gunshots at night.
Real estate agents warn against buying a great house in a bad location, but it is a way for buyers to get some of what they want without spending a fortune.
Ms. Griffith's home is a 16,000-square-foot building, a former shoe manufacturing plant built in the 1800s. When she first saw the property, there were old boats and rusted cars in the yard, pigeons roosting indoors and a resident colony of bats.
A building in disrepair, near the Griffith home in San Antonio. Ms. Griffith has made sure several family and living rooms are in her house. A decorator with an opulent flair, Ms. Griffith has spent $400,000 creating a lavish space that conjures a ruined European castle.
Many rooms inside Ms. Griffith's house have a theme with paintings, sculptures, books or furniture. Like many people who own houses where the location is unlikely to improve, Ms. Griffith may never see a return on her investment.
A freight train passes a few feet from Kathleen Hulser's 1839 summer house in Connecticut. She's willing to live with that because it helped her buy the house at a lower price.
David Evans and his partner, Jorge Ruiz, antiques dealers in the small Lowcountry town of Walterboro, S.C., say they could never have afforded this farmhouse had it been in a better location. When the challenging location and troubled economy drove down the seller's asking price from $296,000 to $170,000, the home was finally within reach, and a few months ago, the couple bought it. A similar house would cost 35 percent more in a different location, according to the broker who sold them the house.
The Evans/Ruiz house is just across the street from a former liquor store/gas station/fireworks stand. Without the spark plugs, windshield wipers and rotting transoms that dot his garden-and the trailer park and an abandoned gas station as neighbors -- Mr. Evans and Mr. Ruiz say they could never have afforded the area's oldest farmhouse.
Houses like the Evans/Ruiz house are charming and often historic, but bargains because of their blighted neighborhoods or undesirable locations.
The breakfast room in the Evans/Ruiz house.
Anne Troutman and Aleks Istanbulu turned this old Santa Monica church into their home, paying a third less than the asking price in part because a nearby community center attracts substance abusers who sometimes end up on their yard.
At just over $1 million the Santa Monica house wasn't cheap, but many comparable area homes are currently listed at more than double that price.
When her husband told her of a crumbling 1901 Federal-style mansion for sale in an unsafe part of the Bronx, Eridania Diaz knew she had to have it, even though the house sits among boarded-up buildings and empty lots.
Ms. Diaz paid $350,000 for the 10-room house in 2004. It cost about that much to haul away more than 10 tons of trash and remodel and install surveillance cameras and alarms.
The house is in Highbridge, which borders Yankee Stadium and ranks among New York City's most unsafe areas, according to statistics from the New York Police Department.
Though she said she loves the house, Ms. Diaz, who is a landlord, recently put it on the market because she said that economic troubles had left many of her tenants unable to pay their rent, which has reduced her income. She said she plans to move into a similar antique house a few streets away if she sells the property.
