How many stories are hidden within the walls — or better, are covering the walls — of this 60-year-old home on Tupelo Ave. in Pasadena, about a mile south of the city’s namesake freeway? There are so many sides to it. Including, inside, what looks like a theatrical one:
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The place was listed just last week. As of yesterday, it’s available at a $1,000 discount:
All told: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths in 1,400 sq. ft. Asking price now: An envelope with $34,900.
Looks like some junker single family homes I’ve bought in SE Houston.
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PS: If you’re looking for cheap single family homes to buy as rentals (cheap relative to the rent they bring in), SE Houston has a ton of great deals. Sure it’s not a location you’d want to live in, but as an investment property they’re great.
Two things come immediately to mind:
1. Are there bodies stuffed behind all that ersatz siding?
2. The quote from “Silence of the Lambs”, “Put the f*cking lotion in the basket!”
Looks like a lot of the teardowns in my old stomping grounds in Old Alief.
Jeez, that red curtained room makes me half expect to find Laura Palmer and a backwards talking little man there after living in the house for years as hoarders.
“great deals for slumlords”
Looks like Pasadena to me.
Photo #2 is awesome: an art pic.
You know… a great number of people live like this – both inside the belt and waaayyy outside of it.
Chris: Not everyone can afford what you and I would consider to be nice. Econimic realities dictate that there will always be lower income ‘slum’ housing as there will always be people with little or no income that need a place to live.
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I have some single family homes that I bought in SE Houston for next to nothing. I heavily upgraded them (fixed the roof, new flooring, new appliances, etc) and still am in at a cost that allows me to rent something pretty nice and still get a good return on my money. Some of them I haven’t been out to in years. They have happy renters in them.
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Some of them I’ve sold off to other investors who wanted a solid return (often out of state people that wanted me to manage them turnkey) and others I’ve just decided to keep as the market to resell out there (except to another investor) is non existent.
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If you have a few bucks to put together for a down payment, you could do a lot worse than buying a low cost single family home in a market with strong rental demand. If you look at what that $ would make you back in the bank vs. with property (esp after you factor tax write offs, appreciation, renters putting in equity by paying off debt, return on leveraged money, etc.), it seems silly to have money rot away to inflation in the bank.
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If you worry about having a ‘slum’, then keep an eye out for a nice River Oaks home to buy and rent. You’ll eat a few thousand every month by being upside down but you’ll fell better about yourself by owning a pretty trophy property. Sadly this isn’t an option for me as rental property is my income.
That’s right Cody, there’s a happy price point for rentals and re-sales.
It’s obvious that Cody has missed some neighborhoods in SE Houston if he thinks “it’s not a location you’d want to live in”.
This place looks like the cleaned up version of any number of foreclosures I have photographed in the last year or two. The most recent owner or tenant has been creative with the colors, and it looks like renovations of some type might have been started but not finished (fairly typical for the slumlords, er, investors who own them).
What this house needs is a bulldozer…
I hadn’t realized the FOTEH family had properties in Pasadena.
Pye: I’m talking about the area of SE Houston I’ve bought in. Not an area I’d want to live, and I’m making an assumption that most people on this site would not want to live there either. Perhaps “South East Houston” covers a lot more area than the specific zone I was talking about.
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I have homes in the Cullen/Airport area and MLK/Reed area. I will be the first to say I’m not an expert on the whole zone
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My assumption is also based on when I’ve discussed them with other investors who have come to me for an income property. They say “SE Houston? Eh, not interested” (as if they were buying a place to live in themselves)
You know movocelot, there are a lot of different areas of Pasadena, and while some are as bad as the perception the Houston area has of Pasadena, there are just as many nice parts of Pasadena as there are bad.
But if you believe in those myths that all of Pasadena is trash, then better for us here, we don’t have to deal with people like you visiting our city.
Carlos is right. There are some very nice areas of Pasadena and a lot more perfectly decent older neighborhoods. The area that Cody is describing, while sketchy in places and with some very shabby houses, still has some reasonably well kept houses and is a great location in terms of getting around/into the city. I’m guessing it will be the next gentrification area, economy permitting.
Is it just me or does Cody’s smugness about real estate investment get really annoying after a while? I’d rank him second only to Armando Montelongo. They both make some excellent points mixed in with some truly awful points and, at the end of the day, no matter how successful they might be all you want to do is make them shut up.
biggerintexas…THANK YOU i thought it was just me….
Bigger/Chris: I didn’t think I was being smug but if it came out that way, shame on me. I was a long time reader here before giving my $.02 on various things. I don’t have anything to gain personally from comments, I was just trying to be a part of the conversation. I’ll admit that normally ends up with me pushing the idea of people buying rental property, however you’ll never see me push my own properties / website / etc.
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The only time I mentioned a specific property of mine is when I made a comment (my first comment actually) on a story that was done here about the two former Montrose area Skylane apartment buildings I purchased.
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Anyway, at the risk of digging myself further into the smug hole, I’ll just leave it at that. Thanks for pointing out that I was sounding smug. That’s the last thing I want to be…
I think Cody has provided some good information in his posts, usually information that we wouldn’t get elsewhere. I read back over the last few posts and I’m not seeing the smug. Other than he admits that he wouldn’t consider some of his rental properties or neighborhoods “nice.” Neither would I but if his renters are happy and the places are in livable shape I have no need to criticize.
Cashadena will be the next area for gentrification….especially North Pasadena..or NoPA as the hipsters will start calling it…I can see it know…hipsters trolling down SOuthmore and Spencer…Cashadena..Houstons own version of Brooklyn… ghetto people of all color…some rich people…but MOSTLY working class…refineries..urban architecture…very ethnic.. gangs..guns..Clear lake Makes it…Pasadena takes it… if you’ve been to Spencer Highway and Southmore those two major streets are very urban..in fact I think it some of the most urban architecture in houston..southwest Pasadena otherwise known as “fairmont” which is the area past beltway 8 and Fairmont towards LaPorte is the nicest area in Pasadena and is the last enclave where there is still a lot of gringos…but there is still a lot of Latinos there as well…the only diff. is that its mostly middle class than working class..sorry gringos you can’t escape us…also Edgebrook is pretty ghetto too.but thats in SoHO(south Houston) pasadena south houston..same thing…
i can see a tooth-less meth head couple in here…