A while back there was a thread about a particular house, which was sitting empty with a pool of filthy water in the back yard, making it unpleasant for a neighbor to sit outside. Someone had looked into buying it, the taxes were too high to make that feasible. I pointed out that houses needing work had to go dirt cheap, in my experience, before anyone could buy them without getting taken to the cleaners. There is a house for sale now, which I think might be the house in question, someone bought it for $45,000 and is now trying to flip it after rehabbing it. That's how cheap houses have to get in Schenectady. On a nice street.
Another house, which somebody has been sitting on for years, holding out for a high listing price that wasn't gonna happen, and turning down offers that reflected what someone could afford and still be apply to pay for major repairs, I found out that after the recent heavy rains the kitchen ceiling has fallen in. It hasn't been listed with a realtor for maybe a year now, after maybe five years on the market. I don't get it. This isn't a case of walking away from a high mortgage, the house hadn't changed hands in a long, long time. Did someone think the market was coming back up?