A home that was listed for $1 has been sold for $52,000 in Michigan.

Chris Hubel, a Metro Detroit real estate agent with Good Company Realty in Royal Oak, confirmed in an email to FOX Business that the two-bedroom house he listed online for a dollar has found a buyer.

“We did in fact accept a $52,000 cash offer this morning,” Hubel wrote on Wednesday, Aug. 23.

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Hubel listed the 724-square-foot ranch home in Pontiac, Michigan, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, through Realcomp, which is the state’s largest multiple listing service. 

The dollar asking price garnered attention from homebuyers who saw the property on popular real estate websites.

“The listing had millions of views from different sources,” Hubel wrote. “I received over 4,500 calls from consumers directly from Zillow where the listing had nearly 250,000 views in just a week.”

“In total we ended up with approximately 142 offers ranging from .27 cents to the $52,000 offer that we accepted,” Hubel continued.

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which is located within Michigan’s Dupont Heights neighborhood, will require repair, according to Hubel.

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“The home needs a full rehab which will cost between $25,000 to $45,000 depending on the finishes and how much work is hired out,” Hubel wrote. “After rehab the home should sell for $120,000 [or more].”

Photos Hubel provided FOX Business show the Pontiac home will need its kitchen and utility room redone.

The utility room will require a furnace replacement, a new hot water heater and floor repair, Hubel explained in a phone call Wednesday evening.

The home appears to be in need of modest repairs in the living room, bathroom and one of the bedrooms.

Why list a home for $1?

“This was kind of an experiment to show that when you underprice a home, the market is just going to tell you what the true market value is,” said Hubel.

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“If I was to list this home for a traditional listing price, I probably would have listed it around $40,000. It probably would have sold for a strong $45,000,” he continued. 

“But, since we did it the way that we did, we increased exposure and all of a sudden this home is marketed to the entire world as opposed to just the local market, which obviously impacts the sales price and that’s a little more money.”

Overpriced homes, on the other hand, tend to sell below market value because sellers are going for a higher number in anticipation of being talked down, according to Hubel.

While some towns in Europe have made headlines for selling one-Euro homes to people in exchange for years-long house rehabilitation, Hubel’s tactic differs in that it’s happening in a competitive market where there’s a shortage of homes, he explained.

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“I wanted to do this for a few years now, and this kind of was the perfect scenario and perfect home to try it on,” said Hubel, who said he only recently learned about the one-Euro home trend after his listing went viral.

“I knew it would do well, but I didn’t expect it to reach a worldwide audience like it did,” he continued.

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In light of the success of Hubel has received with his $1 listing, he launched homesforadollar.com, a website where he plans to continue list dollar houses in hopes of finding the true value of residential properties like he did with the Pontiac listing.

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A former New Jersey state correctional officer was charged Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for fraudulently raising funds through a now-collapsed unregistered crypto asset security he created and misappropriating investor funds.

John DeSalvo, 47, marketed his digital token known as the “Blazar Token” to police officers, firefighters, EMTs and other first responders as a “crypto pension” that could be used to supplement existing pension plans, according to the SEC’s civil complaint.

The complaint accused DeSalvo of falsely telling investors Blazar was registered with the SEC, it could replace existing state pension systems, and he was arranging for it to be purchased by automatic payroll deduction. 

He allegedly promised Blazar would offer “more stability than another other token” and its value would rise over time as any investment fund would, but at a “much higher rate of success,” according to criminal charges also announced Wednesday by the District of New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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After raising at least $620,000 from approximately 220 investors since Blazar’s launch in November 2021, DeSalvo’s token collapsed in May 2022 after he sold off more than 41 billion of his own Blazar tokens, according to the SEC complaint. The move caused the token’s value to drop very quickly, and it never recovered – resulting in most investors losing their entire investments.

DeSalvo is accused of using investors’ funds for reasons unrelated to Blazar, including renovating a bathroom and sending money to his personal crypto asset wallets, the SEC complaint revealed.

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He is also accused of operating a fraud scheme in January 2021 where he solicited investors to participate in a “venture where he was to invest their funds in stocks, options, and crypto asset securities,” the SEC complaint included. 

In that scheme, he allegedly raised $95,000 from 17 investors, which he deposited into his brokerage account. Within weeks of the deposit, he lost about $17,000 of the funds to speculative investments and then misappropriated the remaining $78,000, the complaint said. 

DeSalvo allegedly told those investors that the group’s securities had “lost all value due to poor market conditions.”

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U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced DeSalvo’s criminal charges include two counts of wire fraud, two counts of securities fraud and two counts of money laundering related to the schemes.

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Affordability isn’t the only factor potential homebuyers consider. Not only are potential buyers looking at price, but they’re also factoring the proximity to work. 

Commutes to the office are becoming more of a consideration as companies continue to drive the nation’s workforce back to the office, even part-time. Zoom, which helped millions work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, is asking employees to come back to the office two days a week..

For the first time in five years, the suburbs of five major metropolitan areas — Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis — have made it on Realtor.com’s Hottest ZIP Codes report. 

Homes listed within the Hottest ZIP Codes report have received an average of 3.6 more views than in the rest of the country. They have also sold one month faster than average in 2023, according to the report. 

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“With the world changing yet again, home shoppers are adjusting…the zip codes that are near big cities with good job opportunities that offer high quality of life are getting attention from home shoppers this year,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale told FOX Business. 

These are generally higher priced zip codes given their proximity to major metros.

The data “suggests that people are thinking about where they’re going to be and willing to pay a premium for a good location, presumably because commuting is becoming a thing that people are doing more frequently. It’s top of mind when they’re searching for a home,” Hale added.

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Realtor.com economists projected that “affordability was still going to drive a lot of people to look outside of cities” this year, but that they also noted how the “return to office trend is going to probably cause people to go in the other direction,” Hale added. 

This is creating a bifurcated market, which means they are seeing two contrasting buyers in the market, she said. 

While many buyers are looking to move closer to the office, there is data to suggest that a handful of buyers till have work flexibility and are able to seek out more affordable options farther away from the office. 

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Here are the top ten zip codes, according to Realtor.com data: 

1. 43230 in Gahanna, Ohio 

2. 06489 in Southington, Connecticut 

3. 07450 in Ridgewood, New Jersey 

4. 01810 in Andover, Massachussets 

5. 18064 in Nazareth, Pennslyvannia 

6. 46322 in Highland, Indiana

7. 48183 in Trenton, Michigan 

8. 06851 in Norwalk, Connecticut 

9. 14534 in Pittsford, New York

10. 63021 in Ballwin, Missouri 

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