I’m not familiar with this phenomenon of cheap apartments in very desirable locations that are only open for sale to people on a limited income who can buy the apartment outright for cash:
These properties are called HDFC. You’re not allowed to take out a mortgage on them. And you are not allowed to make over $150,000 a year. The only people I can imagine having $185,000 in cash lying around while not making that much money (for NYC, at least) are crooks. I mean, where do you get that amount in cash on a $150,000 income?
I asked AI, and it confirms the existence of the phenomenon but cannot explain it beyond spooling miles of woke platitudes. Does anybody have any insight into this?
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s…. really weird. I suppose it could happen if you inherited it, or you were part of a successful injury lawsuit.
ethyl
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It seems very strange that there would be laws aimed at manufacturing a situation where these specific categories of people would be able to buy extremely desirable real estate on the cheap. There are bizarre forms of corruption everywhere.
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Haven’t seen those around here. But like all the “first time homebuyer” programs we’ve investigated, it seems ripe for fraud.
The other people who’d be eligible are, of course, people whose income is mostly off the books, and the sort of wealthy folks who can always afford whatever they want, but carefully arrange their assets so as not to legally own much of anything, or have any visible income. I bet Trustafundians could buy them.
Down here at the low end, we have Habitat for Humanity houses for sale, where you have to have a household income under $80k to qualify, but the price is still high enough that nobody with such a low income can actually afford to buy the house.
The result is: we watched a HH house go up on our last street. When it was done, a single mom and her teenage kid moved in. Hooray, congrats on your homeownership journey and stuff! A week later, her undisclosed adult male second income moved in.
We, being legally married, cannot take advantage of such programs.
There’s a statewide program that offers no-interest ‘downpayment assistance’ loans to first-time homebuyers. You can wait until you pay off your mortgage to start paying off the assist loan. The program stipulates that it’s for first-time homebuyers only, has a household income cap, and if you move out, sell, or rent out the property, the entire amount of the loan is due immediately. Which sounds fair, but… it also doesn’t sound like there is any mechanism in the program for checking that people aren’t lying on the application, the usual fraud-by-not-mentioning-your-unmarried-domestic-partner’s-income, and all the exciting possibilities for people turning the place into a rental and just not mentioning it, people who already own 5 investment properties in other states applying as “first time” buyers, etc.
All of which helps drive home prices up, up, and away out of range of ordinary working families who made the mistake of getting legally married and not lying on the application.
ethyl
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