The $1 house is not unique to Detroit, although there are a lot of them for sale in the Motor City to local government. Under HUDa€™s Good Neighbor Program, properties offered to the public for sale for six or more months are removed from the market and proffered for $1 plus closing costs.

It appears to be a popular program. Michigan and Ohio were buying up so many $1 houses this year that HUD put a halt of sales in April so they could look into what local governments were doing with the properties, reported the Columbus Dispatch. But this is not a deal offered to the public or even directly to nonprofits.

Regular folks can find $1 deals, however. The houses just usually dona€™t include any land. Among the strings attached, buyers must pay to have the houses moved. The Angelino Heights home featured recently as the Home of the Week was one such $1 prize in 1978 before it was moved to its current site. It’s listed today for $1,495,000.

If having a site and paying moving expenses are not deterrents to you, HistoricProperties.com lists a $1 house in South Bend, Indiana, and two in Lynchburg, Va. Still too steep? A Windsor, N.Y., farmhouse lists for $0. Not everything on the site is so inexpensive, but ita€™s pretty amazing what can be bought for about the price of an automobile. Tough luck for the Western U.S., though. The search unearthed no such gems. latimes