2 days ago
The ramshackle homes in America's 'most miserable city' are selling for peanuts but would you dare live there
A place once dubbed 'America's Most Miserable City' is experiencing a major property boom as investors are snapping up abandoned homes for as little as $15,000.
Gary, Indiana or 'The Steel City,' which was once home to more than 10,000 abandoned buildings after half its population fled, has seen house prices skyrocket from a median of just $15,000 in 2014 to $106,000 this May.
That's a staggering sevenfold increase in a decade for a city where people once simply walked away from homes they couldn't sell.
The city was built around a single steel industry but that has been declining for decades.
Gary ended up victim to deindustrialization, depopulation, drugs, crime.
But now, amid a nationwide housing shortage, investors are taking a second look at properties and there's still massive bargains to be had.
One realtor from XF MANAGEMENT is currently offloading homes at rock-bottom prices to investors willing to take on massive renovation projects.
'The 656 Tennessee address unit is currently under contract and we were only unloading it because we can't get to it with how many projects we have currently on the books,' the realtor revealed to
The realtor explained the appeal to investors.
'We realize that Gary, Indiana, isn't the same in terms of both economy or equity accumulation in the real estate category but with the barrier of entry into its inventory of real estate parcels being so low it would be hard for any real investor, developer, builder, to pass on the solid opportunity in building cash flowing assets while the rest of the country is super inflated.'
These aren't move-in ready properties by any stretch of the imagination.
Many homes are boarded up, filled with rubble from collapsed roofs, or charred from fires and arsons.
Some require complete gut renovations with investors pouring tens of thousands into properties that cost just 'peanuts' to snatch initially.
The realtor emphasized the lengths they go to present these distressed properties in the best possible light.
'We even go as far as pouring brand new concrete driveways and sidewalks to present the property better even though we know the city doesn't have that kind of funding just yet.'
Jennifer A. Parham, managing broker with Lighthouse Realty Northwest Indiana, confirmed the market transformation to NWI Times.
The interior of the Ralston Street property needs some serious TLC
'The Gary housing market is most definitely experiencing a resurgence,' she told the outlet. 'Gary was an area hit not only by blight, but hard by the recession as well.
'Over the last few years we have seen numerous investors take advantage of Gary's low value and purchased and held those properties.
'Some flipped them, but overall the last thee years we've seen more consumer investors.
'Those particularly interested in buying back the block and building Gary back up to its long forgotten stature.'
The driving forces behind this boom are stark economic realities elsewhere.
'Currently with inflation, the housing crisis, and current state of inflation, Gary has become a hotbed for Illinois transplants and those who have never left,' Parham continued.
'They find they can get more home for their buck in Gary, and it offsets some of the costs like additional security and/or schooling. More and more professionals are looking to purchase in Gary.'
'They are either looking for older larger homes that they can remodel and customize to their liking, or fully flipped homes which still price very well considering the Northwest Indiana housing market and come with all the amenities.'
Kristene Reyes with JKRB Properties bought her first Gary investment property in 2022 and is now on her third.
She's seen firsthand how challenging these projects can be.
'These projects aren't for the faint of heart,' she told NWI Times. 'You have to have experienced contractors and can run into serious problems, even with the foundation.
'You have to rip the houses out to the studs and it can take a long time. If you've never done it before it can be quite overwhelming. Even just tree removal is expensive. You have to put a ton of money in it.'
But for those willing to take the risk, the rewards can be worth it.
Reyes said some of her tenants are even 'coming from Chicago' where rental prices are rising.
'The market is squeezed. There's a housing crisis where there's not enough homes,' Reyes said.
'In Gary, the homes are just sitting there. This is good for Gary but also making an impact on all of the Region. It's good for the general housing market here.'
Gary - best known as the birthplace of Michael Jackson - was named as America's 'most miserable city' in a 2019 list complied by Business Insider.
In 2024, Gary was home to the highest abandoned home rate in the nation at 31.41 percent, according to analysis from 247WallSt.
The data found that the population has staggeringly dropped by 18.2 percent from 2010 to 2020, with a population around 67,000.
Mainly known as a hub of the United States Steel Corporation, the city thrived as over 16,000 steel workers flooded the area, making it home to the largest plant in the nation in the 1920s.
When the steel industry began its decline in the 1970s thanks to foreign imports outpacing the domestic steel economy, Gary began crumbling into chaos leading to rising rates of poverty and violent crime in the city.
A median 49 crimes per square mile are recorded there each year, according to Neighborhood Scout.
This dwarfed the national median of 27 crimes per square mile - and it's also a whopping 149 percent higher than the Indiana median of 20 crimes per square mile.
