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Should we be focusing on the Beckley area instead???? Or maybe contact the gentleman with the home in Sophia? With these comments.....ya'll have me nauseated!
Please take no offense, but if these comments frighten you or make you leary, may I suggest Virginia? I understand Tennessee is nice all year round with fewer problems than either of the Virginias.
I think you should also know something about the obesity problem. West Virginians didn't get fat on fast food. More like road kill. I make a mean road kill chili. Seems to help the flavor if ya can't identify what the critter was before it tried to cross the road.
Alice do you think it wise to get them their own series on bravo? Moldy bigfoot wives of bluefield county. This might backfire and vagrants from Indiana might come looking for true love.
Vagrants from Indiana will get what they deserve if they don't fully research an area before the move. The article even says that Bluefield hasn't been a boom town since 1920. There oughta been a message there....
Yummmmmmm...roadkill! We have a fair share of that here in VT. Not knowing what really is a prob and what is just overexaggerated sarcasm...I can handle obese, non thriving, drug infested communities.....you're describing most of the USA at this time. I think we will need to visit WV a few times....check out some of the areas we like best...make a note of this. The way I see it....the property is cheap enough in Bluefield right now and we can relocate to an area we find more suitable in the future.
The way I see it....the property is cheap enough in Bluefield right now and we can relocate to an area we find more suitable in the future.
Suit yourself. But remember, if a price sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Make sure you get at least two inspectors to evaluate the property before you sign anything. It is not that anyone would mislead you or lie during the transaction but is generally a matter of the seller not having any idea of the faults in the home.
Here is how such a thing can (and does) occur: A woman has a breathing problem in Bluefield. Her doctor tells her it is asthma and she should find a hot and humid or hot and dry climate. So she puts her house up for sale, "is motivated" to settle in a warmer climate for her health. All along, the respiratory problem may have been black mold in the walls of her home in Bluefield. Chances are slim that she even knew about the mold.
There is no sarcasm in my voice that tells you to get two inspectors to evaluate any property you are interested in. If the price is so cheap that you will ignore the conversations on this thread, at least make sure that you are getting a structurally sound and healthy home.
Even if you buy with the intention of relocating to another area later, it will then be your house to sell, and any defects that you know about have to be passed on to all potential buyers. This is fair warning.
I'm not ignoring the information in this post....I obviously don't live in a bubble! The man selling the property has never lived there and the project is a total rehab. He's not trying to hide anything and we already know that we will have to do most of the work to make the place livable. The main thing I am concerned about is the black mold. However, any house can have this problem. My point is the price is cheap enough that we could rip the entire house out if desired and put another one up and consider our purchase to be a land buy. My husband is able to do all of the work.
Nice article in USAToday about places in the U.S. that have escaped the housing "mess". Bluefield is noted for having 57% of its owner-occupied homes being mortgage free, the highest rate in the nation.
Unfortunately, it also mentions that people are discovering Bluefield and similar places, so we need a counter article to discourage the hordes. Maybe along the lines of "West Virginia last in sushi consumption".
Hats off to Bluefield.
To discourgage - would they like to take over the fattest title, I'm sure Huntington area wouldn't mind giving it up.
Quite often we mention "concerns" here either as tongue-in-cheek or to ward off "outsiders". Alice is the leader of our "keep WV wonderful" campaign.
Want to enjoy living in WV and the people? Don't come here with a better than thou attitude. We have pretty salt of the earth type values, repect people with physically hard working jobs, etc.
Ever watch "The Housewifes of...." shows? We think the values and attitudes of those people are ridiculous and dare I say, disgusting. What's even funnier is that people like that think everyone envies them and wants to be like them.
Bluefield - to me downtown is pretty depressing. However, you may like the area as your second home. But like another poster said - you do get what you pay for. If it has a lot of land, don't be shocked if a lot of the land is steep mountainside that you can barely even walk on, etc.
If it has a lot of land, don't be shocked if a lot of the land is steep mountainside that you can barely even walk on, etc.
Or rocky or not tillable or infested with vermin. Even the WV vermin don't appreciate outsiders. If the property is a "project property" you have to look at the resale value of it too.
It's not just this one property but the whole area is depressed. The economy has been in a slump since the major coal operations left. There are still active mines and there are a great many people who mine for a living, but the BIG operators like US Steel have moved on. US Steel was HUGE here and ran most of the mining operations during the war. The slump of US Steel moving on has remained for over 50 years.
The people here are not interested in what you can bring here or what you can improve or change. Even if you put in a couple years of elbow grease and sweat, your place isn't going to turn a profit for you the way they will on TV. That kind of money doesn't exist here. Nobody is going to buy a "flipped" house because everyone in WV is a handy person. We do for ourselves and if we want a flipped house, we'll do it ourselves to the cheap house we bought.
I know people on welfare that are buying a house. There are bunches and bunches of rent-to-owns and owner-financed options here. It happens all the time here.
If your project house were in Chicago or New Orleans or Denver or DC, it would work, but we are trying to keep you from making a HUGE mistake. Why do we care? Because people have tried to do what you are trying to do so many times before and you know what they turn into? They leave and then they turn on us. They bad mouth all of WV and her inhabitants.
We take offense to that.
We are trying to prevent it by doing our best to keep you from making another mistake that has been made a gazillion times before by others with dollar signs in their eyes. There is no money here for "flipped" houses. There is no economy here. You have a choice of being a coal miner, a cashier or burger flipper. Coal mining tends to keep the dead economy from drowning completely, so be real careful about badmouthing that.
Right now is a precarious time for WV. Why? The next President of the US is no friend of coal. He fooled the voters long enough to get their vote, but his real feelings slipped out shortly before the election and too late to get the word out. If we lose our coal mines, there will be nothing left here to salvage.
But maybe we aren't being cldear about something. It's not just Bluefield. The story is the same in most of the state.
Please don't preach to the choir up here in VT. I'm not a house flipper...just a fellow "american" citizen trying to plant my feet in another state. Why? To have a place to get away from my own personal life here. The VT site is full of posts just like this regarding tranplants. My husband is one of the biggest "transplant" bashers around me. If I were coming from a big city you might expect some culture shock to occur. I am harmless...I am not a city person...I don't even like Starbuck's coffee! I dragged my husband into one yesterday when we had to go up north to a music store to get my son's guitar equipment fixed.................. he about near crapped himself in the crowded atmosphere. I finished him off totally when I told him how much I paid for our hot chocolates. Anything over a dollar is too much to him. WE ARE NOT CITY PEOPE! WE ARE NOT MAJOR LAND DEVELOPERS and WE DO NOT COME WITH THE EXPECTATION TO CHANGE YOUR STATE! We are corner family diner people. I am a person who wants to wipe the slate clean and start over somewhere else.(on a part-time basis) I can't buy a second home in another state because I am not "rich". I am a social worker and my husband runs his own excavating business which he plans to retire from in the next few years. A "project" home to us is one that we would have in the family for many years to come....so we have a place to visit and hopefully consider permanency when my children are on their own. I value the quiet life. Have you ever stumbled upon a "stereotype" of a true Vermonter? It is very similar to a West Virginian in many ways.
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Or maybe contact the gentleman with the home in Sophia? With these comments.....ya'll have me nauseated! 
I'm not a house flipper...just a fellow "american" citizen trying to plant my feet in another state. Why? To have a place to get away from my own personal life here. The VT site is full of posts just like this regarding tranplants. My husband is one of the biggest "transplant" bashers around me. If I were coming from a big city you might expect some culture shock to occur. I am harmless...I am not a city person...I don't even like Starbuck's coffee! I dragged my husband into one yesterday when we had to go up north to a music store to get my son's guitar equipment fixed.................. he about near crapped himself in the crowded atmosphere. I finished him off totally when I told him how much I paid for our hot chocolates. Anything over a dollar is too much to him. WE ARE NOT CITY PEOPE! 
WE ARE NOT MAJOR LAND DEVELOPERS and WE DO NOT COME WITH THE EXPECTATION TO CHANGE YOUR STATE! We are corner family diner people. I am a person who wants to wipe the slate clean and start over somewhere else.(on a part-time basis) I can't buy a second home in another state because I am not "rich". 
I am a social worker and my husband runs his own excavating business which he plans to retire from in the next few years. A "project" home to us is one that we would have in the family for many years to come....so we have a place to visit and hopefully consider permanency when my children are on their own. 
I value the quiet life. Have you ever stumbled upon a "stereotype" of a true Vermonter? 
