Old House Renovations

Are you searching for solid old Craftsman style homes for under 50,000? If so, Decatur, Illinois may be the town of your dreams. I talked to a few people that live there to be able to tell you all the nitty gritty details about this area.

First, there’s the obvious - you’re close enough to Chicago (3 hours) to take a ride in to the big city for the weekend to enjoy the arts and entertainment options. However, you’re not living in a big city. Keep in mind that Decatur itself is a small city, with a population of around 80,000(city-data.com), and does have many of the things a big city offers, including some crime ridden areas.

The people I talked to recommend anything located West of Business 51 and they said the Fairview Park area is also good. They also said that some of the other areas aren’t necessarily unsafe or bad to live in, but they tend to smell like burnt Wheaties. I’ve never burned Wheaties myself, but it doesn’t sound like a good smell. The odor comes from the big employer in town - a soybean processing plant. (On city-data.com’s forums, I noticed some people didn’t like Decatur because this major employer acted a bit Big Brotherish with them when they left their jobs.)

Decatur does have quite a lot of nice hiking areas , which is always a nice surprise in a city.

Employment - there are other options besides working for the soybean plant, but don’t expect to command the same salary in the Illinois area that you command on the East Coast. Jobs that are going for $20 an hour here seem to be going for $12 an hour there. I didn’t check all job fields, just some of the basic electrician, librarian, etc. type jobs. Of course, you don’t need to earn as much because you’re paying so much less for real estate.

A search today on Realtor.com brought up over 120 houses for under $50,000, with two houses starting at $9,900. I like the look of this diamond in the rough for $13,000 , although I didn’t check to see which side of Business 51 it is on.

Do you live in or have you lived in Decatur, Illinois? I’d love to hear your thoughts about the area.

Photo by Benjamin Costello

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