This house at 3121 Barton Ave. north of Brookland Park Boulevard is one of 26 Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority properties to be auctioned June 29. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
Bargain-seeking house hunters and home renovators will have a chance to bid on more than two dozen Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority properties to be auctioned June 29 at 10 a.m. at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. (June 29 update: All of the RRHA houses up for auction have sold, with an average price of $55,365. The authority gave the total tally as $1,439,500. Final contracts and closings are expected within 45 days.)
The 26 properties to be auctioned include 15 on Richmond’s North Side and 11 on the South Side. Among them: a two-story Colonial Revival duplex at 3121 Barton Ave., built between 1910 and 1920 and currently assessed at $72,000; a 1948 one-story ranch at 2109 Halifax Ave., valued at $59,000, in the Oak Grove area off Jefferson Davis highway; and a two-story wood frame house in the Reedy Creek area at 3518 Moody Ave., built in 1930 and assessed at $137,000.
Because two of the properties are duplexes, RRHA counts the number of units as 28. They’re among 66 public housing units that the RRHA plans to dispose of, with the rest being transferred to two nonprofits, Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity and Project:HOMES. During the next 18 months, the nonprofits will renovate the houses and sell them to families earning 80 percent or less of the area median income, says Marcia Davis, RRHA chief real estate development officer.
Many of the houses have been vacant for years. In 2007, with federal Housing and Urban Development department approval, the authority put the properties into a home ownership program, with the intention of helping public housing tenants become homeowners. As a result, the RRHA sold 11 homes, she says, noting that changes at HUD and the economic downturn affected the success of the program.
After rejecting an earlier plan for the properties, HUD signed off on the current initiative this spring, Davis says. Proceeds from the auction will go toward development of affordable housing projects.
After this set of properties is sold and transferred, another 44 houses owned by RRHA will follow suit, she says.
“We’re very excited about the opportunities for the partners that we procured to provide affordable homes,” Davis says of the nonprofits.
