Historic Oakland houses for sale for one dollar each

Oakland, Calif. – You can buy a historic home in one of Oakland’s hottest neighborhoods for only a dollar—but there’s an expensive catch.

NBC Bay Area reports the two homes on Brook Street are for sale for a dollar each, but anyone who buys the homes will have to move them, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Victorian houses were built in 1900 on a property where real-estate developer Lowe Enterprise is planning on building a 127-unit apartment complex.

The real estate deal is made possible by Oakland’s historic preservation rules, which require developers to offer historic or older buildings for next to nothing for buyers who can move them.

“They’re not throwaways by any stretch of the imagination,” city planner Pete Vollmann said.

Any potential movers have their work cut out for them.

Recently, it’s become difficult finding a place that it’s feasible to move homes like these. They need to move under freeway overpasses, overhead wires and down narrow streets.

“We’ve had a number of people who have looked at it but not anyone who has filed a development application to move it. Hopefully someone will apply because [the developer] is going to want to break ground pretty soon,” Vollmann said.