There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere

CONTRIBUTORS

Cindy Perman
News Editor at CNBC.com and the author of The Pony Blog (ponyblog.cnbc.com). She has also written a book, “New York Curiosities,” and does stand-up comedy.
Jane Wells
CNBC business news reporter, based in Los Angeles, covering the defense and technology industries. She writes the CNBC.com blog Funny Business.

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

The news can get a little heavy sometimes, with debt crises, vicious markets and crappy earnings reports. So, we dispatched our crack reporters, Cindy Perman and Jane Wells, to find some levity amid all this seriousness. May we offer you a Keynesian cocktail with a side of bacon?

Why a Pony? To be clear, there were no ponies harmed in the making of this blog. The blog’s name, “There Must Be a Pony In Here Somewhere,” comes from an old joke, a favorite of Ronald Reagan’s, that essentially means, with a pile of you-know-what this big, there MUST be a pony—a bright side—in here somewhere!

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This Town Will Pay YOU $10,000 to Buy a House

Published: Wednesday, 11 Nov 2009 | 12:26 PM ET

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By: Cindy Perman
CNBC.com Staff Writer

Here’s a sweet real-estate deal: One well-heeled Chicago suburb is selling three homes in its downtown area for just $1 each.

Source: Village of Barrington
Hey, honey—Can you come out and help me unload the trunk? This hair salon I bought today is a little heavy! I'd also love your input on where to put it. By the fireplace?

But, wait, don’t answer yet: They’ll also give you $10,000 to buy one of them.

That’s right. They’re paying YOU to buy a house.

So why aren’t there any takers?

Well, there’s one teensy catch: You have to physically move the house to another location and that costs a lot more than $10,000 — more like $20,000.

The town of Barrington, which had to reduce its staff by 10 percent last year amid the recession, wants that land to build new restaurants, shops and office space as part of a downtown-revitalization project.

A first round of bidding generated a lot of buzz but no buyers.

The town says it's because the auction wasn’t long enough.

“We only had the bidding process open for a few weeks and that didn’t give the public enough time to assemble and get all the different players together — house mover, utilities, etc.,” said Brooke Jones, a development planner for Barrington.

It also had a lot to do with money.

By the time you add up the costs of buying a new lot, building a new foundation and then rewiring these turn-of-the-century homes for modern times, “it probably ends up costing per square foot similar to building a new home,” said Marty O’Donnell, who runs a B&B in town with his wife, Mary, and is chairman of the local architecture-review commission.

To put it simply: You get a fixer-upper-MOVER for the same cost as a new, move-in ready home.

And then there’s the fact that you have to figure out how to actually MOVE the house.

I mean, if you said, here’s a new refrigerator, all you have to do is find a place to put it, I could probably find a truck to move it — and a place to put it. But a house? That just sounds like something beyond the scope of my capability.

“It’s really a labor of love,” O’Donnell said — you’ve got to love the house and love preserving little pieces of history.

O’Donnell, who lives in a historic home in downtown Barrington and also volunteers to preserve the town's architectural history, obviously has the love: “It’s kind of a cute story,” he said. “You can buy a home for a negative $10,000 — all you have to do is find a place to put it!”

If you’ve got $1 — and the love — contact Brooke Jones from the village of Barrington at (847) 304-3400. The next round of bidding will start in November and run through March.

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