patrick.net

Judging by the picture in redfin, it looks like a homedepot leftover special.

103 years old home / 1300 sq ft house / 3400 sq ft lot / 4 and 1.5.
New paint, granite counter top, new faucets, mabye some fix and repair here and there.
Still builder grade kitchen fixtures, old windows unchanged.
I think they have spent less than 20K for the quick flip.

I guess "decent" is very subjective. That's the ghetto in my book. I have friends who live around there and I pretty much hate to be in their neighborhoods after dark. And I was born in Richmond. Point is to leave the ghetto, not spend 309K to stay in it.

It mentions in the redfin listing that a new roof has also been put in. I'm didn't see the house go for sale in Nov, and frankly if it needed a good deal of work, I wouldn't have been interested.

OnTheFence, I agree with seaside that it has been freshened up by an investor. I for one like the 'old' windows when they are properly repaired - these look to just be painted shut (bad idea). Whatever the quality of their work, it's pretty clearly a case of someone buying a fixer, doing some work, and looking to profit.
If you are seriously interested in this house, I would try and get to the seller and figure out what he/she really feels they need to make on it. My strategy would be simply to bid low and see what they do. They may have done a half-assed job and are looking for a sucker, so inspect it carefully - but it could be a reasonable contractor type looking to make a few bucks by doing what you don't want to do - take a fixer and make it decent and livable.
It looks like a pretty standard job to me though. When I did my 100+ year old house, I can assure you I used much better fixtures than what is apparent here. Those do look like homedepot cheapies. The lights fixtures and the sink are very low end.

EDIT: just looked at street view - oooo, I no like that street.

RealtyTrac shows:
1562 properties in default in the area
1726 waiting for auction
2457 bank owned
635 resale / forsale -- this house is listed here. It is not in default, so no loan info or title history is shown.

Zillow only shows the idiot that paid 500K in 2005. The taxed amount went from 30K value to 500K value ,.... and then back down to 250K value in 2007 (?) but no sale info shown. The REturd has curropted most of the info on Zillow for this home.

The backyard neighbors look to be multi family res of some type.
On the bright side, the dude accross the street has a pumped up red nova that I bet sound good when he fires it up.

Pretty close to freeway.