Southside homes getting snapped up cheap online by out-of-town buyers, companies

PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — David Hill resides in Peoria’s Southside on West Lincoln Avenue.

During the pandemic, houses abandoned on his street for more than 15 years suddenly started getting bought up by out-of-state buyers via online auctions for less than $5,000.

“A guy they said, is scamming people, putting them on the internet and selling them for thousands of dollars,” he claimed.

Joe Dulin, Peoria’s assistant director of community development, said it’s not a scam, but also not good for the community. He said these properties don’t belong to the city. But that LLCs and corporations are buying the homes cheaply and selling them to make a quick buck.

“What we saw in this process is an out-of-town LLC purchased these properties. They essentially tried to just quickly flip them to another LLC, who then quickly flipped them to other individual buyers. So at the end of the process, people were purchasing properties for…