Elwood Indiana on Line

Prior to moving to Indiana, I did some searches of Elwood just to see what I could find before going there.

The Elwood High School Band

Elwood Memorial Day Parade

From what I could see on line, it appeared to be a very nice town and I still could not figure why the house prices had dropped so low. 

What I found when I got here was a lot of jobless people, many who had houses that were in forclosure and many who had just packed up and left. For where I don't know, maybe to go live with Mom and Dad or to somewhere else in the country where they thought jobs might be more plentiful.

After I was here about a year, I did a web page on Elwood called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I wanted to document what it was like here in 2009. I found it  much like Struthers where the steel mills were gone, the houses were still standing but the jobs and many of the people had up and left town.

 

 

Elwood, Indiana  2009 to current

 

After Helen passed away in September of 2008, I found it necessary to get out of the house we had shared for so many years. I began looking for houses on the internet that might be affordable for me but there was nothing in California that even came close to what I could manage on my fixed income. I had just returned from a Struthers High School Reunion and decided to see what the prices were like back east. I looked around Struthers as I knew the area but even there, the cost was more than I could afford.

I'm not sure what made me start looking for places in Indiana but I came across the town of Elwood and found quite a few houses that seemed exceptionally low priced. My friend Michelle and Brian lived about 30 miles to the south of Elwood so I asked her if she would go up and look at a few places that I had found. She did go look and some were pretty bad but the one at 1611 L Street seemed fairly nice so I contacted a Realtor. In a matter of two weeks, I had sent a down payment and got the ball rolling. It was a HUD owned house and the realtor had me pay for an inspection of the place.

1611 South Elwood As It Was When I Moved In

After the inspection, I decided to go ahead with the deal and ended up paying 22K for the place. My next big chore was loading up my car and driving from California to Indiana.  It took lme 5 days to make the trip and they were long and tiring days and I was glad when I finally arrived in Indiana. I was told after I arrived that the house closing would take two weeks so I ended up having to stay at a hotel for that period of time.

Once the closing was completed and I got the keys to the place, the rehab began. This next link will take you to the Elwood Rehab Pages which show 1611 South L Street as it was when I moved in and what it's like just about a year later.