It's now possible to buy a Sacramento home for less than the price of a Honda Accord.

At least two dozen homes in the Sacramento region sold during the last three months for $25,000 or less, and more are coming onto the market almost daily – a record number for this decade in such a short period of time.

For that price, you can get a home with a leaky roof. Or severe fire damage. There's a strong chance someone squatted in the home, taking everything good – pray for deals on copper piping – and leaving a lot of bad: trash and holes in the walls, if you're lucky.

In Oak Park and Del Paso Heights, for example, median home prices have fallen 80 percent from their mid-2006 peak to around $60 a square foot. That's about the cost of a house today in the 120-degree, high desert heat of Needles, Calif.

Still, in some ways the rock-bottom prices are a boon for the areas, according to real estate experts and community activists. All these houses are foreclosures; many have been vacant for more than a year, stripped by thieves and sucking the surrounding neighborhoods deeper into blight.

Offer homes for $25,000 and investors swoop in, even though typically they must pay cash and spend more to fix them up. Once repaired, the homes can become cash cows.

"They sell very good," said local Coldwell Banker agent Wesley Ellinghouse, who just sold a house in Del Paso Heights that listed for $23,500. "We had 13 offers on this one during the past 48 hours."

Jose Besabe lives on 33rd Street in Oak Park, surrounded by vacant, boarded-up homes he called eyesores. Recently, one sold for about $25,000; a few others for $30,000. Besabe is thrilled.

He expects the new owners will fix them up. And once repairs are made to neighboring houses, "It will raise the value of my house."

John Foley, executive director of Sacramento Self Help Housing, which provides home counseling and referral services to 2,000 local residents annually, figures finding a buyer now at any price can only be a good thing.

"When these are vacant, they are horrible for the neighborhood," Foley said. "If they get purchased and rehabilitated, that's positive."

Buying, fixing up takes cash

Real estate investor Reggie Lal is happy to oblige.

"At 25K, the risk is out of the market," Lal said. "It's pretty much bottomed."

What Lal does arguably has a more positive impact than speculators who bought $400,000 homes during the boom and sold them for $500,000 a few months later, pricing out regular folks who were unwilling to take on a high-interest loan.

During better times, Lal, who maintains an office for his firm, RL Financial, on the edge of Elk Grove, mostly focused on selling homes he bought during the last bust. Because he buys all his property out of foreclosure, he said, banks, not homeowners, get hurt by the low prices.

After finding a property that interests him, Lal pays cash and starts putting more money into the property. On a $25,000 house, he might add $15,000 in rehab, he said.

When the house is ready, Lal often puts it up for rent. Once he finds a tenant, he can find financing, he said, because the home is habitable and occupied. That rent is likely to cover the entire cost of his house payments – and more.

Then, it's just a matter of waiting until the market improves.

Lal said he's careful to keep his properties maintained, and city records support that contention. Not only does he want them ready to sell, but should tenants become unhappy and leave, he would have to pay financing costs.

Lal has bought at least a dozen low-price properties during the last year, property records show, and sold several after rehabilitating them.

Two areas fertile ground

Residents in Oak Park and Del Paso Heights took out more subprime loans during the boom than any other parts of the region, federal mortgage records show. Subsequently, they've experienced more foreclosures.

As a result, the two neighborhoods – with perennially high crime rates chasing away many potential buyers – are drowning in some of the region's cheapest available properties.

Call The Bee's Phillip Reese, (916) 321-1137.