Posted on 02/12/2021 9:18:49 PM PST by dennisw
NORWICH, Conn. – American millennials with budget constraints are breaking out of their pandemic coops to find affordable dream homes in far-flung places.
For funeral home director Kate Reinhart, from Utah, that dream is an octagonal Victorian that recalls the macabre Addams Family mansion seen in cartoons, films and a TV series.
Her scientist husband Cameron found his first job near Norwich, Connecticut, a town with one of the largest concentrations of 18th- and early 19th-century houses in New England.
For just $85,000 couple bought the 1885 house replete with stained glass, artisanal light fixtures and winding banisters. They plan to put some $100,000 into a massive renovation.
“I do feel like we appreciate it more now during the pandemic to have more space to ourselves,” Kate said. “People are more self-conscious about being on top of each other in tiny apartment buildings. In New York City, people are fleeing to here.”
The trend is clear from visits to CheapOldHouses, a website founded by Elizabeth Finkelstein in 2016 to promote the purchase and preservation of historical houses.
Followers of the site’s Instagram account have steadily doubled every week since U.S. pandemic lockdowns began in March, to about 20,000, she said. About 42% are aged 25-34, and about 75% are women.
“The mantra of real estate has always been ‘location, location, location.’ For the first time that’s being flipped a little bit on its head,” Finkelstein said. “We are living in a time when people are willing to kind of take risks, maybe risks that they’ve been wanting to take their whole life.”
Homes on CheapOldHouses.com tend to be in the U.S. Midwest, South and Rust Belt, where many sell for less than $100,000. Houses that cost more in North America, Europe and elsewhere are also listed in Finkelstein’s monthly newsletter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Yours is a labor of love and absolutely sounds like a slice of Heaven. Good for you!
A friend’s mother passed away last year. She lived in the DC area (Maryland burbs). The family cleaned out the house (built in the ‘60s), had the wood floors redone, wallpaper removed and all walls repainted, etc... They put about 8 to 10 thousand into prepping it and put it on the market.
My friend said they had a dozen or so walk thrus in the first week and got an offer of 15k below asking price in 5 days. The buyers were a 30 something hispanic couple with a little girl starting first grade and said that was maxing out their loan qualifications.
Friends family countered the offer with the full asking price and offered to split closing costs. Buyers reluctantly agreed and the 1900 sqft house on an 1/8 acre lot sold for $495,000. The kicker... the day after closing, a dumpster was dropped off in the driveway and they gutted the house putting over $100k into remodeling. Turns out, the husband was a contractor and the wife was a lobbyist for some hispanic group in DC.
>>Dealing with cheating contractors will be an education.
LoL! You got that right. Hello real world.
<<
The world where “next Tuesday” is eternally the following Tuesday.
That’s just to rehab HVAC, the roof, leaking chimney chase, bad plumbing pipes, rotted porch wood, bad gutters ...
On and on.
A century house is always a money pit. 💰
Not terrible IF you have done work like that before.
Like Sandpoint?
It’s been my experience fixing up older homes will cost a wee bit more than $100,000. I hope they know what they are getting into. Having said that, I’m glad someone is buying these old homes and not allowing them to just sit and rot.
I hear there are big houses in Detroit that are rather cheap.
I found some asbestos in my house during a minor renovation. I found out that I could do three things.
Leave it, hire a very expensive remediation contractor or tear it out myself.
All were legal. I chose option 3.
The county dump even had a special dumpster. No extra charge.
EXACTLY! Good for them. For a while there, home ownership was seen as something of “the past”. I am glad that the young are trying to live the AMERICAN DREAM instead of the “just rent” ideology. Another good thing the young are doing that no one is complimenting them on... buying vintage furniture. It’s unbelievably affordable, usually a hard wood of some kind and solid in structure. I see the “good for nothings /s” in antique shops, Good Will and Salvation Army stores.
Their site appears to be “scraping” real estate listing info from legitimate listing websites (Zillow? REALTOR.com?). Maybe they have an agreement with those sites, maybe they don’t. But that’s proprietary information and taking it without permission is a no-no.
😆
Agreed...the type of actions we should be encouraging.
I have some suggestions when doing this.
There is a reason they are affordable. Check the demographics, drive around at night, etc.
Most importantly if you have kids, find out how pervasive the drug culture is. This isn't Mayberry. These small and shelled out towns have been flooded with drugs by design.
Sure, drugs are every where but if you have kids, I can promise you, your chances of them having too much time on their hands and runnning into and being pressured into using them are near 100% in a hopeless small town. Maybe their kids have ample opportunity but the loclas kids, not so much.
Adding tech engineers making 300K to these towns is only going to increase the disparity and resentment.
You folks are quite knowledgeable but you are all missing something. 80% of renovations is grunt work-anybody can do it. Gutting plastered walls was a no no so insulation had to be blown in. No contractor to do that. As for asbestos the issue is simple.
Not-so-old retirees(62/SSI) should be doing it. Piss and vinegar left. Big contractors for roof and foundation. Dirt bag contractors for the small stuff-limited disappointment. Once exposed to asbestos it takes 20 years to take negative effect so you’ll probably die of something else.
Should have a lot of rooms to take in “immigrants”.
Like Dr. Zhivago’s house.
“Dealing with cheating contrators will be an education.”
I’d almost be willing to put up with cheating contractors if they’d even show up as promised, or return phone calls.
Sounds like they are Democrats. Honesty is not a virtue anymore. I am sure they are teaching their girl well.
Yep.
Then people complain about gentrification. Some people are always complaining ‘bout somethin’.
How much does tariffs on Canadian lumber play into this?
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