Am I Really Buying Another House?

I’d be lying if I didn’t have a few moments yesterday morning while leisurely drinking my morning coffee, poking around on the Intrawebs, reading more terrible economic news, when I questioned why exactly I was buying a tiny little abandoned house in not the best neighborhood in town. I mean, I enjoy this real estate stuff, true, but I also enjoy playing Fallout 3 on my Xbox, and one of those two things is immensely less risky, expensive, and time-consuming.

But the moment passed, and I got busy working on floor plans and seeing if I could get our contractor out there. Met him later in the day and he and his helper kicked the tires with me, tossing around different ideas.

Some of the good news, in no particular order:

1) He didn’t think I was batshit crazy for buying the house. We’ll need to undo most of the “repairs” the guy living in it did while he was supposed to be fixing it up, but the bones of the house are solid are far as the foundation, beams, subfloor, etc.

2) He thinks we can salvage the old metal roof and just redo the flashing and some of the ridge caps, paint it, and call it good. It’s currently doing it’s job and water-tight, it’s just not much to look at.

3) Wonder of all wonders, there are fairly nice original hardwood floors underneath a couple of layers of old Masonite and linoleum floors. Some areas aren’t salvageable but I think I can save the hardwoods in what will be the main living area and the bedroom, and put tile down in the bathroom and kitchen where the floors are beyond saving.

And the bad news:

1) The biggest problem with this property isn’t going to be the house itself, but the abandoned house next door. This thing is a real piece of work, as it’s an original house built in 1910 with another structure tacked onto it (literally) as some point. The realtor selling my property said at one point 12 people were living next door, until some of them were arrested, kids hauled off by protective services, and the whole gypsy camp shut down.

Poking around yesterday, the abandoned house next door is obviously where the cool kids hang out. To smoke crack. The house itself seems to be securely boarded up, so there’s no one squatting in it, but there’s trash everywhere outside, including a ratty old couch beside the house with like nine million empty lighters and beer cans scattered around. One nice thing about my property is that it’s very close to downtown but kind of secluded, on a dead-end little street with a park next to it. But seclusion cuts both ways, as evidenced by the activities next door.

The real problem is that the property belongs to an estate, which only lists the property itself as a mailing address. Even better is the fact that they haven’t paid any taxes since 1983, so they owe nearly $7,000 in back taxes and fees. Complicating things is the house sits on the only irregular lot on the street, which extends down and then behind the other lots like mine, so it’s actually on a 1 acre lot. 50% of which is in a flood plain.

So yeah. Messy. Buying it from the estate would likely be problematic even if I could contact them, as dealing with estates are usually nightmares (especially given the nature of the family that had been living there previously), and they’d likely have unrealistic expectations about the property, given the lot size. And anything paid to them would be on top of the back taxes due.

The realtor selling our property thought that this one was going to the tax deed sale soon, which might be the only way to go. $7,000 would be a decent price for it, as one of the structures on it looks salvageable. The only problem would be the 6 month redemption period the previous owners would have, as I don’t believe I could legally demo anything during that period.

A completely illegal option (which I may do) would be to simply clean up all of the trash outside it, including the party-time couch and other similar crap. Technically speaking, I’d be trespassing and stealing, but I highly doubt the only neighbor in sight would mind. He’d probably pitch in and help, as he actually maintains his house and yard very nicely.

I’ll also probably bite the bullet and put up a privacy fence, to at least give my future tenants some relief from the eyesore next door. It’s something I’d do farther down the road, when trying to sell the property, so it’s not a waste, just an expense at this stage I’d rather avoid. It’d mean that I’d also have to pay for a survey, as it didn’t come with one and I have no clue where the actual property lines are (other than the general plat info) which again is useful down the road but not needed at this stage.

2) The sheetrock and electrical work already done needs to just be ripped out. Not a huge loss as only 1/3rd of the house had been sheetrocked, but I’d been hoping we could use it just to save some time, more than anything.

All in all, pretty excited to tackle this one and get to work. It’s a little frustrating to wait until closing on December 19th, but that gives me some time to get a floor plan squared away, and hopefully a
more set schedule with our contractor, as far as deadlines for various stages of completion, incentives to finish early, etc. Especially since I’ll be tackling some work myself, so being better organized will help me stay out of their way and not be stuck waiting for them to finish this or that before I can paint or tile.