Our First House – You Get What You Pay For

It seems that my fiancée and I may have set our requirements too high for our budget.  Originally we were hoping to get a 2000 sq ft house with .5 acres of land for around $125,000.  There are houses out there that fit the bill, but are issues with these properties.

These big houses are only $125k for a reason.  That reason is that they have issues, major issues.  Here are some of the issues that the 1st house had:

- the unfinished basement was counted as part of the 2000 sq ft
- the house sat 5 feet away from a wet weather creek (in rain became a river)
- the house would likely need expensive flood insurance ($500 -1500 a year)
- there was a huge old ugly mint green barn on the neighboring property
- there was a 15-20 unit mobile home graveyard across the street

None of these issues are good for resale.  And none of the problems were mentioned in the listing.  Here are the issues with the 2nd house:

- the foundation was only 2 inches thick
- there were support beams through the middle of the living and family rooms
- the walls had poorly patched holes (looked like they had been punched out)
- the ceiling in the master bath was extremely low
- the roof had been re-shingled 3 times
- the deck felt like it was going to collapse
- the driveway needed to be repaved
- the house seemed like it had been abused by the owners

The problems with this house are that it needs $10,000 or more of work to be put into it.  Our budget is $125k, so the total cost of the house needs to be that amount.  These two houses are potentially nightmares.

In the first one we would be wondering if we were going to get flooded out every time it rained.  In the second one we would wonder when the foundation was going to crack.  These are not things that I want to have in the back of my mind.

Written by admin on August 30th, 2006 with comments disabled.
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