Buying a House in this economy - Part 2

Fixer-Upper vs. Remodel
Today we looked at 5 more properties only to find out 2 were already under contract, one looked like it was a former swinger party den, one was by high voltage power lines and one was over priced and too far north.

Although it sounds like a motley crew of locations one did shine so bright that we we actually placed a bid on it and would you believe it was the one that was overpriced? This house had nine out of ten of our things we were looking for in a house. It had real hardwood floors, it had a 2 car garage, it had a fenced in back yard (vinyl fence too!), it had a pool, it had an wide open floor plan. The one thing it didn’t have was a big open kitchen but as the song says you can’t always get what you want.

The house was set as a short sale, and is not guaranteed because we did have slightly lower bid than asking but we think we may be in luck. And as in the previous article mentions there are vultures out there just waiting to pick these things off. The house also has a mortgage that is $70,000 more than the asking price, so that alone shows you how good of a deal it is.

But why not just buy a house that is a much lower price that is a “Fixer Upper”? If you have the time on your hands and not the 2 small boys like we have then this may be your cup of tea, but many of the ones that we evaluated it seemed like many of these fell in neighborhoods where the lack of home pride was apparent. And when you think of it in a long run, that 20,000-40,000 more you are spending on a house that is already remodeled is going to let you start your life the day you move in. How many of these jobs that you had high hopes of “down the road” never happen? There are many of those unfinished honey-do lists out there, and you just look at that old carpet and wonder when you can replace it.

Yeah you will probably pay double or triple the price of the actual repairs over the life of your loan when you consider interest, but the piece of mind that it is already done and don’t need to bring outside workers or bust a knuckle or cut off a finger (ask my dad!) on a DIY job may be worth every penny.