America had a love affair with ‘fixer-upper’ homes. That may be over

Home Depot/Lowes paid shows in tMud

That’s what I did. Ours was shite inside. We got right to work not only refinishing most rooms but making other major upgrades as well. Mostly doing it ourselves with sweat equity. It’s been a lot of work and a lot of fun and incredibly rewarding

I've bought two houses in my life. Both were brand new. I looked at pre-owned but the price difference wasn't enough of a savings to outweigh the hassle of fixing shite, and the idea that someone else had been living there. It's not like I'm a maladroit with powertools, I do a good bit of carpentry and mechanic work. I just like the idea of a new house with no hidden headaches from day one.

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Contractors are priced out of the residential market. It's either do the work yourself or let it be, there's little in between.

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i've had to do two things at our property this year that i absolutely could not do on my own: replace a deep well pump and some significant repairs to a steeply pitched metal roof (a fall would probably result in death or paralysis). Both were very expensive (though not what I'd consider out of line for the work).

I'm doing my own walk-in basement finish. One day. I've gotten this far: move all the crap to a storage unit and flush that rental money down toilet.

My one experience with a home update/renovation came in my previous house. We met with contractors and got bids before even closing on it. Main, number 1 thing we wanted was a gas stove, with a vent to the outside. Absolute number 1 priority for the project and we knew that it may or may not have been feasible so we interviewed several contractors to gauge how expensive it would be and if it was even reasonably possible given the layout of the house/kitchen.

Dude we went with was like "oh yea I can do exactly what you want that's easy."

We had a bunch of other parts of the project, but we knew that was the main one and would probably take the most "skill" to complete in a good, workman like manner.

Well like 75% of the entire project is finished/wrapping up and they still had not even begun on running the gas line or designing/installing the ventilation system. We'd already made several progress payments and had purchased an expensive gas stove for the guy to install.

We meet with the GC and ask (for the 3rd or 4th time) when the stove project would be tackled and what the plan was. It was at that point, a 6 weeks and about 25k into the reno that he came back and was like "Yea what you want is impossible and I had no idea you wanted it vented to the outside, I was just going to put a microwave with a vent feature above the stove (so it would just filter through the microwave and exit practically in your face if you're cooking).

Long story short, everything but the stove part of the project was finished, we found out that he didn't pull any permits for any of the work and the gas line he ran was not to code. Fired him on the spot and he was like "ok that's fine I'll come by and pick up my tools and the check for the outstanding 15k balance"

Laughed at him and told him to go ahead and have his lawyer contact me if he wanted to work something out. Never heard from him again.

:csb:

People are leery of buying other people's "problems"

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You are either very well-read or a fan of Weezer.

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I'm both. Actually woke up with My Name is Jonas in my head this morning.

But I learned that word from BC comics a million years ago.'

That’s when you could get a fixer upper cheap. Now the fixer upper in a good area costs just as much as the “move in ready” house used to cost.

Flipping homes has been a nice form of upward mobility. Started with a crack house in my 20’s and traded up every few years. Young people complaining about the price of rent should do the same. I would think the fixer-upper would be more attractive than ever when people are pinching pennies.

/double post/sry