<p>VeryHappy: Did you get your estimates?
:)</p>
<p>Not yet, alh. We’re trying to schedule an afternoon next week when the seller will be out of the house and we can bring an inspector in but so far we’ve not heard what day will work. For all I know, it could need every system – plumbing, electrical, roof, septic, well – renovated and upgraded, in which case just getting the house livable will cost too much. </p>
<p>In the meantime, we’re seeing several other houses tomorrow. Truth be told, I can’t get this original house (the Hoarder’s House) out of my mind. I’ve started to decorate it. And I’ve even figured out what to do with the entryway and the kitchen. </p>
<p>Dangerous, huh?</p>
<p>The lighthouse came from alh’s link. I want it!</p>
<p>well - who doesn’t want to live in a lighthouse?</p>
<p>Good Luck with your inspections VeryHappy! I can’t wait to hear.</p>
<p>Photos of rip rap. ( I don’t know why. It’s called that)
[Riprap</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riprap]Riprap”>Riprap - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Location Location and Location are the most important factors of buying a real estate. whether the home requires work or not is only part of the negotiation and pricing.</p>
<p>^^ only if you approach the process rationally. </p>
<p>I bought the ultimate fixer-upper in the middle of nowhere and have now spent enough to have bought the showplace house, with the updated status kitchen & all the rest, at the very best address.</p>
<p>Thank goodness I’ll never have to try and sell this house.</p>
<p>artloversplus, this house is a short sale. It’s my understanding that the bank – which has to agree to the deal before it can go through – has little to no interest in negotiating. They want their money, they want to get out of owning the house, and they’re not going to agree to requests or demands that we might want. It’s basically, from their perspective, take it or leave it.</p>
<p>the 1900 house is the short sale? or the hoarder’s house?</p>
<p>I had a thought (oh noooo, not another one you’re thinking) since it sounds like you are cash buyers. Sometimes old houses aren’t actually mortgageable once inspections are made and must then be disclosed. In those cases, someone who has cash may be in a really good negotiating position… depending on whether there are other potential cash buyers interested.</p>
<p>Locally I watched an old house go from over 1 mill to $150,000 over the course of two years. Some of the acreage was taken away, but still that was pretty dramatic. I have a lot of unmortgageable house stories but I will restrain myself.</p>
<p>edit: except for this: I have looked at short sales on old houses where the bank essentially told me “make an offer - any offer” :)</p>
<p>We live in a perfectly perfect contemporary that we built in 1995. But DH is always looking for a project so we’ve looked at [url=<a href=“886 Main St, Southbury, CT 06488 | realtor.com®”>886 Main St, Southbury, CT 06488 | realtor.com®]this[/url</a>] 1715 house, and even though we know it’s too much money and needs too much work, I know he’s still thinking about it. Too much HGTV indeed.</p>
<p>wow archiemom – what a gem! How much do you think you’d have to put into it? $50K? $100K?</p>
<p>So proud of myself, I knew what rip-rap is. I am absolutely one of <em>those</em> people who would be in the market for a restored antique house. …or unrestored. My dream is to be married to one of the This Old House type guys and work on restoring a house on evenings and weekends. Sigh…not to be in this lifetime!</p>
<p>Character, built-ins, craftsmanship, architecture, beautiful millwork…dreams, dreams, dreams. We’ve spent more converting this 1998 house to <em>old</em>, than it would have cost to by used and fix…now he sees I was right…lol.</p>
<p>“artloversplus, this house is a short sale. It’s my understanding that the bank – which has to agree to the deal before it can go through – has little to no interest in negotiating. They want their money, they want to get out of owning the house, and they’re not going to agree to requests or demands that we might want. It’s basically, from their perspective, take it or leave it.”</p>
<p>You might want to consider what alh said, that " I have looked at short sales on old houses where the bank essentially told me “make an offer - any offer”</p>
<p>We have been getting these short sales, and I’m starting to think that deal about “the bank says take it or leave it, this is their minimum” is just a negotiators ploy. If they think you are really interested, they want to make the deal go through, and if you pay cash, full price, then it’s more likely. Now that’s probably the right thing to do in a hot market, when you know it’s a great deal (we put 5 full price cash offers out there, and only got 3 accepted, as there is plenty of competition in certain areas at the right price). But if this is an old house that needs plenty of work, and has been on the market for some time…yeah, they will deal. The banks want to get rid of the properties. They are paying taxes on it, and sometimes people have stopped paying their mortgages and are living there for free.</p>
<p>One thing that is eye opening, is that even when all parties agree, surprise, when the title company does their checks, there may be liens that need to be cleared up. And of course, the bank doesn’t want to pay for those, so they have to be negotiated also. This one property we’re closing on soon (hopefully), had a 12K lien on it from the HOA, plus a couple of child support liens. We ended up getting the negotiator to whittle the HOA lien down to 4K (which we’re paying), and the state to remove the child support liens from the property. More complicated than we thought it was going to be!</p>
<p>The newest trend are these gender-reveal parties for expectant parents, whereby they have a party towards the end of the pregnancy and announce in some creative way that it’s going to be a boy / going to be a girl. How self-absorbed is that? If you want to tell us ahead of time, fine; if you want us all to wait, fine - but please, don’t think that it’s SUCH exciting news that you need to throw a party just to announce it. >>>>></p>
<p>Wonderful antique house. But…ONE bedroom and FOUR bathrooms? Isn’t that odd?</p>
<p>We’ve been looking at short sales and decided it’s not worth the money. It seems cheap but it’s actually not considering all the liens and then the hassle of a short sale. We decided to buy a new house because life is just too short for these short sale. :D</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, they both are, but we’ve eliminated the 1900 house from consideration. We continue to be obsessed – uh, focused on the Hoarder’s House. We’re having it inspected next Wednesday, so we’ll know if it has serious expensive problems or “only” the stuff we’ve already seen.</p>
<p>Yes, we would be cash buyers for this house.</p>
<p>The seller’s realtor (whom we we happen to know separate from this deal) has told us that there is a minimum the bank will accept, and she’s told us what that is. Are you suggesting that she may not be leveling with us? The difference in her commission would be peanuts.</p>
<p>And yes, the house has been on the market for something like two years. This house is not an “old” house – it was built in 1969. I’m hopeful (obviously) that the inspection doesn’t show anything horrible, but we’ll see.</p>
<p>DrGoogle: I never thought about liens. Maybe if/when we make an offer, it will be contingent on there being no liens. Is that possible?</p>
<p>And we’re being responsible adults by seeing about six houses tomorrow that aren’t the Hoarder’s House. Maybe one of them will catch our fancy. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Archiemom: I love that house!!!</p>
<p>And, truth be told, this is our fantasy house. Unfortunately it’s eight million miles from anywhere in the universe we’d like to live:</p>
<p>[Find</a> a Home - Property Listing](<a href=“http://www.historicproperties.com/detail.asp?detail_key=Nebus001]Find”>http://www.historicproperties.com/detail.asp?detail_key=Nebus001)</p>
<p>Be sure to scroll down and click on the link to see additional photos.</p>
<p>Sorry for the digression, but I thought this was pretty funny. We’re re-doing our upstairs bath (wow, it’s so expensive!). The contractor called me upstairs, and showed me two beer cans that some previous contractor had left on top of one of the beams, behind the wall, which our contractor uncovered when he went into the wall to re-do the electrical. </p>
<p>Both cans look like new, except for the two triangular holes on the top where they went in with the can opener. Remember can openers?! One is a Bud can, and the other is Schaefer beer. The Schaefer can even advertizes “come see our exhibit at the New York World’s Fair 1964-1965”. My husband says he can’t even remember when beer cans didn’t have pop tops. It’s so funny - the cans look totally new - and they’re almost 50 years old. Back then the contractors thought they were leaving trash, and we may even keep them instead of throwing them away!</p>
<p>hayden, I bet they’re worth something! </p>
<p>Probably not as much as the cost of doing the bathroom, however.</p>
<p>vh，</p>
<p>it all depends on location。 buying a house, whether it is a short sale, REO or Regular sale, there is always room for negotiation. However, some locations are really hot, you have to bid up, in your case it does not seem to be the case. If you like it, leave a bid, good, bad or indifferent. Let the bank decide to take it or not. If it is on the market for 9 month, the room for negotiation is large. OTOH, if there are 16 bids in one week, you probably don’t have much room.</p>
<p>You have to make a comp analysis, if the area house price is in downward trend. Bank knows about it and will adjust for repairs etc. Do your best, if you win, you win, if you don’t win, move on.</p>