Thinking of Buying a house... again.

J

Jonny_B

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Oct 14, 2004
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I've been watching this house down the street from me sit on the market since November. I'm hoping to get it for a song, but it's going to need some work. First up would be levelling it. It's a block and beam foundation which has become a tad uneven over the years. Going to get my first estimate tomorrow on how much it would cost, since I intend to do a lot of work on it myself, but levelling the house isn't something I want to tackle.

Anyway, thought I'd start a thread here as a clearing house for what's going through my head as the process continues. Here's what I know about it:

-2 br, 1 ba, kitchen, one big living/dining room. ~1200s.f.
-1 Crumbling out building that can at worst be saved as a shed/workshop and at best be converted to a garage.
-Front porch the entire width of the house.

First job: level floor. immediately
Second job: tame landscape/clean fences. summer
Third job: rescue shed. summer
Fourth job: redo bathroom. fall
Fifth job: sand and refinish hardwood floors. fall
Sixth job: interior finish work. winter

With any luck I can pick it up for less than 60k and by spring it should be worth 80-100k, though I don't intend to sell anytime within the next five years.

Most of the decision will rest on the bids I receive for levelling and what I hear from a home inspector. It also depends on what I hear from my mortgage guy.
 
Valve1138 said:
Sounds like a good plan. Don't forget that when you level a house you often times wind up with a bunch of cracks in the drywall after the fact. Perfectly normal, just takes time to fix obviously.
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yeah, i'm worried about that. especially since it's an old enough house to be plaster rather than drywall. i'm leaving any interior work for a few months after the levelling to allow for any cracks to let themselves be known and reach their extent before refinishing. not sure if it'll be cheaper to try to repair the plaster or to pull it down and install drywall one room at a time. the second option allows me to install insulation, which this house probably doesn't have yet.
 
Valve1138 said:
Yeah, plaster and lathe is a pain in the ass. If you patch it you have to make the patch look as bad as the lathe :fly:

Is the house that crooked? Is it entirley neccessary to level it? Or could you just shore it up so it doesn't get any worse?
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the only really bad part is in the living/dining room. roughly in the middle, running across the room, is a weird dip in the floor. it could be the result of just one beam that has come off the pier. other than that it's actually relatively level. i definitely want to get it looked at though so I know how out of level it is, and what we're talking cost-wise to fix it.

the plaster is terrible. has that really old shitty texture and glossy paint.
 
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Oh good lord. On the plus side you could just jack up that part of the floor and put an LVL beam in to make sure it doesn't sag again.

That sucks about the lathe. you could just put drywall over it and go with blown in insulation. Might be cheaper.
 
Syrup Beaver said:
I freaking HATE HATE HATE people that do that :mad:
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:lol: you have a bad experience messing with someone else's handiwork?

I've done blown in before on the house I grew up in. It was a friggin mess and you could always tell where we'd drilled the holes. Never thought of putting drywall over plaster. can't really see how that would save very much money since it wouldn't take that much time to remove the plaster first.
 
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One house was all lathe and plaster, with drywall over it - made for a huge pain in the butt repairing the heating, ended up ripping it all out.

One house has plaster over the drywall :wtf: again, making repairs difficult.

Another house has two layers of drywall over lathe + plaster :rant:

The second layer of drywall, was placed over wallpaper......
 
Went over it with a foundation contractor today. He's going to email me a detailed estimate, but off the top of his head he's estimating $5000 to level it out. He said the good news is that it's already resting on concrete blocks, meaning someone has already worked on it (because it would have rested on wood when built).

He also expects extensive plaster cracking when levelled. He also indicated that the floor under the bathroom and kitchen appears soft, meaning there's probably some rotten wood down there.

I pulled the deeds pertaining to the property off the county website. The current owner bought it Dec 1, 2000 for $67000 and paid it off in 2004. It's an investment property for them, except no one has lived in it for months which means it's not making any money. The down side is that since it's paid off the only incentive he has to sell is to save the tax payments (about $220/month) and reinvest cash elsewhere.

If I get the taxes reassessed after purchase and apply the homestead exeption I should be able to get the ppty taxes down to about $134/month. If I pay damn close to asking price the note would be $445. Estimate insurance at $50/mo and I'm still paying less than I currently pay in rent.
 
Shalimar said:
i believe we're about to undertake the remod of the freestanding garage. i should be on the phone now contacting contractors.


if any tampa heads know good ones, holla.
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Elliot said he needs to know what you want done with/to it. He can do all the drywall and construction work but if you want electric he will not be able to do that. If you need electricity done Donnie, our old roommate(elliot and i) can do that part of it...

He has regular jobs though for his daily company and would do it on weekends... I can send you his number if you want to go that route. If not I am sure he knows someone that could bang it out quicker at a good price. His price would be the cheapest but it would take longer since it would be done on weekends
 
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