I would wait till you see the "new" bathroom; you're right that it's probably worse IRL, but you might get an idea that you could make it more to your taste by ripping out only the vanity and light bar, for example. Cheap enough fix,
and not necessarily obligatory to do right away. If it's cheesy tile though,
that's a not so easy fix.

You need location and price, with your talent and taste you can fix everything else. There are times when conservation has to go by the wayside, if you are going to cringe every time you pass by the "new" bathroom. Plus you can donate whatever you won't use. Make someone else happy, recycling instead of conserving, it's a workable plan.
good luck in getting what you desire, keep us posted.

This is pretty wild, butif you are still looking have you thought about placing an ad in the area of interest houses for sale section of the week-end classifieds? I did this once when I was looking for a particular size with certain amenities in a popular neighborhood and was getting discouraged that I never seemed to be fast enough for the deals. I had lots of realtor calls and only one home owner call. I bought that owner call house and it was exactly what I was looking for. The owners husband had died a few years before and the house needed lots of updating and cosmetic work that she did not want to do for a sale. It was very livable until the changes were made but I swear the master bath had turned to plastic from so many years of hairspray. We didnÂt get it at a "steal" but it was a very very good price. The good thing was that I didnÂt have to compete to get it. Describe want you want and what you want to spend, you never know.

Ask yourself (as you probably already know) how much space do you need/want. Is the extra space worth 100K more? That would be the question for me. Does the smaller house have a footprint that can be tweaked into something you love and would that extra 100K, or portion thereof; net you all the design trappings you love. If the basic layout mets your needs or has the potential to be changed without an extension; I'd go with the smaller original house.
Now I might be biased; cause that's the decision we went with when we decided to remodel this house. It's half the size of my home.

I should clarify something from my original long post. The smaller, less expensive house is no longer in the running. It was *the* house in my neighborhood that met both my location and pricing criteria and was priced such because of length of time on the market, condition, and a potential problem with the house next door that I was satisfied with based upon talks with the owner of that property. The owners had the ability to accept a better offer over my contingecy, and they did. If it does not go through after all, they may accept a contingency again or a different offer from me, rigth now they have chosen not to extend my contingency, which expires today.

I am now looking at two houses that are $100K more. One which includes a garage which I don't need, but could act as income property at some point. It needs more work of the two. The second has a bit more charm, but is on a walkway, not a street, so it would not appeal to a car-oriented person. It also has the brand new, hated, bathroom.

I never "plan" on resale, but the reality is I have lived an average of 8 years in the houses I have owned and renovated. Each house has its +s and -s...I will continue the discussion after I see them in person (today).

If you are worried about ripping out a new bath, then contact Habitat for Humanity. They have Restores, that sell new and barely used fixtures and the profits go to HfH. You get a tax write off in the deal.
Of course, you can sell on craigslist if the elements are very nice and worth the trouble.

Good luck today looking! BTW - there is no way you can make a purchase decision on a house without seeing it with your own eyes. Pictures can be very deceiving in either direction. As a r.e. agent, I am still amazed at how far off pix and a house itself can be.

Would the bathroom be your primary? Every day, twice a day? Could you leave it for guests until you could rip it out and start over?

Frankly, I'd buy a car and move further out where it's less expensive. A 12K Yaris hatchback and 1K of auto insurance a year would take a LONG time to add up to that 100K that you say the homes are out of your comfort zone. Plus, you can haul STUFF in a car. I can't see how you can function as a designer without lugging STUFF around! LOL!

I have looked at that option from several different standpoints.

My month to month expenses would actually be significantly greater with a car and a house in the burbs than they are here. My original plan was to be able to buy the house outright upon the sale of my current place. (and then have a loan for renovation) Thats not going to work, but I am still going to be going into a property that is much less than I could qualify for, or I won't go at all--I'll stay here. That is part of the plan that is intact.

As for the bathroom in the one house, it was much worse than I imagined, and it would be the primary. Not in particularly good taste, not a quality job, and really unsuitable to the rest of the house. That particular house just went on the market so I doubt they would accept the offer I would be likely to make at this point anyway.

The other house has been on the market 9 months. I will likely look at both of them again and come to some sort of conclusion.

You can probably tolerate bad taste longer than non-functional and possibly even live with such problems longer than you think possible at this point. Much more important is getting a house that does not require major repairs to make it sound or a complete reconfiguration such as the main bathroom is off the kitchen or other serious plan problem.

Almost anything can be sold on Craigslist, especially nearly new bathroom vanities and fixtures. I see stuff on there that is should be at the dump so you would have a good chance of getting something out of it.

I can really understand getting out of the shared ownership environment. We had that for 12 years and will never do it again. You seem to have still have some time to find a place and make this work, so keep looking and something will turn up soon.

"When does conservation trump taste?"

There are lots of variables, but you know real estate well enough not to really need advice about which is a good deal. You've done enough fixing up of houses that you really don't need advice on what's feasible. So I'm sticking with the question in the thread title:

I don't think the problem bathroom is on you, the new (potential) owner. It's on he who put a bad bathroom in in the first place. If the structure of the bathroom is okay (i.e., if it's not an addition which screws up the house), then I, who think of myself as conservation minded but reasonable, think you could rescue it. There's no reason why you couldn't have a house with a garage and use the garage as a party room or storage or whatever, but as a conservation minded person who does use feet and public transportation, why not turn a house with some charm on a walkway into a gem?

You can sell, freecycle, Habitat, or otherwise give away all the usable fixtures. There were newish miniature toilets in my house, I presume to comply with water conservation laws, but not livable for grown-ups. One of the workmen--I think a drywaller, took them for use in low income housing in Mexico. Whatever. They didn't go to waste. It's a lot easier finding takers for the other fixtures. You can also try popping the tiles off. You can use a twisted wire with handle ends (basically a short garrote) to wiggle under the tiles and grind away the mortar. It's time consuming and unlovely work, but they could then also be cleaned up and reused by someone. The guys who worked on my house even divided up the awful carpet. It was old, worn and stained, but the rooms are big, and there were large enough places where the furniture protected the carpet to leave pieces large enough for them to use in kids' rooms or something. I think they even reused some of the padding.

I know a distance cyclist, however, who has done the math on a lot of conservation issues. He claims that his carbon footprint is greater when he bicycles 20 miles than when he drives. There are false economies with reuse, especially when you count things like water usage, though if you exercise you might as well get something done (i.e., popping tiles), as just breathe out CO2 on a weight machine.

It's possible that there will be a lot more waste than you'd like when the practicalities are put in play on this, but you're not just contemplating a redo because it's not your taste. You wouldn't have posted it here if it were just sicky pink with roses in the tiles, or over the top Zen garden, or some other style you weren't crazy about. Bad taste is a lot worse than not-one's-taste, but the fact that it's a badly done job is the capper. That's on the person who did it badly.

I once offered over 10% less on a house than asking. I based my offer on comps. They sold a year later for $10K less than I'd offered. There's no way to convince sellers not to aim too high and that the first offer is the best, unfortunately, but you could have your agent tell the selling agent that you're prepared to offer the price you think is appropriate any time their agent thinks they'd be willing to accept it. Not a writing that obligates you. Just a conversation between two agents. If the seller's agent thinks it's a fair number, and if the buyers are really trying to sell, they might say yes we'd like to see the offer.

A dear friend of mine sat as Pres of her condo association for several years. She found it so stressful she was seriously considering moving to New Zealand, the only way she figured her resignation would stick.

She's now well retreated from the board, and enjoys her condo and her life again.

NOT when conserved tacky finishes would make no appreciable dent in the big problem but would displease someone living with them every day. A big part of what I love about designing homes is that, in a frequently harsh world, one's home is...well, HOME. Or maybe you could keep the bath and seek further spiritual growth in hopes of leaving behind this materialistic focus altogether. If not really interested in that, how about conserving it behind drywall, a period "treasure" for some fortunate future owner to discover? :)

We're actually in a similar situation, except in our case it's our kitchen. :) We had a very similar list of criteria in our city---we wanted to be within walking distance of a number of things, and my husband needed to be able to bike to work in under half an hour, so he literally tested the commute from several neighborhoods at the edge distance-wise to define exactly where that boundary was. A chunk of the area within that commute was in a city we didn't want to live in, and another big chunk was a trendy neighborhood we were completely priced out of. Another slice was a sketchier area we weren't super comfortable with crimewise. This left maybe a 12 block by 12 block area that we could afford and liked enough to live in. I'd say it's totally doable, but you need to be willing to look leisurely---took nearly a year before the right match came up for us.

Our house had been "spiffed up" by a realtor---some of the work was useful (great paint job inside and out), while some of it I really wish they hadn't done (granite counters on top of failing cabinets). We wrestled with whether to rip out brand-new fixtures and counters for the aesthetics, and have lived with it for three years hemming and hawing about it---in the end we decided to go ahead, though, since it's the only good way to get a dishwasher, which we counted as more function than form. We are doing demo through Habitat and they can salvage some of it, though not as much as we'd hoped (they expect the granite will crack when it's removed, but will salvage it if not).

How many of the new bathroom's issues are finishes, and how many are layout/actual work issues? You can change out paint, fixtures (everything but the tub is pretty cheap), tile, etc. for not very much money, and you can do it incrementally. If that's the only big flaw with the house, I'd let it sit for a little while and assuming it's still there, make a lower offer. The upside to it being on a walkway is that, while that's a plus for you, it will be a minus for car-oriented buyers, so it might give you some leverage on the price.

Good luck!

Devil's advocate answer here.

If the "bad" bathroom would be acceptable and not removed by other buyers, but the old bathroom would certainly be renovated by any buyer, then the total sum of future remodeling MAY be less if you take the older home.

Frankly, unless it the older home has been neglected to the point where you question the overall soundness of the home, then I would also generalize and think your future return on investment potential would be larger with that home as well.

You would not be paying the markup on the recent renovations (that you do not like), and would have a garage which has more universal appeal. For storage, home office or gym, and many other uses beyond car storage.

This is just a general opinion, please disregard if this doesn't apply to the situation at hand.

I started looking almost a year ago, when I was initially approved for a refinance that lowered my interest rate and knocked 8 years off my mortgage. The company realized, I think, how much money they would be losing in interest payments and dragged their feet, finally coming up with a good enough reason to deny the refi despite my excellent credit rating etc.: Their underwriters found a financial weakness in the condominium association as a whole.

I served on the board and while there are many guidelines as to how decisions are to be made, the interpretations of such vary wildly, and are overlayed with personal prejudices like crazy:

Example: Voting for rejecting a washer and dryer in a unit: (now commonplace, a big deal 14 years ago) Board Member: "I have been using the laundry room or laundromat for my entire adult life. People who want one in their unit are just spoiled." Not concerns about flooding or vibration...an opinion.

Example: when specifying what type of washer and dryer can go in a unit, ten years later, different board member: "We as a longstanding policy do not allow people to upgrade their electrical from the meter to power a full sized dryer or electric oven (220 line.)" I was given board approval to do just that in my first apartment.
Same board member "We as a longstanding policy allow people to install gas dryers, even if it is in their kitchen area" Prior board had approved just that in my second apartment."

The latest: "The board is not approving your request for a new roof vent penetration with the addition of a new vent pipe" The previous board had approved this and *insisted* I go through the roof rather than the wall, because the previous board president was afraid he might see the vent cap through his skylight.

Believe me, I understand that I will run into problems in a neighborhood as well. The house across the walkway from the one I looked at today (and next to the one I had an agreement on previously) is in danger of being demolished, because it is one way for the owner of two houses, to stop the endless appeals and legal hurdles one neighbor is throwing up against his plans for an addition.(If he tears one house down, the other house can be added onto without variance.) She is willing to see an intact street scape altered because she does not approve of his addition.

The other reason is that in an old common space rehab (1965) in much older buildings (5x1840s, 2x1870s, 1x 1923)...the condo fees are very high because of failing infrastructure and although I have very high equity in my unit, I will continue to pay high month to month expenses that contribute nothing to the equity in my unit.

Some of the HOA rules are just ridiculous...so I can see getting away from them. If you find a home with sound structure, sq ft, good location, working plumbing and electric, etc that meets your needs...I say go for it. Superficial decor can always be changed over time. Sounds like you also need to be sure the neighborhood is viable. Best of luck in your hunt for a new home.

Juliekcmo:

Your reasoning makes perfect sense. My feelings about changing older things are different than about changing new things. And someone else might love that bathroom. The house with a single owner of thirty years has had less wear and tear, less sloppy paint jobs, less --interference.

The two current contenders are very close in price. The one on the walkway has *two* nice outdoor areas and multiple exposures, and a walkout basement. (a rarity)--the house with the garage has a nice (but not As nice) outdoor area...and a garage (a rarity). The garage actually has income potential of about $200 a month in this neighborhood.

The question is always which makes more sense over all. (If you're a sensible person who buys with your head.)

Or which one do you really love beyond reason, enough to sink your money into regardless?

I don't think you can let one room or one issue determine whether you buy a house or not.

I am with juliekcmo though. I wish people wouldn't "renovate to sell" or flip. They tend to make bad or boring decisions, and pass padded costs onto the next homeowner.

If you make changes for yourself, that's one thing, but those "My agent says I gotta change X or I'll never sell!" changes -- I think you should breathe and get some more opinions.

And you can't tell me they take as much care in the details as the people here do. I'd buy the house with pink roses -- its faults are right out in the open, if the price reflected condition. I'd never buy the "builder's beige."

How urgent is this purchase? Can you wait longer? There is another installment of house foreclosures, house ownership failures, etc. coming in many communities. With the rates this low and the economy in shambles, there is little chance that you are going to be in a bidding war for a while. I hear that there are great values "out there" in other arenas; perhaps same for houses in your community?

I congratulate you for your conservation concerns. We sold my mother's 1947 house six years ago with this proviso: "We could have installed a new floor and some new cabinets, but you are probably going to make changes and we were reluctant to have you add new materials to our local landfill. The house is priced to reflect this understanding." It sold, to a very savvy young man whose family had previously done some repair work on the house and knew it well.

I've been in condo associations since the mid-80's. I've had houses too. I've seen good boards and bad boards. I've seen good neighbors and bad. A condo association board can be modified or overturned at any time. Condo neighbors have an incentive to learn how to get along because the vote can depend on a small number. House neighbors have less incentive to get along. I've had house neighbors who cut my trees and removed plants they didn't want to see growing any larger. This kind of thing happened more than once. Anytime I have to move or consider moving, I tell myself that it will be an exchange of problems of one color, for problems of a similar hue. I could say "circumstances" but I think calling it problems is clear, fair, and not too negative.

I wouldn't worry about removing the 'remodel' of that bathroom and doing it the way you want it. you're not flipping it, you're gonna live there.

I was gonna post that a garage in an area like that might be rental as - a garage - for a neighbor with 2 cars or one they don't want to drive in the winter (depending on what area you live in). or as a garage to rehab an old car.

I heard on the news yesterday about a loop hole in some of the foreclosures. if the foreclosure notice is from (says anywhere on it) something like MRSA ? (you might check on that or some might know what it really is). It's just a process of numbering mtgs before they are sold off. 'They' can't foreclose on anyone because courts are ruling they have no 'standing' to do so. They aren't really a 'they' and don't hold the mtg.
That was by Bob Massey, nationally known lawyer who has been involved in many of the foreclosures.