Quandary over buying a total fixer

12 years ago

Please help me decide whether or not to buy a total fixer that is basically land with a 1 bedroom house on a nearly 9000sq/ft property.

I'm interested in living on the property but the house is considered uninhabitable at present and I plan to get an assessment soon.

My interest now is to see what is more economical/wise:
Option 1: I could put a trailer on the property and live there during a slow, calculated renovation.

Option 2: I could hire a contractor to do an add on of 1-2 bedrooms and a bathroom, making the house marginally livable while then slowly making other repairs to the remaining structure.

Option 3: I could initially hire a contactor to make sufficient repairs to make the home livable and then proceed to do individual renovation projects on my own with subcontractors.

My background: completely unrelated to home building. But my dad is a plumbing contractor and my boyfriend's dad has carpentry skills. How much trouble could we get into?
Thanks, Rosie

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Comments (2)

handymam
12 years ago
I really think all of that would totally depend on the price of the property initially, and how much you have to put into it, and how much you can continue to put into it. Are you willing to wait, or are you looking at this as somewhere to call home right away. These are all things to consider...
rozychic thanked handymam
hayleydaniels
12 years ago
I would think long and hard about this as the chances of it being more work than you're expecting are extremely high. I say that because in the two times we've updated/remodeled part of our house, it's cost twice as much as expected, was twice as difficult as expected and took at least twice if not three times as long as expected. And my husband is very good at DIY stuff, but if you don't do it for a living, you can't expect to have it done as quickly as someone who does that type of work 40 hours a week.

If you have the money, I would go with option 3 just so you have the majority of the nasty, tough stuff taken care of by people who know what they're doing. You can then do the more cosmetic fixes as needed.
rozychic thanked hayleydaniels
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