Kenneth Brown
Captain
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2003
- Messages
- 3,481
Re: Buying a home: advice for a youngster.
I've done both scenerios, well sort of. At 20 (1994) I bought my first house,1850 sqft. It was built in 1955 and had been modernized in the early 80's so it wasn't ancient but no where near new. We paid $20k for it. Two years later we put new insulation and vinyl siding, a metal roof, and a deck on it for about $13K. Over the years we repainted, replaced fixtures, redone the plumbing, new carpet and linolium, new HVAC, water heater, etc. Probably spent around $15k. Just about everything was redone at some point. Right before we sold it we done a repaint and clean up spending about $750. I sold it this summer for $56k. Doing the math it doesn't look like I made much money, but then figure in if I had paid rent for all those years what would I have? I got all of my money back plus some. That brings us to the next story. 4 years ago we bought 36 acres in a decent location and right where we wanted to be. I gave 39K for it because that is what it was tax rolled as. The seller wasn't happy with it but sold anyhow. Over the next couple of years I worked my tail off on it. I've now got it on the rolls at $77K. I paid on a loan for a little over 3 years and then used the proceeds from the house to pay off the loan. True value is about $126K if I was to sell it. We wanted to build a house on it. We looked at the budget builders because thats what we could afford. It was shoddy work and materials everywhere we looked. Looked into double wides and modulars. They were nice but still had that stigma attatched to them. They were quite pricy too, at least what we wanted was. In the end we worked out a perfect plan. We were our own general contractor. We found a house we liked that was being built. We bought the plans and contractors list from him. We got everything cleared at the architect so we could use the plans and had copies made. We hired the same contractor to do our framing. He also did the siding and metal roof. He hooked us up with his guys (contractors) and one of them did our piers. Another did our drywall while his buddy did the tape and bed. I did all of the plubing, septic and electric with some help from my dad. My wife did all the insulation and most of the downstair floors (laminate). Inlaws helped do all the trim and painting along with the steps and recently the deck for the pool. Pricewise from start to finish (not counting the pool) I have $106K in this house, thats everything. That works out to $56.84 a sqft (its 1865). It was appraised on taxes at $156K, insurance man set his price at $179K and was upset because he said it was a lowball. I think I saved some money doing this, what'da think?
Things to consider if you take the same path. We are in an unincorporated area. Inspectors don't exist here except for the culvert (its on a state road) and septic (over 10 acres exempted me). Although I did most of the work I did have tradesmen check out my business because I had a lot of money and my families afety to worry about. A sixpack of beer or buying supper went a long ways. Do you have the skills? I didn't when i started but books and the internet helped tons. I had good basic knowledge of what I was doing so the rest was ok and I learned as I went. Living with your folks allows you to not worry so much about completion times. Will your job allow you time off to meet with people or do you have someone you KNOW you can trust to do so? Banks are a thorn about people being there on GC. I had private finacing so it wasn't a problem for me. All possible snags in the system but it worked for me.
I've done both scenerios, well sort of. At 20 (1994) I bought my first house,1850 sqft. It was built in 1955 and had been modernized in the early 80's so it wasn't ancient but no where near new. We paid $20k for it. Two years later we put new insulation and vinyl siding, a metal roof, and a deck on it for about $13K. Over the years we repainted, replaced fixtures, redone the plumbing, new carpet and linolium, new HVAC, water heater, etc. Probably spent around $15k. Just about everything was redone at some point. Right before we sold it we done a repaint and clean up spending about $750. I sold it this summer for $56k. Doing the math it doesn't look like I made much money, but then figure in if I had paid rent for all those years what would I have? I got all of my money back plus some. That brings us to the next story. 4 years ago we bought 36 acres in a decent location and right where we wanted to be. I gave 39K for it because that is what it was tax rolled as. The seller wasn't happy with it but sold anyhow. Over the next couple of years I worked my tail off on it. I've now got it on the rolls at $77K. I paid on a loan for a little over 3 years and then used the proceeds from the house to pay off the loan. True value is about $126K if I was to sell it. We wanted to build a house on it. We looked at the budget builders because thats what we could afford. It was shoddy work and materials everywhere we looked. Looked into double wides and modulars. They were nice but still had that stigma attatched to them. They were quite pricy too, at least what we wanted was. In the end we worked out a perfect plan. We were our own general contractor. We found a house we liked that was being built. We bought the plans and contractors list from him. We got everything cleared at the architect so we could use the plans and had copies made. We hired the same contractor to do our framing. He also did the siding and metal roof. He hooked us up with his guys (contractors) and one of them did our piers. Another did our drywall while his buddy did the tape and bed. I did all of the plubing, septic and electric with some help from my dad. My wife did all the insulation and most of the downstair floors (laminate). Inlaws helped do all the trim and painting along with the steps and recently the deck for the pool. Pricewise from start to finish (not counting the pool) I have $106K in this house, thats everything. That works out to $56.84 a sqft (its 1865). It was appraised on taxes at $156K, insurance man set his price at $179K and was upset because he said it was a lowball. I think I saved some money doing this, what'da think?
Things to consider if you take the same path. We are in an unincorporated area. Inspectors don't exist here except for the culvert (its on a state road) and septic (over 10 acres exempted me). Although I did most of the work I did have tradesmen check out my business because I had a lot of money and my families afety to worry about. A sixpack of beer or buying supper went a long ways. Do you have the skills? I didn't when i started but books and the internet helped tons. I had good basic knowledge of what I was doing so the rest was ok and I learned as I went. Living with your folks allows you to not worry so much about completion times. Will your job allow you time off to meet with people or do you have someone you KNOW you can trust to do so? Banks are a thorn about people being there on GC. I had private finacing so it wasn't a problem for me. All possible snags in the system but it worked for me.
