The renovation will cost more than that.
The rodents are probably still in the house. The attic. The walls. The fireplaces.

It’s a really bad idea to leave a house vacant even for a few months, much less years.

If this is your best chance to buy in the neighborhood, I would seriously consider it. Ditto everyone else on bringing an inspector and contractor thru. It will cost way more than 200k to gut and remodel, but maybe you can get it cleaned up and livable and slowly update as you go along.

No, because you said you’d only have $100k to play with for renovations. We just finished half our basement and it was $90k. There was no structural issue, no mold, no surprises. That’s just the cost. Kitchen in 2021 was $65k. Bathroom in 2022 was $18k.

None of these involved any mold, plumbing issues, wall removal, etc. What you describe could easily be $300k+ of work unless you’re going to do it yourself.

I had the opportunity to possibly buy a fixer upper (not abandoned though) in a desirable neighborhood that I felt was the best and only neighborhood I wanted to live in at the time. Passed on it mostly because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my kid’s childhood working on the house instead of enjoying the house and doing other things together. Can’t overstate how all consuming and exhausting and miserable working in a house can be if it’s not your thing. . Bought a “normal” house elsewhere and am very happy. Definitely dodged a bullet. Something to think about.

It will be way more expensive than you think to fix it up. That is all.

How much can you do yourself? My brother and SIL bought one like this. SIL's brother is a licensed contractor and gave a small bit of advice and help, but they did the vast majority of the work themselves. Yeah, a lot of long days!

How much financial cushion will you have if the costs come in higher than you expect? If it were me, I would want to be able to afford *at least* $100K in repairs above the high end of what's visible/expected, probably closer to $200K, before embarking on something like this. Not that that's necessarily likely, but I'd want to be confident it wouldn't really mess up things for my family financially if there were big surprise costs, because it's totally possible in this kind of house.

This house sounds so gross I think it might be better to tear it down.

No chance you get it done for $100k. The clean out and whatever repairs you can’t see yet will eat that up before you even get to cosmetic stuff.

You might as well do an inspection and see. Friends on mine did this, bought the empty house on the street. It took a construction loan but they re did drywall, sanded floors, upgraded windows, etc.

Anonymous wrote:OP here and thanks to everyone for such a quick round of replies. My husband has been doing math today to see if we could stay in our rental to the end of our lease in the spring and still afford the house. I just asked him to check in with the realtor (they've been trading texts all day) to see what the options would be in terms of an inspection.

It's so funny, $75-100k sounds like so much to me but I've never done any work on a house before so I can see that I may be clueless about what it will really cost. We probably can't do more than that, so that's something to really consider, beyond the ick factor. Also, the idea of things living in the walls...yeah. That hadn't been on my list of things to be afraid of but it is now.

if you need to do the math to see if you can afford rent until spring and buying the house, it does not look like this is the right house for you. you are getting a huge project and if you are in the DC area costs are $$$$$. in addition to an inspector i would really have a contractor come and look at the house. the inspector cannot really give you the price of fixing, this is what a contractor can do, even just the ballpark. and if you find hard to get a contract to come and look, you will have your first answer on how difficult (and expensive) fixing the place will be. BTDT. good luck

We bought a clean fixer-upper, and it took us several years to get through the list. I can’t imagine buying an icky house. There’s never any break. You both work all week. One person watches the kids on Saturday and cleans while the other fixes the house. Everything takes longer than planned.

Three MINIMUM I’d require done before moving in are:

Remove trash.
Anything structural/leaking.
Hazard cleanup. (Mold, etc.)
Refinish or recarpet floors.
Take everything to the studs.*

*We once had the most nothing moisture problem. Something leaked on carpet. We did all the things you do. Took off moldings. Brought in professional fans. We later opened the wall for something else and found mold.


**If your kids are small, you’d need to keep/replace drywall in their bedrooms and any room they play spend time in unattended. Even a second.

We bought an icky and slowly redid it. I would rent while you make it liveable at first. We didn’t have kids so at the time it was our pet project I would do it again in a second. We are completely done with the original list and have added an addition which is great. It has been 15 years and now our kids love it too!

Anonymous wrote:OP here and thanks to everyone for such a quick round of replies. My husband has been doing math today to see if we could stay in our rental to the end of our lease in the spring and still afford the house. I just asked him to check in with the realtor (they've been trading texts all day) to see what the options would be in terms of an inspection.

It's so funny, $75-100k sounds like so much to me but I've never done any work on a house before so I can see that I may be clueless about what it will really cost. We probably can't do more than that, so that's something to really consider, beyond the ick factor. Also, the idea of things living in the walls...yeah. That hadn't been on my list of things to be afraid of but it is now.

I know this sounds crazy. I think I know what house you’re talking about here. Buy it. Not trolling.

I'd pay for an inspector and see what they come up with. We just did a modest kitchen renovation that didn't include the floors but include appliances and it was about $50K. Cabinets feel cheap after all of that. Bathroom that was recently done and room expanded / plumbing relocated cost $34K. Windows on a 1600 sq ft house, $18K. Painting about 900 sq feet was $6000.