Habitat for Humanity builds houses new from the foundation up and sells them to qualified low- and moderate-income households with a zero-interest loan.
There are other organizations that do the sort of thing you describe.
p.s. Back in the 1980s, there was a silly comedy called “The Money Pit”, about a couple who did this sort of thing.
I’m living in one and I’ll never do it again and/or marry my wife again. Its the only thing in our 40 years together I consider a mistake. The big mistake part was trying to live in it and do the work at the same time. My advice is at least live elsewhere until the basic gutting is done, heavy electrical or other similar work finished, and at least 3 of the rooms are pretty much done. YMMV but talking to others who have done the same kind of thing that would be my “must do” before ever considering it again.
OP, don’t do it. Just…don’t.
The big question is what to you mean by “fix up” a Detroit house. To make it livable according to your standards is tens of thousands of dollars away from making it salable on the market.
The other factor to consider is how good does it have to be before the electrical utility will let you run juice through the wiring.
The next factor is, what is it going to be like living with the neighbors, who might no longer have an enduring respect for the dignity of your neighborhood.
So clearly fixing up a dilapidated house is a money losing proposition, especially in the city of Detroit.
What do you guys think of buying a relatively inexpensive ‘structurally sound but in need of rrepairs’ house?
Can you list some of these areas? Im not attached to Detroit in particular, but it does have some of the cheapest housing in the country. All I want is just enough to get buy.
Housing can have negative value, unfortunately, which I think is true of a lot of Detroit housing stock.
If you are looking for the cheapest house you can get, you should look at one of the emptying small towns of the midwest, not in a large city. You can get a house that is outdated but in need of only minor repairs for 50 or 60k in a lot of those easy, sometimes less. For example, I opened google maps, looked for a county seat of a county as far as I could get from the nearest mid sized city, and you have houses that look to need no more than minor repair for $57k , Ie 633 Flanders Ave, Lima, OH 45801 | realtor.com®
There are thousands of places like that.
Most of Tennessee (outside of the Memphis and Nashville areas) has plenty of cheap housing available, a comparatively low cost of living, no income tax, relatively low property taxes, and mostly moderate climate. Summers can get pretty hot the further west you go toward Memphis, but the eastern portion of the state is pretty livable year-round. The political climate may be a bit more conservative than would suit a lot of folks around here, but the people are friendly and not so much in-your-face about a lot of things.
The area around Knoxville (and possibly others) have a large population of what we call “half-backs”. People from up north who fled the cold winters and moved to Florida, couldn’t stand it there, then moved halfway back to where they came from, landing them firmly in Tennessee. They seem to like it here.
If you want to get an idea of cheap housing in Detroit, take a look at the Shea Show on youtube. This guy is a rental property manager in the city.
Same basic thing; have another place to live at least during the initial work. The house next door to me fit that category and I’ve talked a lot with the semi-professional flipper working on it; often the “work” is electrical, plaster, plumbing and things that are going to cause a lot of mess throughout the house. Do you want to live with constant dust and disruption for several months until that is over and you are at the “paint and upgrade” stage? Its a question I can’t answer for you but my experience is a lot of times that causes the work to be dragged out over years and years and causes a certain level of internal turmoil that can be troubling.
I have family members who have done major home renovations on houses that were much worse than the pictures shown. But the important thing is location. They were taking on former crack houses, but in neighborhoods that were up and coming (gentrifying) and filled with houses that were already renovated or that had great potential.
It’s hard fucking work. The more you want to preserve any of the older features of the house, the harder the work is and the more expensive it is.
Can you give a summary of your housing situations you lived in until now as well as any experience you’ve had with home repair/improvement? Even as a kid, did your parents do any work on their own house? Also, do you do any sort of handwork hobbies like sculpture, painting, woodworking, etc.
It’s really difficult to answer this question for a random person on the internet. The difficulty is that some people will naturally have the skills needed while others will struggle to even get the basics done. As an example, consider making a sculpture. Some people can sit down with a lump of clay and easily make something amazing, while others will struggle for a long time and the end result won’t look good. Some people will get lost in the task and time will fly by, while others can’t wait until it’s over.
When you’ve had to do things with your hands like landscaping, painting, car repair, etc., did you generally enjoy them? Do you enjoy your time doing them or do you do the minimum so you can move on as soon as possible? If you genuinely like working to create/fix things, you may be good at home repair. But if you generally prefer relaxing and taking it easy, then a dilapidated house is probably not a good choice.
Marcus, have you considered buying a camper? Or living in a van? You could get a decent camper for under 5K, and take it around the country, living in parks, following the seasons. You can find parks that cost about $400 a month pretty easily. That includes electricity, water, cable, internet. No homeowners insurance or property taxes. You could test out living in different areas before you decide where you want to settle down.
(By the way, the homeowner’s insurance thing is another issue with fixing up a house in poor condition. If you can find someone willing to insure it, it’s very expensive until the house is finished. When we do major renos, we just accept the risk.)
There’s a really huge distance between buying an old, somewhat run down house that you patch drywall, put up or take down shelves, replace light and plumbing fixtures, repaint, and put down new carpet or floors to make it look more modern and buying a house with major structural damage in multiple areas and trying to fix it all yourself. The first one works great, I actually did that on the house I’m living in and it wasn’t bad at all. The second is a gigantic money pit that will suck up all of your savings and still not end with a livable house.
I hope you can find either a medium-small town you like, or a small town near a larger city you’d love.
For instance, let’s say you’d love a college town/state capitol like Madison, WI, which is great (except when you’re shoveling heavy snow IN MID-APRIL! Grrr…). Madison’s out of your price range, but as soon as you get a half hour out of town, housing prices drop. We have friends that bought over an hour away, and just got a cute little 2 BR house for 65K… that needed NO work. They were used to an hour plus commute in Seattle, but ended up working from home half the week. They’ve gotten involved in their “adopted hometown” and love it.
Southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado. New Mexico. Western Kentucky/Tennessee. Central Oregon/Washington. Any of the Midwestern “flyover” states with low property tax rates.
That cheap housing in Detroit comes with some serious downsides, hence why it is cheap, and it probably isn’t going to get better any time soon. And I’ll reiterate that those brokedown houses in Detroit and elsewhere that you can pick up for a few thousand dollars are generally not worth what it will take to make them even minimally habitable. You are better off either buying a small trailer or building new using recycled and reclaimed materials unless you can snap up some gem of a house with a solid foundation and good roof that just needs cosmetic updates.
Stranger
An acquaintance of mine is doing basically what the OP plans to. He has no prior experience and isn’t particularly handy but his project is moving along successfully. Things I’ve learned from his experience:
You can’t live in the house while you’re taking it down to the studs. My friend lives about a block away from the house he’s renovating.
Plan for it to take a year or more. My friend is in year 2 and is probably 60% of the way there. He has a full time job and a little one, so he puts in a few hours after work during the week, and goes hard at it on the weekend.
Look to buy surplus building material. Things like counters and cabinets can be found for cheap if you’re not picky about the configuration.
I’m in a meeting right now so I’ve only skimmed the previous responses.
But get a home inspection so you’ll have a much better idea how big that elephant is that you’re planning on eating.
More reason to avoid Detroit The Detroit News: “The Red Zone: Inside Detroit’s deadly gang wars”.
Since 2003, prosecutors say gang members targeted for death dozens of rivals on Instagram hit lists, participated in more than 14 shootings, at least four homicides, 11 attempted murders and drug crimes that eroded the quality of life on the gang’s home turf, known by locals as The Red Zone.
While the article focuses on this specific area (the “4820-‘Die’), gang violence, arson and vandalism, and general corruption and neglect are all over the place in the Detroit Metro/Wayne County area.
Stranger