My husband and I have found an beautiful old house that we’d like to fix up and resell. (We’re part-time real estate investors, and we have experience with this sort of thing.) The difference is this 3,000 square foot house is in a bad neighborhood. If we fixed it up and sold it where it is, it would sell for about $60,000. If we moved the house a few miles south, it would sell for a minimum of $200,000. (Real estate is dirt cheap here- if I could move this house to the suburb of Chicago where I grew up, it would sell for at least a half million.)
Does anyone have experience with moving a house, or know someone who does? I’m going to start calling contractors in our area on Monday to find out approximately how much this undertaking would cost, but I was also interested in learning from people who’ve done this before.
If the house stays where it is, it will eventually fall apart. Besides the profit motive, I love old houses and would like to save it just because I love it. Any suggestions?
Haven’t done it myself, Holly, but have watched it done locally. I live in a formerly “transitional”, now almost yuppie historic district. We lost some gorgeous old homes to neglect, abandonment, etc. but those holes must be replaced with “sympathetic infill”–basically either relocate an old house or build a new one in appropriate style.
I don’t have the sources at hand here, but I’ll track 'em down and send them to you.
Sounds like you have a realistic grasp of the issues. Moving a house sure ain’t cheap, but the kind of relative resale value you’re talking about could make it realistic.
Several things to keep in mind:
if the house has a cellar, you’ll need to make sure the new site has a basement in place to handle the mechanicals.
take a drive and scope out the travel route. Sad it say, moving old houses in urban areas is tough because of clearance problems. You need to look for overhead power lines, stop lights, tight corners, etc.
consider getting some preservation folks involved. These are tough, canny and dedicated people. They can advise, pull strings and help in more ways than you can dream.
I’ll check with some of the “usual suspects” and get you a more targeted list of resources, but you might start here: http://www.state.il.us/hpa/
You’re not talking about an historic landmark, but these are good folks and can put you in contact with some experts in your area.
I just wrote a tremendously long, clever, and insightful reply, then somehow managed to spin the damnable thing into space, from where it never returned. But here’s the short version –
Don’t do it.
In over 20 years as an Architect, Developer, and Construction Manager I’ve avoided moving buildings whenever possible. The cost is monsterous and the problems are daunting.
Suffice to say that if it were more cost-effective to move a nice home into a nicer neighborhood than to build new, ye can be sure that us land-raper types would have the roadways fairly littered with buildings in transit.
If yer interested I can make the case against moving buildings in exhaustive and brain-numbing detail, but this is certainly not the place fer such an undertaking. Feel free to eMail me at CrkNWtsn@aol.com if you’d like a more detailed discussion.
Dr. Watson
“Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.” – Ambrose Bierce
The house is pier and beam so there would be no basement to mess with. Even though this is tornado alley, almost no homes have basements here (but our own house has a small one). It’s also a frame house- no brick or stone. The route to the “good” side of town is along a relatively deserted, wide, smooth highway. It’s the old Route 66, in fact. The neighborhood where the house resides is half-barren; most of the lots are now empty and only flat prairie lies between there and the “good” real estate.
I have seen many, many homes in this area moved from one place to another but never one this large. I’ve seen it done on TV with some houses so large and heavy that they had to be sawed in half first. I have no doubt the undertaking would be enormous.
I understand what you’re saying, Dr. Watson. However, this is a $29,000 dollar house (owner finance with a couple thousand down), 3,000 square feet, with basically cosmetic work involved. It has four huge bedrooms and three full baths with the original fixtures, including 3 clawfoot tubs, in good repair; it has 10 foot ceilings and a gorgeous staircase. It has all the ductwork installed for central heat and air. I can’t let it pass without researching the possiblility although I’m certainly not about to jump into it until I have all the information I can find.
Even if we leave it in its original place we estimate at least a $15,000 profit.
Well Holly, I’m not really up to speed on land and construction costs in Texas, and I’ve obviously not seen the building, so you’ll probably have a better idea of some of the real numbers than I do, but if I were moving a home of that size around here the budget would look something like this:
10 k – New Lot (WAG)
29 k – Purchase Price
3 k – Excavate for new found.
12 k – New Foundation
2 k – Cap & abandon old foundation
8 k – Bring in new utilities. (inc. water & septic)
4 k – New Driveway
5 k – Prep house for moving
2 k – Steel moving supports, in place
38 k – 1 day move, reset, patch & hook-up
9 k – Util. relocations in transit (rural)
7 k – New Chimney
18 k – Windows & Structural Repairs
16 k – Original renovation budget
3 k – Add for transit damage (superficial)
4 k – Landscaping
4 k – P.I.T.I.
12 k – Realtor Commission on $200k sale
Estimated Total Project Cost: $186k
Less resale of old lot: ( 5k)
Projected profit: $ 19k
This is by no means an exhaustive budget, and as I said, yer numbers in Texas will probably vary considerably, especially foundation costs, but hopefully the above will give ye a guide to some of the major cost catagories involved.
I’ve never tried to do a list like this on the board here, so hopefully when this posts it’ll stay in the nice neat column I see before me. If things end up scattered all over the place I apologize in advance fer my ham-handedness.
Whoops, sorry, Holly; sloppy reading of the OP and didn’t do a profile search. Kindly disregard all that Illinois based info.
Crick did a noble and realistic job of outlining the problems. He is quite accurate. But that doesn’t mean your dream is totally insane and unworkable. And it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. Having done the “building trades” stuff personally and professionally, the plain fact is that experts abound but answers go begging.
Don’t confuse logistics with practicality. It’s all ways and means. And don’t for one red-hot second let naysayers discourage you. Not to diss Crick–he’s right–but all of it is market driven. So much of your decision rests on how far your dream can go toward driving that market. (Hint: real profits are often tied to long-term commitment.)
I bought a sagging old house 15 years ago. Ridiculously low rehab loans floated some of it, along with a cash based city commitment for the neighborhood. Sweat equity, cursing, fumbling rehabbing and some years have turned a repellent slum into the priciest yuppie “trolley tour” real estate around.
No one can make the decision but you. The essential thing is to know the real hurdles and then measure that against your dream. But don’t ever discount the pure power of a canny dreamer.
What Veb said . . . with the caveat that if yer in it fer the money, as you implied initially, make sure your pencil is really sharp and your budget planning includes everything you can think of. On a pure business level my own internal company estimate for a project like this would include everything from the multiple closing costs, discount points, hours expended, permits, depreciation, and accounting fees to the rolls of ‘Caution’ tape and Xerox copies involved.
But as Veb points out, often the best work is done on a gut level. As I said, I am first and foremost an architect, and my design sympathies have led to some spectacularly bad business decisions that have been turned around into success through little more than emotional commitment. Sometimes you can make a project succeed simply through force of will, and by persuading others that yer vision is indeed clearer than theirs.
I’ve earned my design awards entirely on the strength of taking on a project that I was universally told I was insane to attempt.
On the other hand, these kinds of ‘crusades’ take a lot out of you, and if all my projects required my entire heart and soul I’d probably be an empty quivering shell with a closet full of prescriptions by now. I’d love to be able to say that I’m the epitome of social consciousness, but the world has demonstrated that if yer virtues are such that ye shit angels, yer probably broke.
I won’t shy away from the occasional emotional, against-all-odds ‘crusade’, but if I made a habit of it I expect my children would not understand. They’ve come to be rather fond of living indoors.
Dr. Watson
“The best way out of a difficulty is through it.”
Thanks for the breakdown, Dr. Watson. As for the foundation, it was built to sit almost directly on the ground. The house we live in is of very similar construction and I’ve spent several hours in the crawl space fixing a pipe. There is still grass and tumbleweeds rooted in the ground beneath our house; apparently there was very little digging involved. So if we were to move this house, building a new foundation and tearing down the old one shouldn’t be too involved.
Some things you listed we’d plan to do ourselves such as putting in a driveway and landscaping. The house doesn’t have a chimney, although if we moved it we’d consider putting in a fireplace where the mock fireplace is now. We could possibly choose to sell by owner as we’ve done it before.
Then again, any money we save by doing things ourselves may get eaten up by unexpected problems, which is why I always estimate expenses way on the high side. Your list is extremely helpful to me.
Handy, I don’t think the house is historic though I’m still working on finding out for sure. Even if it is, I doubt the city would lend a hand: right now the city is trying to salvage the historic Santa Fe building and the taxpayers are pitching a fit because they’d rather let that beautiful old building fall down.
Veb~~ actually, I’m an Illinois native and only live in Texas by a weird twist of fate. I’ve always been interested in Illinois history and historic buildings there, so your link is much appreciated.
Recently in my city the city sold two of its old houses to make room for a parking lot for $1,000 each. IT was supposed to be an auction but they ‘said’ they only got one bid so took the thousand & gave the guy a water permit too, which is worth a lot here.