My SO and I are like this. Both of the last 2 times we were house shopping, our agent was amazed that we were looking at things like cracks in the walls and ceilings, and not worried about the fact that the kitchen appliances weren’t all stainless steel. Apparently they’ve never sold a house to someone that says “We can take out that wall, or paint that room.”
Speaking as a recent homebuyer, I would say fix it. When I was first introduced to my dream house, I immediately noticed that the interior was in perfect condition: walls freshly painted, carpets pristine, wood cabinets and tile floor in the kitchen, no cracks anywhere, almost no wear-and-tear, even the bathrooms and the laundary room were in great shape. Those are the first things that a prospective buyers notices upon walking through the front door, and they’re what shape the snap judgment. If you give the wrong first impression, you’re going to lose a number of possible buyers right off the bat.
Yep. I think we want to send the message of: affordable house in great school district close to everything!
Instead of: I wonder what else is wrong with this house.
Reported.
So, Carol, since you’ve been bumped, any updates for us? 
Heh, the prevailing notion in my houses-over-50-years-old-that-haven’t-had-updates-in-ages neighborhood is: “I’m not doing anything. Let the new owners take care of it.”
Mind you, over half of my neighbors are senior citizens.
The other half – like me – cannot afford to update.
We faced a similar problem when my father in law passed away. We had been living in my husband’s grandparents house and were buying his parents house. The grandparents house needed work - new carpet, paint, really needed a new furnace, etc.
When I had a yard sale before moving, my sister in law came up with the idea to put up a sign: “House for sale as is”. A guy who did rentals came by, did a walk through and gave us a $500 earnest check that day. We sold the house a week later. We didn’t get as much for it as we would have without the work that needed to be done, but we also didn’t have to do the work. Since I had to do a lot of work on the house we were moving into, that meant a lot to me. One sister in law lives out of state and the other isn’t capable of much physical work. We were looking at “we’ll do it ourselves to save money” on things like painting, which meant my husband and I would do the work. We ended up with about as much profit as we would have if we had done the work. It was worth it to us to not have to deal with it.
Things like a wet basement will have to be fixed. One idea is to put up a “for sale by owner” sign while you are doing that work - don’t list it with a realtor until you’ve fixed it up. You might luck out and find someone who would rather replace fixtures and paint themselves. You won’t sell for as much, but you won’t have to spend as much either. Then, if you haven’t sold it while the necessary work is done you can do the cosmetic work and list it with a realtor.
My husband’s family is having the same issue with his grandpa’s house, SnaksesCatLady. Grandpa recently passed away, and while his house is not too old (20 years, I think), and in a nice residential neighbourhood, I don’t think it’s had any work or updates done in 20 years, and had 20 years of smokers in it. My inclination would be to fix the house up on the cheap before selling it to get the most money out of it, but I can also see an argument for just selling it as is and not putting one hour of work into it (beyond cleaning it all up).
Well, the update for my parents’ situation is that after all the talk, nothing has ever been done. The house is in even worse shape now. I don’t have the slightest idea of what kind of crazy person would buy that house. If they get $90,000 out of it I will be shocked out of my mind, and that would probably be after it sat for sale for a year.
Frankly, it makes me sad to read this thread now. Back then I had hope that something could be and would be done, but it’s almost three years on and what has won out is my family’s disfunction.
The house next door to me sat for almost three years after the owner – a friend of my mother’s – went to a NH. One of her sons briefly moved into it. After he moved out, it just sat. Finally another son went in, did some basic cosmetic updating, then contacted a realtor. It sat for another year with four price changes before being sold. The people who bought it will probably be putting it up for sale come spring because they’ve since discovered a whole mess of upgrades that should have been done years ago
Yep. A guy I know that grew up with me in my neighborhood two years ago offered to paint their house with his Navy buddies as a service project. My dad refused to allow them to do it. For free, they would have painted it! But no. My friend was just gobsmacked that my dad wouldn’t let them do it. I had to explain that that is just the way it is. He pointed out that their roof is falling apart and needs to be repaired. Yep, I know. But there’s no talking to my dad, so the house is just going to crumble around them. Meanwhile, dad assumes his kids will buy him a new house. Or pay for a fabulous assisted living situation.
Uh, with what?
It must be a past-a-certain-age phenomenon. Years ago I tried several times to convince my mother to sell and move into the brand spankin’ new over-55 development on the other side of town. Many of her friends were already there. Nope, nope, nope, nope, I’ll stay in this house until it comes crashing down on me :rolleyes:
I’ve always wondered if part of the reason was because she didn’t want to face cleaning out the attic and basement of all the furniture she’d inherited and that is still up/down there…,
My mom is 88 years old, and my brother lives with her to take care of her and the estate owns the house, with her having lifetime tenancy.
This past summer he had the roof replaced, has done lots of yard work and removed some trees that got somewhat out of hand. He and mrAru have started going through the house discarding the outright junk [like 50 or so years of National Geographic and other odds and ends of magazines] and are more or less sorting stuff with an eye towards getting things ready for auction or passing along to the people indicated in the will. I believe next thing is renovating the bathroom and the half bath. The kitchen has reasonably new appliances, the fridge and dish washer were new last summer. I would say that a new coat of paint throughout the inside would be needed, and the carpet replaced. Last time the house had anything major done was the rebuild after part of it burned in 1984. I know he and mrAru have plans for the rest of the yardwork come spring.
So hopefully by the time Mom passes, the house will be market ready.
That’s what worries me about my neighborhood. As I said upthread, many of my neighbors are senior citizens, some of whom were raised in the very houses where they still live. Other than the occasional plumber’s van or the oil company, you never see any contractors or such anywhere near their houses.
OTOH there are also several families with young children scattered here and there. I have no hard statistics, but I do know many of those young families had to do significant upgrading/remodeling before moving into their homes. As one of the dads said to me, “It’s the price you have to pay to get your kids into this school district.”
And I’m thinking, That’s great IF you can afford to do so, but what if you can’t? My senior neighbors obviously can’t. Neither can I. So what happens when everything falls into disarray?
Try asking habitat for humanity or your personal church if there is some sort of program that can be signed up for to do basic repairs like roof, leaky plumbing, faulty heating systems or intense yard work.
Luckily Dad left Mom well enough off that she can afford to have the home maintenance done. And in the end it contributes to selling the house more efficiently. They did maintain the house, and it looks fine, though the colors and such are mid 80s decor - it was just time to replace the roof and give the place a bit of an update anyway. Heck, it is time to do the roof on our house, it is 20 years old.
That really is sad news, Carol. Are your parents senile? Why would they assume that anyone else is going to buy them a house after they let their house go to ruin?
Realtor[sup]TM[/sup] here.
If you update the house, it’s unlikely that the $ investment you make will be returned.
However, if you don’t update it, it will be harder to sell, and you may only get the “teardown” price.
On balance, I advise my clients to consider upgrading if:[ul][li]they can afford to pay for the work before a sale, andif it would make a useless property into something that someone might want to live in.[/ul][/li]
I just sold a 3BR, 1BA house that fit into this category. The sellers had replaced all appliances with new (and upscale!) ones, and remodeled the bath and kitchen. While there was still work to be done, it made a sale possible. Without that work, it might not have sold for another year or more.
I have no way of determining if it was cost-effective, but the fact that it sold might override any $ figures.
This sounds just like my mom. She’s been living in the house since the 70s and I swear she hasn’t done a single thing to it. It’s sad because it could be a really beautiful house, but the place is a dump. It’s in a pretty expensive area too (comps would be around $1,000,000.) which just makes it worse since even the shitty quick renovations in the neighb look a thousand times better inside and out.
She has no intention of fixing or replacing anything, ever. She truly believes that she can sell it “as is” for a million dollars, but it’s never occurred to her to go to one of the neighboring open houses and see how much nicer those houses are compared to hers. It freaks me out that I’m going to have to handle this stupid ugly house when she’s gone, and yet she thinks she’s setting me up for life by leaving me this “asset” in her will.
Am I mistaken or outdated in remembering that some types of mortgages wouldn’t be available for homes with certain defects? That is, you won’t be able to get a VA or FHA mortgage on a home with structural or mechanical problems like a crack in the foundation or water in the basement? If that’s the case, it would make sense to repair the big issues, and do some cosmetic work while you’re at it, given the current state of the market.
My MIL had to go to a nursing home so we needed to empty and sell the house; the empty part went fairly well over 4 months.
The house had last seen any serious work during the Eisenhower administration. Things that broke got fixed but not necessarily the damage they caused. For example, a roof leak was fixed and fixed well but where plaster had come down my late FIL had just put up some cardboard. There were a few foundation issues and chimney issues as well. As is where is it would get roughly 70K quickly. Totally fixed it would get about 140K but it would take 35K+ in repairs plus a lot of hours and labor from us. And once fixed to get the 140K could take a year or more on the market. We basically said screw it and went as is. It sold to a neighbor in a couple weeks and we never looked back. Except to see that almost 2 years later he still hasn’t finished the repairs or moved in.