They were white and yet they acted really stupid!
Just don’t move for the rest of their lives, keep the house, then who cares what its worth? The lower it is, the less property taxes
I hope she got a big advance on that book.
You’d think there would be contractors in Detroit falling all over themselves to do a job like this for less than $300K. And you’d think they could have found a house in an equally good neighborhood which could be made liveable for a lot less money.
I assume they have never, ever, watched one of the home improvement shows my kids love. But I’ve never seen one of those people with this little sense.
I bet they had many opportunities to pull out of this fiasco. And maybe they will get lucky and property values will go up enough to let them break even. But basically they are chumps.
They will not be staring in Flipping Detroit
I assumed thevOP’s point is that the couple were trying to be do gooder liberals, trying to elevate the ghetto, and it slapped them in the face because you just can’t help some folks. Because culture.
Please note that I don’t in any way espouse that view, but there exist those for whom it is a comforting narrative.
Because the OP is racist
Racists
White people act stupid all the time. Look at Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump supporters. They’re all white, and it is really difficult to get any dummer than that without serious neurological trauma.
Stranger
Not good as an investment. They were way too inexperienced in this area to sink so much money into this project. If they had done smaller renovations before and been successful, then it could be chalked up to bad luck. But this is a case of people who had stars in their eyes about building their dream house and making lots of money. Plus, they don’t have the money to fix what’s broken now, so that likely means problems with upkeep which means more serious problems later.
But that only matters if you’re looking to sell it and make money. I paid $150K when I bought my house almost 30 years ago - and I wish I had been able to spend another 50K to remodel it the way I wanted it. But I couldn’t have just bought what I wanted in a neighborhood of $200K houses- because those houses were pretty much the same as the one I bought. The same size , the same layout , still only one full bath, the same tiny kitchen that’s even smaller than the one in the article - just in a different neighborhood. A neighborhood that wasn’t better in any objective way- it wasn’t more convenient , it wasn’t safer, it didn’t have better public transportation. People were just willing to pay more for reasons I’m not sure of (although I have my suspicions). When my kids inherit the house, after we’ve lived here for 40 or 50 or even 60 years, it’s not going to matter one bit whether it’s worth $400K more than we paid or $350K more than we paid including renovations. But spending that 50K would have made my life better for however long we end up here.
But if these people did it to make money rather than increase their happiness, they were out of their minds.
I assumed the OP was mentioning race in a “first world problems” kind of way, and mocking the Times for showing off the troubles of affluent white people with more money than sense.
Or, racism.
Think horses not zebras.
Maybe they won’t be white for the rest of their lives either. These things, y’know, are so fluid now-a-days.
If they like the place and living there, its a great deal.
If they don’t, its a bad deal.
Lord knows I’m not one to consider getting more out of a property than I put into it as a scale for good or bad; its just not my thing.
I am not sure what the point of mentioning they are white was but they do seem to be some late-blooming aspiring hipsters that are really bad with money in general.
From the article:
“On paper, Ms. Haimerl is about the last person you would expect to go all in like this. She grew up poor and lost a house to a foreclosure in Denver several years ago, when a previous relationship disintegrated. She has even worked as a personal finance editor.”
No, they are about the first people I would suspect of having such problems. They bought an inexpensive but dilapidated house that needed a complete rehab in one of the most speculative areas of the country and then dumped way too much money into it. The results aren’t even that great judging by the pictures. If you read the article closely, they even went with one of their more expensive contracting bids and then were shocked when the project went over budget despite the wife being the daughter of a contractor. That almost always happens on projects of this nature and she should know that better than most people but still somehow didn’t.
This is one of the reasons the word ‘retarded’ can be applied in an appropriate way. The one saving grace is that they do not have kids and do not plan to ever so hopefully that will break the cycle of downward spiraling bad decision making.
Pointing out that they’re white is unnecessary, because everyone knows that blacks and Mexicans could never afford to spend that much on a house.
People do this crap all the time. Not really news.
I think the real question is, are they hipsters?
They will morph into Greys.
White ones.
Whipsters.
mmm
You’re kidding! I’d never noticed!
So. . .“dummer”?