For those of you who follow my blog regularly, you know I'm a "rehabber", a person who buys distressed St. Paul houses and fixes them up for resale. Rehabbers are different from those who restore. Someone who restores shops around until they find authentic replicas or replacements for what's missing in the house. A restorer would never replace an old window. They would fix the old window so that it functioned correctly, carefully stripping away the old paint down to the old wood, retying rope to the window weights, reglazing the outside of the glass panes to look like the original. Rehabbers fix for profit. Restorers fix for love. I mix both in my own house.
A prominent character flaw of rehabbers is their eternal optimism. They see potential in every home. They see how an irregular floor plan can be fixed to "make it work". Even condemned houses are not beyond a rehabber's optimism. Throw some money at a condemned house and it can become a true gem.
Today, however, was an unusual day for the rehabber in me. Seldom do I tour a house that I feel is beyond repair, but I found one today. As I approached the side door with my keypad in hand, my nose started protesting. "Yuck," says the nose. "What's that musty smell? Yuck! That surely isn't mold and filth in this price range!" The house was modestly (?) priced at a half million dollars. Now I don't know about you, but a half million dollars is significant in my book. I don't expect to smell offensive smells in that price range.
The door opened a time warp. The familiar acrid smell of a leaking oil tank slammed into my face. Surely not in this price range?! The warp continued. The kitchen did not have one clean surface, not one. The old cabinets had obviously not been cleaned in about 80 years. Some doors hung by one hinge. Drawers were worn from use. There wasn't a wall in the house that was plaster or sheetrock. It was all paneling and all the ceilings were yellowed tiles. The floors were raw plywood worn smooth from years of being uncovered. No switch plate covers; not one good window; raw 2 x 4's around the basement stair; a trap door stair opening. It felt like an old farmhouse from the '20's complete with the barnyard smell and the grit under foot.
It was eerie to be walking around alone in this house at dusk. The creeps were crawling up my neck and into my hair but I forced myself to descend the open stairs to the basement. It was the only clean part of the house. To complete the time warp, however, there was an ancient half bath with the seat-less toilet and a wall hung sink. Neither appeared to be salvageable. Oh, and not to be forgotten . . . the big green oil tank as my nose suspected was in one corner with its dark smear of leaking oil beneath it. The smell was overwhelming and the creeps in my hair won out. I exited pronto.
Nope, this house had no hope. It was not capable of being fixed. It needed to be blown up and started over. At half a million dollars and taxes of $4800 a year after the homestead credit, I was appalled. Surely the city had not seen this house. The lot was great, but it costs a lot to remove the house and start over. Even a lake lot wouldn't be worth this price and with this house . . . ? I cringed again as I drove away.
The inspector the buyer hires often takes several hours in the house. Buyers question whether they need a home inspection. When a defect like knob and tube wiring is found that insurance will not cover, it's best to know ahead of time. Or when a vent pipe is not properly venting out, but spewing hazardous waste gas into the house, it's good to know ahead of time. Time after time, a house that looks pretty good has a list of defects the home buyer should know about. Often the home inspection is the first "honey do" list!
The buyer's home inspection took four hours today. It's the second
inspection for this client, but the benefit from the first convinced them they wouldn't buy a house without an inspection. The last inspection was in the big St. Paul snow storm. We all knew to expect about four hours. Four hours is a long time for a
toddler to keep going. Personally, I would have liked to curl up with
him!
