You start off by saying you're 'considering' buying the house, but near the end talk about 'walking away', which almost sounds like you have comitted to it. In any case, I can't imagine, from your description, a worse investment! The fact it's a mess is not the point, but the water issues alone (location and what might already have turned it into a mold factory), never mind the new hwy, would have me running a mile. There must be other places out there that would interest you... sometimes you DO get what you pay for (and I say that assuming this one's rock bottom cheap). A shell of what was nice years ago even in a 'prime' neighbourhood, is just a shell, and the other issues make it totally undesirable as far as I'm concerned.

A quiet, idyllic lakefront home....30 ft from a highway. No thank you - I'd not even consider this, even if the home was in perfect condition. Remember one of the top rules of real estate....location, location, location.

To me, this would be throwing your money away.

stay away from the highway. especially if you have pets. the other neighbor will probably buy this house, tear it down, and use the lot as a barrier between them and the new highway. ick ick ick.
good luck kren
ps icky houses only work in a great location which you will not have...remember that house on the forum with the blood, etc. inside, but a great view of the mountains?

icky houses only work in a great location which you will not have...remember that house on the forum with the blood, etc. inside, but a great view of the mountains?

Kren, I'm not familiar with that thread. Do you have a link?

We are not planning to live in this house. It would only be for an investment "opportunity". The owners bought if for $495K about 18 months ago. How in the world they got a bank to loan them that much money on this dump is beyond me. They KNEW this house needed work when they bought it. They didn't improve the house in the least, unless you count tearing out the carpet and painting black grime white. (All of the dirt/mildew has bled through the paint anyway. It's just gross.

The bank wrote off a 2nd mortgage for 99K. The first mortgage was for $396K and they would (love to) agree to settle for $365K.

The lot is being assessed for about $60K+ too much, according to my calculations, which I could argue for the State to re-assess. (I'm a real estate agent.)

We've remodeled homes before, but have never undertaken something like this. There is absolutely NOTHING to try to save here. Unless you want to take out a new $300 dishwasher that the bank put in the house. I told them that was truly like putting lipstick on a DEAD pig.

WELL, I do have a few positive things to say. The concrete slab foundation looks pretty good. Also, the house is at least 50% brick, which is good, albeit gross color, but it could be painted.

We guesstimate that there's at minimum $200K of repair work, bulkhead installed, dock repaired/replaced, land clearing on this .72 acre lot, and fill dirt. If we gutted the house and had a minimalistic remodel, but still replaced all windows, wall, plumbing, electric, roof, fixed the pool, yard, etc...Shoot... $200K might not cover it.

I've never bulldozed a house. I wouldn't want the same house back there. BUT IF WE DO, then we'd have to pay the new building permit fees and that would be about $10K. Plus house plans (I could do them) and then structural engineering, hurricane engineering, etc. I am thinking that we could build cheaper than tear this down, but I do not know how much it would cost to just rip everything out and dump it and start over. I am also thinking that might be overkill and I'm just not being realistic.

I did find a site that talks about putting Quiet Rock Drywall to soundproof the house from the sounds of traffic. Pricey, but it would work. The pool could be filled in atually, but I'm just not sure.

Any ideas knowing that this would be an investment to sell?

Do you know how companies charge to demolish a building?

Call around and find out. As an investment though, especially in today's market (wherever you live), it just sounds like good money after bad (and you don't really know what you could find when digging it out). There HAVE to be better places around!

You would be surprised, if the house is structurally sound because sometimes it's easier to just take it down to the beams and studs than try to remediate. I've seen miracles. But, they've been done by people with good handles on returns for expenditures. It's not for someone who hasn't had the baptism by fire. As far as I'm concerned the house has a fatal fault, or will have a fatal fault when that highway goes through. You can throw all the money you want at it, and if it's not something you'd consider living in, why would you think somebody else would? The market is sucking rotten eggs right now. People are taking money to the table to get out of their mortgages. It's a risky time to be investing unless it's a sure thing. I just sold an investment property I could have moved a year ago overnight, and it sat on the market for almost six months because I missed my window. Buyers are calling the shots now. It is a good time to invest, btw but not for short term gains. Why don't you pose this question over on the buying and selling forum. They give you a lot of different insights.

If it's so bad that there's mildew bleeding through the paint on the walls are you prepared to rip ALL of the wallboard out and totally redo the interior?

I wouldn't walk away from that house, I would run as if my butt was on fire.

I would run like hell from this dog if I were you.

FWIW it took us from May to December last year to sell the nicest house (by far) in its price bracket on a beautiful wooded lot in a very good town because the lot line of the one-acre lot was 500+ yards from a four-lane divided highway. That is ten times further than the house you're considering, with a 1/3 smaller highway. In the summer you couldn't even see the highway through the thick trees around the house. We had well over a hundred lookers and the #1 cited reason for not putting in an offer was that bloody highway. I can't tell you how many times we heard "it's a lovely house at a great price and in every other way it's perfect for us, but it's just too close to the highway". We got used to the noise within a few weeks and were even content hanging out on the deck but it was indeed a deal-breaker for most people. When it finally sold after a big price drop we were very lucky not to have had to bring money to the table to get out from under the mortgage, but we lost tens of thousands when we totalled up everything we'd done to the house. Frankly, that property sounds pretty much unsaleable even if you put double your budget into it and spiffed it up to be the nicest house in the neighborhood. Sure, you could soundproof the house to an extreme with insulation, QuietRock, and soundproofed doors/windows, put the highest allowable fence around the yard to block a tiny bit of the noise, and put in a great air-cleaner to filter out all the vehicle exhaust, but no one is going to want to hang out on the waterfront or by the pool if "you hear nothing but a roar", so why would they pay a premium price for that?

BTW, with the house being 30+ years old, with the level of remodeling the house needs you may run into a mandate to bring it up to current code for hurricane resistance, etc. Where I live, gut remodels - and that'll be a gut job, no two ways about it - are subject to almost all the same rules in that department as new construction.

You can do much, much better. Be patient. If you are truly bent on real estate investment, the market has not yet hit bottom in most areas of the US, and you will aurely be able to find a house that is more easily salvageable and is in a less rotten location. Especially since you are a RE agent and have first dibs on seeing a lot of properties. But unless your market is a lot better than most, I think you may have missed the boat on the whole remodel-and-resell-for-profits thing.

You've also got to consider if/when you do buy it and make it beautiful ........... and get ready to put that for sale sign up by the curb, how many other homeowners decide it's a darned good time to get out and do likewise.

I see that in some sections of town, when something major is about to go down. It's not necessarily that you have more competition that's damning. To see a sea of for sale signs all clumped together sends up major red flags to potential buyers.

You are all the greatest, really. I printed off your responses and my husband and I have read them all. You have such a firm understanding of exactly the scenario that we face.

johnmari and calliope You've got it oh, so right. We know we should run like hell. If you head 8 lots down, the highway just isn't a bother because the canal hits the river and all of the other lots face the wide St. Johns River, so they are prime waterfront property. It's such a shame, there is so much potential here.

johnmari Just standing outside is nothing but a constant roar. My DH just couldn't take it for ten minutes. It was constant griping about the noise. Only a luny would buy such a place. But we both think...for the right price.... :)

The unfortunate truth is that we could do the remodel/rebuild, however, as you already stated correctly, we'd be subject to the new hurricane codes and it's just not worth the effort. It's a PITA having to deal with a structural engineer on new plans....can't fathom dealing with him on a remodel. We also cannot afford to let it sit on the market and give it away. THIS IS EXACTLY what I am afraid would happen. Our market hasn't bottomed out just yet.

The Bank that has this foreclosure hasn't really totally foreclosed yet because they have SO MANY foreclosures on their table. They'd be losing their fanny if they did let this one go. Truthfully, we'd be doing them a favor just to take the lot. ;) Part of me wants to take the challenge, the other part wants to slap me silly.

I did check on demolition of this building. About $10K would have everything hauled off.

So, unless something dramatic happens, I will not pursue this lot and house. It's a shame, too. 32 years ago, there was only a two lane road that went past this house. If you could only see it now.

Thank you all so very much for speaking the truth to us. It truly did help me and encourage us to just walk away.

I just hope we don't look back.

You know what? There's ALWAYS going to be a bargain somewhere, really tempting, but whether or not it's a REAL bargain or an invitation to hell is what you have to be so careful about! Good luck.

Lucy, you're so right. I'm afraid hell would be the trip we'd be buying into if we bought this property.

Well, a lot of us who have brought older homes back to life have been through the very same experience, Sherilyn. Four years ago, when the stock market was flopping around, I had some profit from my business I didn't want to invest in a portfolio. Instead I put it into a piece of real estate. The one I ended up buying was not my first choice. I saw a beautiful old Victorian across town I wanted, but providence worked that a very sound little house in the perfect location came up. It was a deflating experience, as the one I ended up getting was more realistic in many ways.

In retrospect, I thanked God I didn't bite into the big old Victorian. You can have an excellent handle on costs for even the most modest of clean-up jobs and from experience I'd say you may as well just double them right up front because that is the way it ends up.

Our home sits in an idyllic park like setting with acreage. People drive by and sometimes pull in just to ask if they can walk around and look at the grounds. We are professional gardeners, and they're lovely......but there are things even we don't do, like felling large trees. I hire it done and it isn't unusual to shell out over a thousand to a company just to clean up the mess one tree makes when part of it is downed in a windstorm. It's just a given we expect to spend money on addressing tree issues. I can't even imagine having numerous trees felled.

You will find the perfect place and when you do, it'll smack you across the face and you won't go into it with doubts. Good luck.

sherilyn: "...We are not planning to live in this house. It would only be for an investment "opportunity". The owners bought if for $495K about 18 months ago...The bank wrote off a 2nd mortgage for 99K. The first mortgage was for $396K and they would (love to) agree to settle for $365K..."

I agree with all that's been written. I can't see much of an investment opportunity in this scenario! And I sure can't figure out why the owners would have paid nearly half a million for something like this-??? My husband and I lived for a couple years in a small rental bungalow about 25 feet (no kidding) from a very busy 2-lane road, and it was nearly impossible to do anything in the front room of the house or in the front yard because of the CONSTANT traffic noise. Fortunately we had a very large backyard that sloped sharply downward toward the back of the lot and this seemed to muffle the noise out back.
Good luck with your search!

If you were planning on living there, and you had the money and the will, I would say get it as you know what you are getting into. As for investment, if you have to ask, don't do it. There are WAY too many unnowns to get involved in here. 100% rehab can be more expensive then new!

When I bought my house, we had two architects recommend we tear down and start over. We did not, but I wish we did. It has cost us more than we bargained for, and we still are not done!