Rough Renovation Estimation Advice

Well congrats! We’ll be seeing you in 2019! (Only halfway kidding.) :wink:

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Aaaaaand… the house “will never” pass inspection. Offer pulled. Basically the house was free-standing on the supports with no lateral support because the dirt around the foundations was dug out far too much due to the grow-house that used to be in the basement. In other words, the building was “twisting”. Ugh.

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Ouch.

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Ugh. So sorry to hear this. On the bright side (and forgive me if the news is still too fresh for a bright side just yet…) better to learn this during the inspection, rather than after closing!

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Nah, it’s fine. I mean, we were starting to get excited for the possibility of renovating our own little lake house, but in the end, it just wasn’t meant to be. You’re totally right. We were able to get our earnest money back and everything, so the only thing really wasted was time.

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Oh man, sorry to hear that anyway! :worried:

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We had one like that … seemed perfect, until the inspection came back. No foundation, roofing was actually the material that they use for motor homes (not manufactured homes, mind you - we’re talking airstreams :wink: ) and the well had some serious issues.

My stepdad (a contractor) read through the report with us and just started YELLING. My dad doesn’t yell … we pulled the offer straight away. Excellent timing, too - the next place we found was just right for us. Still a fixer, but workable and worth the effort.

As an aside, we drove by the other place recently. I started to say something to the effect of “I wonder how that worked out for the folks who bought it?” and stopped mid-sentence when I noticed that the entire roof was covered in tarps :open_mouth:

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So sorry to hear that. I hope you find the perfect place soon.

I’m sorry that this happened. probably small consolation, but I know when this sort of thing happened to me, it always resulted in me finding the perfect place down the road a little (sometimes literally :relaxed: )

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Ugh. Sad but good. Because if you thought the stuff you were talking about doing was expensive…

“Tear it down”

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My folks bought an extreme fixer upper in 1977.
By 1997 Dad was saying that he would’ve saved himself so much time and money by starting his first project with a bulldozer, and that the first tool he should’ve bought ought to have been a tent to live in until they got walls up.

Mom still lives there, and it still provides ample opportunities to fix something.

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The latest is that we found another place and put in a respectable offer. Asking was $350k, we estimate it will appraise around $365k…

We lost to an offer of $390k, $15k earnest money, pre-inspection, and NO financial contingency! Who does that?!?

So we keep looking… This could take a while.

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Bummer. Fingers crossed for you.

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Don’t give up because persistence will pay off in the long run and you will probably find a better deal anyway. :relaxed:

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Someone who really wants the place. The Real Estate market is really heating up especially for vacation homes as the economy is strong and people feel confident making purchases like a lake house. Owning a house on the largest lake in the United States (not including those shared with Canada) it’s amazing to see how quickly houses and property int he area is selling this year.

Wishing you the best as you continue looking.

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When we were looking for a place, we were consistently out bid by people with all cash offers, $100k over asking, and/or waiving inspections. It was crazy.

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This is also sometime known as the Winner’s Curse. It doesn’t really matter what “the market” is doing, just what some sucker with money is willing to put down.

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In the past this was typically flippers buying a house to flip. They have cash and know that they will make their money back. In this case the house was already a flip. They bought it and two weeks later it was on the market for $100k more than they paid, and they got an additional $40k on top of that.

The typical buyer wouldn’t have the resources to be able to offer $40k over asking with no contingency based on the appraisal. I guess we just need to save up $400k in cash, that should take… forever. :wink:

I can’t imagine buying a house with no contingency on an inspection :cold_sweat:

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That’s what it’s like in our next of the woods. We just bought at ~$60k over asking, no inspection, no financing conditions. Even so we only got it because we were more flexible on closing date than another, nearly identical offer. The market in Kitchener/Waterloo hot enough that putting in a conditional offer is just a waste of time- nowhere left to build new houses, and Toronto is insane enough that more and more people are buying here and spending a couple hours on the highway every day. Before going through it I would have thought it was idiocy to waive an inspection, but it’s just how it is around here now.

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