It’s a bit off-topic, but it is a topic I’m all-too familiar with. No, this isn’t Detroit; Eugene’s real estate markiet is quite healthy actually. So why is this house being offered for only $10,000, a small fraction of what it might be expected to fetch? Hint: something important is missing in what is being offered.
“Buyer must move house”. Yes, the lot is not part of the deal, or the foundation. The owners want to redevelop, and are hoping to make money on the structure rather than have to pay to have it demolished.
This is what they’re hoping someone will do to it: lift it, put wheels under it, and drive it to a new site. That’s my younger son Will on the day in 1997 we had four house moved in a convoy from the U of O campus are to where they are now. We own eight moved houses, which we got for free back then. Of course there was the cost of moving, having the utilities in the streets lifted, foundations, utilities, and a complete rehab. When I tell folks I got these houses for “free”, the are incredulous.
That’s how the house on the back of that truck looked a couple of years later, on of our twelve rentals. One of these days, I’m going to do an in-depth post on our big house-moving and renovation project, which allowed me to become financially independent enough to start blogging about old cars. One can’t exactly expect to make a proper living blogging about that subject.
Back to that house for sale. Was I interested? Not in the least. First, I’m done with that; tired of bringing tired old houses back to life. And it’s a crappy, sagging, little house, all original without any upgrades. Back then, when I didn’t know better, if it were free, I would probably have taken it. Moving costs have almost tripled, and it’s not all that expensive to build a much more efficient, comfortable and well-built new construction, which of course is what I’ve been doing the past two years, part time. It will be done soon….
The other day, I noticed that the “house for sale” sign was gone, and it was in the process of being dismantled. No takers.
I look forward to your upcoming memoirs of moving those houses Paul! As I’m rounding the corner to the end of my career in public education (for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because the mandates just stopped making sense in the shaping of future useful citizens).
My two fascinations remain cars and houses. Sadly, I’m clumsy enough to figure out the business end of a Phillips screwdriver, but not enough for thorough application.
I greatly admire people who have strong mechanical skills…..
We moved two from a freeway project and got them each for $1. We’re now going to start a “tiny” house project as ADU’s have waived development fees through 2015 in our town. Would you live in 300 sq. ft.? Were your houses from the area of the new basketball arena?
This was in ’97, almost a decade before the arena. But they were form the same neighborhood. The University started buying blocks of houses back in the 60s and 70s, and when they redevelop, the make them available. Back then, for free. Since shortly afterwards, with a sealed bid auction. The condition determines the prices, anywhere from very little to $15k, if it’s a decent older house with some upgrades.
Thanx for this important thread Paul ;
I keenly await your views on house moving .
I’m trying to keep a ‘ 1923 Craftsman Bungalow ‘ (termite infested dump) going until I die or figure out how to afford a decent one to move in or new construction ~ .
-Nate
The seller is asking $9,999 too much for the house. With the costs to move the house, a potential buyer would be better off finding a foreclosed home or a fixer upper. The seller is clearly delusional if he expects to get an offer over $1.
My thoughts exactly!
He should be offering half the cost of tearing it down to anyone who wants to haul it away!
It didn’t sell, and he’s now tearing it down.
Some houses are not all that suited for the 21st Century and reminds me of the house I live in now in Portland just north of Eugene.
Bought last year for 170K, but the little old lady who lived in it for 70 years never did a full remodel in over 50 years. The front areas of the house are straight out of the 1980s, the kitchen is 1950s Lead paint ceiling and all, and the rest of the house is a mishmash of decades. All the windows are horribly inefficient as well as used up, the furnace downstairs is a converted oil burner and does not have a fan to circulate the hot air, the foundation is cracked, moldy, and has Great Stuff in the cracks. The shingles should have been replaced when Bill Clinton was president, there is damage to the roof, and there are water leaks in the room next to me. If I was not a renter and had a bunch of money I would be tempted to buy this house and its double lot then tear down the house and build a nicer one since the current house needs 30K of work or more.
Too many landlords just don’t care. I do. I fixed them up initially, and continue to make improvements. My old houses are very well insulated, have new windows, and upgraded electric, plumbing, etc… I’m determined to keep them in good shape. All my tenants are good; I know them all, and it’s a happy relationship.
That’s the ticket: Upkeep + competitive rent = long-term tenancy & steady income. We just invested in a kitchen remodeling for one of our properties.
I’m sure that the price is negotiable. I would like to know how one can move the house without disturbing the tenants.
Pity about the house. Nice little Minimal Traditional Cottage.
There was a house in a pretty nice neighborhood here for sale for around the same price but it had been gutted by a fire.
Tempting, but no.
It’s actually a cute little house in the photo, but having taken thousands of real estate photos, I know the camera can be very forgiving.
Check out the crazy angle of the header above the garage. It’s about 15 or more degrees off of level.
Didn’t catch that on my phone, but is it pretty noticeable on my PC.
I did something similar three years ago when real estate values were down. I restored a few older townhomes and put in over the top landscaping.
The finished units attracted a hipster clientele, usually couples. I was able to win over the girlfriend or wife every time with the old world charm and garden. Units came out like your green cottage which looks fantastic.
Would be very interested to hear more about your business up there. What is rent on something like the green cottage? How long do your tenants usually stay?
Values in LA have gone up to the point where there are few mom and pop investors doing this kind of work any more. I’m glad I got in when I did.
The green cottage is a compact 3 BR 1BA (about 1100 sq. ft.). No garage. Small yard. Rents for $1250. I keep my rents fairly reasonable, and get great tenants. Rents here are quite variable depending on the neighborhood.
Most of my tenants are grad students, or young adults working and going to school. Average is 3 years. It’s a university town; I don’t get really long-term tenants, and I’m actually happy about that, as they tend to often not make such great tenants. Law school/grad school tenants are intelligent, which almost invariably makes for much better tenants than folks down on their luck.
That’s an excellent rent, outstanding even considering how low your cost per door is. There must be a catch 🙂
I’ve always liked the idea of a grad school tenant, undergrad no thanks. I wouldn’t care how long they stayed but in a rent control area like mine it’s best if they don’t stay forever.
Legally, how much control do you have over who you rent to? Do you have numerous applicants for each one that you can choose from. Can you freely turn down someone who looks like trouble, even if they are from a legally protected group?
That can theoretically be a tricky issue, but one I hardly ever have to deal with. This neighborhood is more expensive than others, so folks looking for a cheap house generally don’t bother to look or apply. Most of my applicants are specifically wanting to live in the area, which attracts younger adults. And since none of my houses have garages, that too acts as a bit of a barrier for bigger families with lots of stuff.
If I have students or kids that are real young or look like they won’t work/fit in, I just let them know that I require three previous landlord references. That seems to make them go away very quickly!
The rental business is very much defined by local and specific circumstances. What is my reality would undoubtedly be very different in another town. Generalities don’t readily apply, bu being a good and quick judge of character is very important.
I have just one rental, but 10 years experience, and my 5th tenant. My rent price point is about the same as Paul’s. In my market, that makes it moderately expensive, so that automatically does some screening. It is also a good home in a good school district.
It is perfectly legal to screen your tenants, I use a service called Tenant Data. Landlords contribute their history to this base. That data base isn’t very robust as 1st time renters tend to become owners of their second residence. The biggest help is credit history. Scores can be low due to a lack of history, so I tend to look for an absence of bad history – big bills that people walked away from. I don’t usually see issues with recession lost homes, these are mostly younger people, and the are either jackasses with their credit cards, cable company, car payment, or they are not. If they treat all of those folks badly, they are not likely to treat their landlord much better.
Also, I ask for proof of income. In one case, it was becoming apparent the lady was running an escort service. In addition to my wife not approving, I didn’t want to find myself on the evening news. Since she was mostly self employed and didn’t keep records she could share, I was done with her. She even offered me a 10% rent premium in the early going, and that was a big tip off of trouble, she had a kid and wanted to keep her in the popular local school. Finally, I contacted her previous landlord who was just blocks away. He wouldn’t tell me more than that she had been a tenant.
You can’t be shy about asserting your rights as a landlord, and you can’t listen to sob stories. You have to run it like a business.
Finally, I am friendly with my rental neighbors, and the prospective tenants know it. It’s like having security guards around the house.
Nice little house. The price may or may not make sense depending on a variety of locally variable factors.
So that’s what it takes to make an income, 12 houses, a bunch of know-how, sweat equity and being in the right place at the right time.
Several friends of ours own income properties, and they got in counting on the income but not the work. One is letting the property deteriorate, the other has had baaad experiences with tenants. They both complain a lot about it.
I have enough trouble maintaining a mid 1960’s box
My father had a rental house in the early 70s; he had to evict a tenant for their ample growth of marijuana in the basement.
A co-worker had rental property for a while. He stated a meth bust in your rental house will kill the value quickly and forever while the meth history is on the deed faster than the ink dries on the police report. I don’t think he was as choosy on clientele as others might be.
All you have to do with an ex Meth House is gut it all and bleach all the wood. Sounds simple enough on paper, but in person it is another matter.
Perhaps where you are but not here. It is a forever blemish on the deed regardless of what remedial action may be taken on the dwelling itself. When I sold my last house I had to sign an affadavit stating I had had no meth action as well as there never being anything disclosed to me at the time of my purchase. It isn’t pretty and laws vary greatly by state for real estate just as they do for auto licensure.
Most Tweekers in Central New York either (accidentally) kill themselves, get arrested (or killed by the police), or make it back to PA, but it is a growing problem as is Heroin. No idea what the laws in New York are when it comes to that.
The rental business, like any business, has to be understood and learned in order to be successful. There are several key factors that have made it work very well for me:
I got the land for peanuts, the houses for free, and had a neighbor who was just starting out in house moving, so he moved them for cheap. My out-of pocket cost for all my moved houses is between $15-$45k, land included, as well as some hired labor. Not counting my sweat equity.
Location: my houses are all within a few blocks of my own house, so I know what’s going on and can respond easily to issues. Also, it’s a desirable neighborhood, so they rent quickly, to good tenants; mostly grad/law student couples/groups, or such. Intelligent, clean and responsible folks easy to deal with. I’ve rarely had any serious issues. Only one eviction ever, which was my fault for letting a jerk guy talk me into renting my least desirable house at the end of a long day. I learned my lesson.
These houses are my babies, so I care about them. I fixed them up nicer than I had to, and I keep them up. Folks appreciate that, and generally take decent care of them. I return most security deposits in full.
I enjoy the business, and it has worked better than I expected for us. Our ROI has been fab, and now it’s a permanent inflation-adjusted income stream. We long paid off the last loans some years ago, so about 10 months of rent per year are true income; the other 2 cover prop. taxes, insurance and maintenance, which has been minimal.
I have the time to devote to my rentals. Folks that have a job and also have rentals don’t, which makes for stressful situation. My goal was to make it unstressfull, and so it has been, for me.
Sounds pretty ideal. How did you manage to get the lots for peanuts in an upscale, desirable neighborhood?
I wouldn’t call it “upscale”. In fact, it started out very modest. but because of its location, it’s in demand with a certain demographic/psychographic. It’s close-in, but quiet. Bikeable, but away from the rabble around the campus.
I bought two houses next to each other, each on double lots. At the time (1996-1997) I didn’t pay a premium for the double lots. I subdivided and created seven lots out of the two (three in the back, with only alley access). So the 5 new lots cost almost nothing. Since then, locals have become more aware of the value of double lots. Also, the code changed, and one can’t create alley-access lots anymore. So today, I could only have gotten two new lots out of that, not five.
back in the mid ’60s a freeway was built through our neighborhood and a number of houses were moved. The houses I remember seeing going down my street in the middle of the night were significantly bigger than this one, I suppose there is a zone between “too big to move” and “too small to be worth the trouble”.
How much DOES is cost to move a house, say an average cost per mile?
I would think a new single wide as opposed to a home that was temporarily mobile would be better in terms of upkeep and lack of repairs for at least 20 years. Old houses can be money pits.
I googled cost and depending a lot of things of course, the cost is probably around $100,000; less if a smaller house and short distance to move, double for a big house going farther. Moving this house will make the asking price of $10,000 insignificant. The big question is whether it would make more sense to build something new where the lot is.
If you look in the picture the lot behind is a truck depot so it is likely that the land is now zoned comerical, industrial, or multifamily, making all the value in the land. That is the case for most of my rental properties a number of which will go up for sale soon. I bought them knowing that they were highly likely to eventual get up zoned or were zoned commercial but at the edge of the real business area at the time. Put a little money down, let the tenants pay for them and leave some money for me and now they have been up-zoned and as they say “the value is in the land”.
Yes, this is commercial land, and will be redeveloped as such. hich is the main reason houses get moved: as downtown areas become more intensely developed, house get moved out to the periphery. This has been going on for a very long time.
I think that I was ambiguous with respect to which lot I meant. I meant the lot where the house might be moved to. Before the house can be moved there has to be a destination lot. Obviously the destination lot could have something new built on it rather than moving this house to it.
Mark: Highly variable. Out in the country, with no traffic lights, utilities and closed streets; quite cheap.
In town, it depends on how many utility lines have to be raised. Moves happen on Sunday morning, so you have to have crews form the electric company, telephone, and cable companies, all at double time. That gets very expensive, quickly. I was able to move four house in a convoy, so I could spread the cost of the utility guys out. Four houses was the most that could fit in a block, between intersections.
In 1997, it cost me about $60k to move four houses, including the site prep (excavation, etc) for the new location, or $15k for each house. That was about a 2.5 mile move, in town, down a very busy main arterial, with lots of intersections. I hear it’s gone up quite abit since then; more than inflation.
There’s no way to answer your question, because there are so many variables in each move. How tall is the house? Wide? Streets? Lights? etc…..
the local church had a manse that was no longer needed and they offered it up for $1. a few folks and a business were interested until they looked into the details. first, the building inspector would not let the house be located in the city limits because it did not meet current code. he wanted to treat it as a new house/new construction. to get it out of the city required the cost of raising all sorts of power lines as the house was 2 stories. in the end no one got it but i got the hardwood floors out of it. they now grace a couple of rooms in my house and they are gorgeous. that was a lot of sweat equity but now it seems worth it.
That pretty much kills moving a house. In Eugene, the house does not have to be upgraded, which is exorbitant. It’s treated as a re-model, from a code POV> Meaning that any changes/improvements do have to meet current code. No big issue.
But things like tightened laws about lead is making things more difficult.
A number of years ago, when I lived in west Michigan, there was an item on the news:
Person bought property on one side of a lake
Person on the other side of the lake wanted to build a larger house, so offered the exisiting house, I forget for how much, to anyone who would remove it.
So the guy with the open lot bought the house.
Being out in the sticks, the roads were way too narrow to move the house, so he waited until winter and had the movers skate the house across the frozen lake.
The house didn’t make it. Fell through just short of the shore.
Then the guy found out the lot he bought was wetland, so he couldn’t put a building on it anyway.
So the guy ended up with a lot he couldn’t do anything with, a house he paid for sitting in the lake, and a bill to remove the house from the lake.
I rented a room in an old farmhouse next to a lake. It had spent 50 years on one side before being successfully moved one winter over a hundred years ago. Guess the lakes in NH freeze harder than in MI?
Guess the lakes in NH freeze harder than in MI?
Quite possible. Lake Michigan usually keeps Michigan warmer during the winters. Several -15 lows last winter set records. Detroit set an all time record snow fall for the season of 93″, but that is about a normal season on the west side of the state where lake effect piles up lots of snow every year.
When the new baseball stadium was built in downtown Detroit several years ago, a group decided it wanted to save a playhouse that was on the site. iirc, the move was on the order of 3 or 4 blocks.
There are epic stories of houses being moved over the ice in Newfoundland when the outports (only accessible by sea) were consolidated to road-accessible locations.
Sometimes the move was accomplished entirely with human power with hundreds pulling in unison. Amazing.
I don’t know how many of them ended up on the sea bottom.
I’d rather have a house that’s original and at least moderately maintained than one that’s been “remuddled.” Sometimes updates are good. Others, the “What were they thinking?!” effect makes one wish for the original construction. 🙂
I’ve always wanted to follow a house move from beginning to end. I look forward to the story!
This is quite common in Australia, to sell old houses for removal. In my little town three old houses have been moved in the past year.
In Queensland we passed a “house farm” – basically a huge lot with dozens of houses on it which have been moved from their original location and set on temporary foundations (I’d guess) while awaiting a buyer.
Ten grand for that plus moving costs sounds a bit steep, though. Should put it up for tender (sealed bids) to get an idea what it’s really worth.
Many years ago after lots of pressure the port authority who runs SeaTac airport bought a number of neighborhoods under the take off and landing runs. They offered them for $1 and for what ever reason they jacked them up and moved them to a couple of areas. For a year or two it was kind of surreal driving through the neighborhoods. Driveways, sidewalks, gardens, flowers ect like a nice kept neighborhood but just no houses. Later when they expanded the airport and bought up a lot of houses on the other side of the airport they just bull dozed or buried them as they raised the ground lever 40-50 feet.
Most of my rental properties are duplexes that were built to house the workers at the Renton Boeing plant during WWII. The only problem is they covered the hillside and didn’t leave any real room for commercial properties. So when they decided they needed shopping centers many of the duplexes were jacked up and put in the parking lot of the local school where they also sold them off for $1. The father of a friend of mine bought two of them and moved him to his property. One he turned into a chicken coup and the other a storage building. They were super easy to move since they were built in a matter of days with post and pier construction so it was easy to put a couple of axles under them.
Having first renovated and then built from scratch, the latter is the way to go, (provided the authorities are not too onerous). Moving the structure first would only make the equation more lopsided. As evidence, I built an 1100 sq ft home with first class materials, passive solar design and custom built-ins, fully plumbed and wired, including foundation and septic, for under $20,000 in the early 90s. (95% of the labor by yours truly).
The relatively recent development of reinforced, through-bolted, concrete-footed, hurricane certified, pole barn structures offer similar economics even today. I had a 16×36 unit erected 4 years ago for less than $3500, materials and labor included. They go up in one day, so you have a roof over your head from the start. All the “moving” is accomplished with just one modest flatbed trailer. Then you pour a slab, enclose it, install windows, doors, parting walls, interior finish, insulation and basic wiring and you are still under $10,000. (Actually, I am at about $7000 total at this stage). If public sewer and water is available the total could still not exceed $20000 fully finished.
That $10,000 price tag is no bargain.
Sounds like you’ve figured out how to build for cheap, which is still surprisingly possible.
Thanks for the update Paul.
Yikes. Sounds like a total money pit, the way you describe it. But then, this is a game you’ve played before.
When I was about 15 they moved a house into a lot next to my house in NJ to make room for a supermarket. It’s still there today. I have a few more pictures if you can use it in your research. The slides are dated 1965.
I think with the cost of moving these days, it’s gone well past being a cost-effective way to get a cheap house (if you’re in the right place at the right time) and has become more a labor of love, a way to save a desirable house from destruction. So the intrinsic value of the house, original details, etc. need to be intact and worth preserving in most cases. As I’ve seen in a few cases though it can be a *great* way to do infill in a historic neighborhood, either replacing a home that was lost to demolition/fire/etc. or to fill a lot that was never built on.
On the more ambitious side of things, Raleigh, NC launched a project downtown a few years back that required the move of several large historic homes. The idea was to take a street that had once been a premier resedential address, had lost some structures and ended up broken up with parking lots and a lot of the homes containing state offices, and return it to a vibrant residential community. Some of the homes had already been moved once and required moving a second time! Though the housing downturn required significant scaling back of the new infill that had been planned, to my knowledge al the moves of historic homes went off smoothly and the siting of the street makes a lot more sense than it used to.
When my wife was still a Realtor she listed a large old house that had been barged from Kirkland to Purdy, and then moved uphill a couple of miles to a lot in the country. It had been built around the turn of the century, and rather substantially in that the main beam under the house was 40 feet long, 14 inches square, and cut from one tree. When she listed it it was completely gutted – no glass, holes in the walls, nothing inside except load-bearing walls. It was solid as could be though, and she eventually found precisely the right buyers, an enthusiastic young couple who proceeded to turn the “white elephant” into quite a showplace.
The sellers were an investment club composed of ten couples, no two of who lived in the same city; this was in the days before faxed signatures were acceptable; you can imagine the paperwork shuffle required to make the sale happen. Also there were about a dozen clouds on the title that my wife had to clear. She says that she was paid at the rate of pennies per hour on that transaction, yet she derived some satisfaction from completing it.
Digging into the guts of older houses can be fascinating. One house I worked on recently had three distinctly different sections of foundation under it. Had obviously been expanded at least twice.
I found this inside the wall of my mom’s garage a few days ago:
Looking forward to the house moving/land purchase story. Sounds like you made a really smart project successful, and also were in or moved to the right place at the right time. Sadly, with all the regulations heaped on since then it sounds like house moving, at least in the city, is no longer worth it even if the house is free. I only own two rental houses, but but thankfully they are both paid for, so taxes, insurance and upkeep are my only expenses. I bought the first in 98 when decent 3 bedroom houses were still in this area for under 100k. When the crash of 08 hit and I was laid off, the 99 weeks of unemployment and housing market crash allowed me to find a newly 90 percent restored 2 bedroom for 85k. Since savings and CD’s no longer pay anything, it was a no brainer to buy a foreclosure for cash with my retirement savings and collect monthly rental income. My last two tenants have been great, both houses are weatherized with top and bottom insulation and new windows and heat pumps. The city has programs that did everything free of charge, except for the windows that were already installed on the rentals when I purchased them. I was going to rent to my sister who moved from Florida, but three out of control dogs and a Penske truck full of roaches, plus 2 cats made me quickly come to my senses and I changed my mind, paid for a storage unit and loaned them some money to get an apartment instead. I’m looking for a tenant that will take care of my property and in return get a reasonable rental rate. It won’t take long, but I will screen carefully. I know this is an auto blog, but Paul’s rental stories really peak my interest.