Shannon Phillips

So, you all didn’t visualize asteroids hard enough, because we didn’t get that lovely bungalow that we wanted so badly. In the meantime, however, we noticed a little two-bedroom on High Street, only a block away from the first house we tried to get.

It needs some work, but mostly pretty routine and/or cosmetic stuff. It doesn’t look so hot right now, but I can see very clearly how cute it would be if cleaned up just a bit, repainted, etc. We’re expecting to get a federal 203(k) loan, which provides up-front rehab money for renovating older properties, so we’d be able to do all that right away. In general I really like the idea of taking an older, somewhat rundown house and doing the renovations exactly the way I want them, instead of paying a premium for someone else’s “remuddling.”

Besides the fact that it hasn’t been kept up so well, the main drawbacks to this house are: it’s on a busy street, and it hasn’t got a driveway or garage: street parking only. Since we’re used to living in the city the traffic doesn’t bother us, and the street parking thing just isn’t a dealbreaker for us.

I’m putting the drawbacks first so that you can make some sense of the price we’re paying for this house, which is a crazy-low $131,000. That’s the lowest of all the offers we made. (It was actually listed for $109,900, but there were four or five people bidding on it, and we wanted to win.) Even with the work it needs (about 25K—we’ve already got most of the inspections in) it will still be a ridiculously good bargain for the area. Also, it has a nice big backyard; there are cute built-ins; it’s intelligently laid out; and we like the location.

Here’s a link to the listing where you can see some pictures. Keep in mind that these are the “before” shots!