Granny_Weatherwax
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Posts posted by Granny_Weatherwax
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17 minutes ago, marbel said:
I know this is likely over and I'm sorry for your disappointment, but this stopped me. Would your husband be up for a huge project like this while he is also working full-time? I have known quite a few motivated project-loving people who bit off more than they could chew on house projects, and ended up unhappy with the results. Obviously I don't know you/your husband, but it sounds like a lot for evenings and weekends.
I know it's hard to walk away from a dream. 💗
I guess it would have been a way to determine which 'dreams' belong to both of us and which are more one-sided.
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21 minutes ago, Catwoman said:
I didn't realize that nothing could be done after business hours. We have negotiated on houses in the evenings and on weekends, so that thought never occurred to me.
I hope you get to make an offer on it. It sounds like you really love the property!
It's complicated for us because DH works 12 hour shifts and with railroad restrictions, he cannot use his cellphone while on duty. Everything has to be done in those few precious hours when businesses are open and he is home and awake.
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41 minutes ago, Catwoman said:
But wouldn't the earnest money only be held for a few days, while the sellers made their decision to accept, reject, or counter your offer?
I think so but it was already a long shot and now that he has spoken with others who have also toured the property, he is over it.
He's sleeping now and I cannot speak to him about other options and possibilities. By the time he wakes up the standard business day will have concluded and the earliest anything can be done is tomorrow morning.
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1 minute ago, Catwoman said:
Why not just make an offer on the house anyway, even if it's quite low? You could enclose a letter to the sellers explaining why your offer is so low, and detail the scope of the work that needs to be done.
If they reject your offer, that will be disappointing, but at least you'll know you tried. And if they reject your offer right now, you can respond to their rejection and tell them that they can feel free to have their realtor contact yours if they change their minds about reducing the price at a later date.
That's what I suggested but DH doesn't want to tie up any funds in earnest money for a slim chance.
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6 minutes ago, Lecka said:
Maybe it will come back on the market with different terms, if it doesn’t sell this way. It could happen!
That’s disappointing!!!!!!!!
It's still on the market. Has only been listed for 7 days. My guess is one of the farmers who own the bordering properties will assume it. It is bordered on three sides by larger farms. One of the farmers owns the current hunting rights and I wonder if he'll buy it.
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I'm doing a desk day this morning so I'll work on my June goals and post in a bit.
Here are my yearly goals with updates:
Lose 15 pounds - I have lost and regained 8 pounds plus. This has now morphed into a larger health goal and trying to figure out why I cannot lose weight. I did a blood glucose trial and learned a lot about how foods affect my body. I had a physical including CBC, CMP, lipids, thyroid, A1c, and insulin. I am now working with my primary care provider to work through the results and figure out what is going on.
1000km walk/hike - 241.32; I know this is higher but I wasn't good with tracking in March and April.
600 mile bike - I haven't ridden my bike at all since January so this is 36/600.
Officiate 20 days - I have officiated 17/20 days. I would have hit this goal but I chose to coach for 7 weeks and that meant having to step away from some officiating assignment. I am also taking the summer off in order to work on my health and weight loss goals. Recertification 90% complete.
Pay off truck - Done!
Paint 4 rooms - I have looked at paint but have not painted any rooms yet.
Declutter and paint the basement - have decluttered some but not anywhere near where I would like to be. Most stuff in the basement is camping and backpacking gear or belongs to DH. I need to either sell the gear or use it.
1 new adventure a month - Nailed this for March and April. So many new adventures coaching. I guess bringing a new dog into the family could be considered an adventure.
Apheresis Gold Level (18 platelet donations) - I have donated 8/18 times. I am a bit behind
Find a new volunteer activity - Due to coaching full time for two months, I put this on hold.
June Goals
Health - follow up appt regarding blood work and foot (x-rays, possible surgery), follow new food plan armed with blood glucose and blood fat information.
Hike/Walk - 150 kilometers
Bike - 4 bike rides of varying lengths
Officiating - None this month; complete recertification
Paint 1 room
New adventure - Be Wild!
Apherisis - 2 donations
Do I really need a new volunteer opportunity? I already volunteer once a week.
Additional goals: reading, financial, house and yard maintenance
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We have also been looking (put on hold while we were thinking about buying property) but have decided to wait also. The prices of a used model, 2020-2022, vs a new 2023 are negligible. We are hoping the prices of used drop soon. We are looking at the 4Runner or the VW Atlas.
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Dh just returned home from work and informed me that four of the guys he works with have also looked at the property and all four said the same thing: house is crap and the price needs to be reduced in order to make it affordable to bring it up to code. None are making offers. As a result, DH is no longer interested and has asked me to let it go.
My daydreams have been filled with walks through the property with my dogs, floating on the pond while reading, watching the deer from the back porch.
So now I deal with disappointment. At least I know more about kit cabins, leech fields, and tenting for termites.
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25 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:
I am concerned that the septic/well proximity might mean that there is a genuine and serious health risk of living here, and that it might be difficult to find another legal site for the septic given the water on the property. I’d focus pretty hard on that question before finalizing anything.
Yes, this is our biggest concern; that and the termites. The current septic is close to the well and uphill from the pond. We are concerned about leeching into the pond and how safe the well water is. The current well is 125 ft deep.
Edited: looked up the statutes and the leech field has to be a minimum of 100 feet from the pond. It is definitely more than 100ft but it is uphill from the pond. I am concerned about the run off. I wonder how much it would cost to have the pond water tested?
The leech field must be a minimum of 75 feet from a closed loop well system. It is not currently 75 feet away, maybe 50.
The septic tank must be a minimum of 50 feet from a closed loop well system, It is not. It is 37 feet (the realtor measured for me when we were on our first tour).
DH and I owned a couple of acres a few miles away from this property when we first moved here. We had to replace that septic system after a couple of years so we knew the basic distance between a well and a septic but not the leech field to a pond.
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11 hours ago, Storygirl said:
I would only do this if I planned for it to be my forever home. Selling in 10 years wouldn't be worth the huge amount of work and expense of making it habitable. And you can't depend on the housing market to be better in a decade.
My sister and her husband bought a property that they loved that has a small, weird house on it. They are living in the small house while building a new house right next to it, then they will knock the little house down. It took them years to make this final plan (they had other ideas first) and find builders, and it has been a huge amount of work. But their little house was habitable, just weird and not what they wanted, so they were able to sell their other home and use the proceeds to fund this project.
They bought this to be near their only daughter and her family and plan to live there forever, so it's worth it for them. What you describe would only be worth it if you would LOVE the laborious and expensive process of turning it into your dream home and property. And then be willing to pass it on to someone else.
I would save the money and buy something you love in your new location when you retire.
And this is the rub...we would never be able to afford this much land with timber and water in any other location. If this land were in CO (our home state and where we would eventually like to end up), it would be well over $1million. We are young enough now to be able to do the things that need to be done. Who knows what will happen in 8-10 years. CO is not going to get any cheaper, so wouldn't it be nice to be able to buy the property now and live the dream, no matter how difficult, while we can?
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4 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:
If you decided to do this with a prefab or some other type of new house on the land, could you turn the schoolhouse into a museum?
No, there has been so much alteration done over the years, it doesn't even look like a school house anymore. We were surprised when the realtor told us that is what is was.
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12 hours ago, Lecka said:
Would it qualify for a mortgage and insurance?
I don’t know how some scenarios work, but sometimes there are houses that need expensive repairs that aren’t going to be done by the sellers, and they are just going to have to go to cash buyers.
I don’t know if the sellers would end up negotiating to pay for some things if they couldn’t sell the house otherwise? Sometimes it can work out in the contract.
I think there might be things like this you could find out by asking a realtor?
This is an estate sale where both the husband and wife have passed away and the remaining family does not want to deal with the property. The house is being sold as-is so the sellers are not going to do anything except remove the remaining furniture and personal items and even some of those are negotiable (like the riding lawn mower, the row boat).
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16 hours ago, Innisfree said:
Others have said a lot of what occurs to me. The other thing I’d want to check is the flood predictions for the area, not just now, but for the foreseeable future. When you mention a pond, stream, and arable land where you could build, that’s where my mind goes: often the easiest land to build on is relatively flat flood plain along a watercourse, but longer term that’s not where you want to be. Here’s a site where you can check your property for a variety of risks:
Flood risk is 1. Fire risk is 1. Heat risk is 2. Wind risk is 2. But it is the midwest prairie so those are expected.
Both the pond and stream are downhill from the current house and the possible future home site.
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17 hours ago, pinball said:
1100 sq ft and 1 bathroom is fine…entire neighborhoods are made up of homes like this.
If I had enough money to make it safe with the electricity and meet all codes, I’d do it. I wouldn’t even buy another house to live in.
I think if you are willing to live there temporarily while building a new home,or prefab or getting a double wide, I bet you’d be fine with staying in it a lot longer…like 10 years. LOL
i think a bigger issue is if there is another person who also thinks they found their dream property and are more ready to jump in
Yeah, I am also concerned about others wanting the property. It has multiple showings daily but no offers yet. Mainly because it doesn't qualify for a standard mortgage. We are in the position that, with the sale of our current home and cash reserves, we would have enough to put down to qualify for a different type of loan through DH's employers credit union. We have asked about this already.
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18 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:
WWID?
For 10 years, I wouldn’t do it unless I was so flush with cash that buying the land, demoing the old house, and putting in a new one didn’t cause strain.
Some dreams don’t get fulfilled. I have a few that won’t be, due to practicalities, and acknowledgment that the stress required to make the dream happen would be so large that it it’s not worth the trade off.
In your shoes, I would be budgeting out for insulation and new siding and wiring. Dumping $40-60k fixing up a house while we lived in it makes more sense for re-sale in ten years than having to pay $30k to demo an old property and then paying to put in a prefab home. Prefabs are little better than RVs. They wear badly, are no good in a serious storm, and don’t retain value. If I had to build new, a cabin kit is the way to go.
Also, depending on how much acreage you have, don’t forget to budget for a tractor or riding lawn mower or both.
I looked up kit cabins, and wow, are there some nice ones.
Tractor isn't necessary due to 95% of the land being timber or pond. Riding lawnmower is fine.
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20 hours ago, Jaybee said:
Yeah, this is where I land. If it was where you hope to retire, then that would be different.
But 8-10 years of having a dream come true versus not giving it a chance at all? Isn't there some value in that? We know we could never buy this much land in the state we want to retire to or anywhere else for that matter. This could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Just for reference, our niece and her DH live in CO and just purchased a similar sized property (better house, no timber) for almost a million. This property is less than $200,000. Valued because it's an estate and the house needs so much work and does not qualify for a conventional mortgage: the septic has to be moved, the termites, no central air due to a boiler, etc. If the house was move in ready, this property would be well over $400,000. The property cannot be sold separately from the house due to the house's location on the property. The realtor informed us that if the house and property could be separated, the property would be sold for more than $250,000 with the house being sold for under $30,000 and that is mostly because of the garage and the acre surrounding the house.
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21 hours ago, Bambam said:
How many years till your DH retires and you move away from that area? About 8
Are you both in good enough health and 'free' on the weekends/holidays/vacations to work on this property? Is that what you want to do with your spare time/money? Yes and we would love to work on this property
Personally, unless I knew I was going to be there for 15-20 years, I wouldn't do it. I would only do it if I could afford to live where I am and have someone build me a house because there is no way I would want to live in a house with bugs and animal activity. To me it sounds like the house might have other environmental issues - and I am not willing to risk living in that environment and potentially damaging our health.
I'm questioning the land increasing in value too. Here land and houses went up significantly (like 50%) over the pandemic as people rushed to move in our area for a variety of reasons. Houses are now decreasing in value, and I'm sure land is sure to follow. I don't think the increase in value is sustainable. Our area never saw the increase the rest of the country did so there is no expectation for a decrease. This particular property is only this affordable because of the condition of the house. If everything was repaired and brought up to code, it will increase in value. It's also timber with deer hunting options, has a pond, and a creek.
Building a house takes time. It is stressful. They get things wrong and it is a struggle to get them to do it right. Then they can't work because XYZ reason, so it takes longer than it should. That is also something I don't want to live through again! (Neighborhood, specific house plans, approved builders, so probably way easier than a build where you can define everything and have to find your own builder) This is why we were thinking prefabricated. Just pick a style and have it moved in place. We would be happy with a nice ranch house with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
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23 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:
Because it is a 140 year old school house, is it a historical building with restrictions on demolition/change in structure or style?
I hadn't thought of this but called the realtor and asked. As far as he knows, there are no restrictions. The house has already been modified and, unless you knew it was a school house, it no longer looks like a school house. No one the realtor asked even knows the original name of the school and no one has been interested enough to research it.
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On 5/31/2023 at 8:47 AM, Faith-manor said:
I would demolish the schoolhouse. It probably isn't salvageable. Get the property if that is your dream. Then you could, while you save money to build, throw up a cabin from a kit (there are some nice ones out there), and hook up to the existing septic and electric in order to finish out a bathroom and kitchen in the cabin. Treat for termites first and go with a pole barn style cabin as the steel outer shell will deter termites. There are a lot of fairly effective treatments for termites. We have a company come annually at the Alabama house and inspect and treat. It is working well. No termites in a region that had a real problem with them.
I am not a fan of mobile and double wide and prefab homes. They do not retain any value in our area, and delivery and set up has become so high, that it is rarely much less trouble and expense than just building a simple home from scratch. but, a kit cabin is not near the expense, and later on it can become a farm out building or garage for the home you build.
One of the issues with using the existing utilities is that the septic and the well are too close together and any new construction would require the septic to be moved. It's one of the reasons the property is affordable.
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On 5/31/2023 at 8:44 AM, lmrich said:
How many people will be living in the house? How handy are you? Or how willing are you to learn to do new projects? Can you handlle a litttle (a lot) of chaos?
I am concerned about the termites. I would want to get rid of those before building. Can you give a lower offer and have some extra money to take care of the urgent issues?
2 people
Kinda handy but willing to learn and provide labor. Definitely could handle chaos as long as there is progress. Chaos for chaos' sake, not so much.
We would use the profits from our current house for the down payment and immediate needs.
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On 5/31/2023 at 8:41 AM, Mrs Tiggywinkle Again said:
Can you knock the home down and afford a manufactured home or to build something? It doesn’t sound worth renovating.
This is our initial idea.
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Dh and I have always wanted to own acreage. However, due to where we live, farming community where most properties are snapped up by the large farming conglomerates, it is nearly impossible to purchase property.
This past weekend the (almost) perfect property came available. It has timber, tillable, a pond, and a stream. The house is a 140yo converted one room school house. That is the problem. There are obvious signs of termites, the floors slope, the ceilings are low (about 7 feet), the electrical and plumbing are outdated...the list of issues with the house is lengthy but is the only reason we could afford this property. The current septic is too close to the well and must be moved before a new mortgage could be taken out on the home and property. It's an estate so the property is being sold as is which means the new buyer is responsible for moving the septic.
We have been to the property and can afford it at the current price. We could afford to move the septic. What we cannot afford is to completely reno the house to bring it up to code and to fix the termite issues. The house is just under 1100 sf and only has one bathroom and isn't insulated. The electricity is twice what we currently pay; inspection reports claim this is due to outdated wiring and the lack of insulation. We also noticed tell tale signs of animal activity the attic.
I would like to investigate the idea of living in the house temporarily while building a new house on the tillable land. If we do that, we would have to bring in a prefab as we cannot afford to build a standard home and purchase the property.
I do not like the area we live in but buying this dream property and having everything I have always wanted in a home site would make living here until DH retires so much more palatable. The property would increase in value over time and, if we built a prefab home and continued to clean up and improve the property, we would make a nice profit when we leave here after DH's retirement.
Is anyone willing to talk about the pros and cons of a prefab? Is it worth doing when we know we'll be leaving in about 10 years?
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June is the midway point for 2023 goals.🩱🕶️🥾⛺
I hope you are seeing progress in whatever goals you set.
It's time to assess your June calendar and obligations, look at your finances, and review everything else you need to consider when setting June goals. Do you have more time now that it's summer? Can you encourage someone else to help meet your goals this month?
Get out your journal and write down those goals and the small steps you will take this month toward reaching those goals.
Have you set up a Summer Bucket List? The 23 in 23 challenge? Which of those items can you work on this month?
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It's time to finish up May and begin planning for June.
Are you still on track for your yearly goals? If yes, whoot whoot! Keep planning those monthly and weekly goals and moving forward.
If not, what has been the reason for the delay? What can you do to help you get back on track? We still have plenty of year left to make progress and see real change.
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Curious - How much would 20 acres cost in your area?
in The Chat Board
Posted · Edited by Granny_Weatherwax
The acreage and house I wanted to purchase was on close to 20 acres. It has:
1-1.5 acre home site (house needs a lot of work, 2 car garage, outbuildings) , 2 acres tillable, 1+ acre pond, and the remaining 15 acres are timber.
How much would a similar property cost in your area?