Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

Move in ready-DH is not very handy and his dad/parents live too far to help get him up to speed.

We painted some rooms and that was it intially. Since then we've painted more rooms, change out some ligh fixtures, bought furniture, put in an alarm and that's it (almost 3 years now).


On my list of things to do still: add porch, add garage organizers/shelving, replace patio and add cover, a little landscaping, change some other light fixtures, update bathrooms from hollwood lights and brass fixtures, update kitchen counter tops to stone.

After that, our house will be perfect

Message edited 4/7/2010 9:04:40 AM.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

Move-in ready. You can never, ever estimate what it will cost to fix something up and could wind up paying more than a house that was move-in ready.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

We bought a two family new construction in Queens over 3 years ago. We didn't do anything to the house except some fiddling with the CAC (we had warranty for the first year). Now that we have a baby we are thinking of making some changes to make the house more comfortable (a deck in the back, pavers in the front of the house, replacing the bathroom vanities, adding a dishwasher). However I am torn because I may want to buy a one family in the near future and so do not want to put a lot of money into this house if I will just be renting it out in the end.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

The first house we bought was a fixer upper. Our family was close by to help and my DH is handy. We also didn't have any children at the time and we didn't need to leave there while we did the work.

Our second and current home we bought move in ready. The kitchen was recently updated in 2002. The only things we needed to do was paint, and the bathrooms eventually need to updated but they really aren't terrible. 2 rooms did have heavy duty wall paper that wasn't attached properly so both rooms needed new sheetrock.

We are living in the house almost 3 years and it has an inground pool. Last year we spent close to $10K to fix it. At the end of the season last year our pool fliter went so that is about another $1K. In January we had a pipe burst in our kitchen and we put a claim in. They gave us a good amount of money to do the whole kitchen so we are going through that now and well, the stress is getting to me physically. The house is so dusty. The kids have been on Zrytec for a week because of allergies to all the dust that was brought up. I can not wait for it to be done.

Something else to consider is this. Lets say you find 2 house that you love, one being a fixer, one being move in ready. I would bring in a contractor with you to give you a quick estimate what it would cost to bring it up to what you want it to, then tack on 10% to that price ( you never know what you might find behind walls). If you that fixer is going to cost you more in the long run than the move in ready home, I would get the move in ready home. For example, our kitchen. We take the insulation out and the builders (this is 30 years ago) never used wood sheathing between the siding and the studs. So there was only reflective paper (like tyvec now) that was attached to a heavy duty cardboard (the material is like the peg boards people hang in the garage). There was a good section that was rotted out. So we had to re-sheath that back portion of the house (approx. 30-40 ft) and we have to re-side that portion too. Something we didn't expect.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

I guess ours was move in ready...not perfect but we could live with watermelon green carpet in LR and DR and stucco on the walls for a few months. We eventually took care of that but still have much more to do. We are definetely not Mr and Mrs Fix it and were not into finding the fixer upper to gut everything and redo it. We found something that was a good house in good condition that needed updating.

When we were looking I found that some of the houses that were marketed as move in ready were really rush jobs and whoever did the work made it look good on the surface but if you looked closer it was not quality.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

Hmm...we paid top dollar for our house, that still needed work.

Windows
Siding
Doors
Wallpaper removal
Paint and wall repair
Landscaping
redo 2 baths
etc

We spent almost 130,000. And sadly we still have to redo our basement or the next owner will.

I say go with something that is livable for a long time or needs little work. That's what I am doing this time around b/c it takes so much time and energy to do home repairs. We didn't have DD during any of it but now we do and I cannot get laundry done, let alone home repairs.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

We bought a fixer upper only because we house hunted for over a year and could not find anything we liked. Every house needed something major. The house we bought had everything on our "must have" list so we decided to take that route and fix the entire thing to our liking. It would have been easier and less cash to just buy a move in.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

We bought a fixer upper b/c DH WANTED to do things his way. He was thrilled the basement was unfinished & they didn't update the electric or the siding b/c then he can do it his way & make sure it was done right.

We still have a LONG way to go to get it to the way we want it.

Like Lauren said, it seems a lot of the move in ready homes were flips where the work was done but not always to the best it could be.

When we moved in we had the floors redone (about 1200)

Regraded the property, took down the pool & ripped up the patio $1100

DH painted our LR/DR/Bathrm & put up crown moldings w/ my dad, painted the ceilings

Installed electric & put in high hats in LR/DD & DS's rooms

He ripped down DD's room to studs & installed sheetrock, insulated, painted, crown moldings & carpet

DS's room repainted, crown moldings, carpet

He put in new basement windows; waterproofed the basement & added a sump pump

Resheetrocked hallway; new crown moldings & electric

He ripped out the bathrm in our mudroom, took down sheetrock & is currently installing stairs, new sheetrock & electric in there (he has to take down 1 wall that is not straight & redo (he tells me this is winter work though, so we're on hold )

Hopefully this winter he'll put in the new bathroom/jacuzzi in our mudroom

He is now releveling part of the backyard now for their playset & putting in all flowerbeds & retaining walls across the entire back of the property & putting in a new fence

We had no landscaping when we moved in so we had to buy shrubs, flowers & trees

He wants to install 220 electric throughout out house

In the next 2 years we'll FINALLY be residing the house & putting a new roof on (as of yesterday he tells me this can wait till next year, thankfully b/c he has enough other projects to work on)

Eventually he wants to finish our basement

Down the line we have to redo our kitchen

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

We bought a fairly new home and we have still put in a significant amount of money upgrading / repairing. We don't enjoy renovating....and it sounds like you don't either....in your case I wouldn't recommend a "fixer-upper"....houses are money pits and you will be spending money to fix things, etc. whatever the case may be....imo it's easier to buy a house that is mostly in move-in condition.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

We bught a fixer upper because DH wanted to do things his way. A lot of the "move in ready" houses we saw were flips with substandard work.

I found out I was pregnant about 2 1/2 weeks after we moved into the house. The market crashed, our home lost a ton of value, I got laid off, DH started a new demanding job and needless to say most projects were put on hold.

Our house is livable but needs sooooo much work to make it presentable, modern and comfortable. I will not buy a house again that needs this much work. I want a finished basement, newer bathroom and kitchen next time around.

We are working on the kitchen now. Once that is done, I think I'll feel much better about our home. I can't even explain how ugly and inconvenient our kitchen is.

Re: Move in ready or Fixer Upper?

when FH and I looked at houses we looked at ones that did not need that much work, as FH is totally NOT handy at all... the house we hope to buy does not need any work really, just eventually updating that we'd like to do to the house such as replace the fence, and do the driveway/walkway/stoop. i would imagine this would cost at least 10k for both but again we are not looking to do this right away.