Looking to buy a home? You may think a new, peak-condition house with all the amenities is the only way to go. After all, what’s the point of spending money on a home that you have to put more money fixing up?
There may be more advantages to it than you think.
It’s less expensive
One of the biggest obstacles any home-buyer has to overcome is cost. A good way of figuring out what kind of house you can afford is to first use a mortgage estimator, then see what available properties fit into your budget. But what if the options in the neighborhood you’re looking at are limited? Or what if you want to spend less than what you can actually afford?
A fixer upper is a great alternative for those looking to save money. While it’s true that such a house will need more work, the cost of renovations is often far less than the amount that would be tacked onto the sale price of a newer house that already has had those renovations. More importantly, much of a newer house’s expensive cost will actually increase over time thanks to mortgage interest rates.
It’s profitable
A huge advantage of buying a fixer upper isn’t just its potential to save you money. It can also make you money. If you’re buying a home with the expectation of reselling at some point down the road, it doesn’t make sense to pay a lot more for a newer home, only to get less for it when you sell it later due to its increased age and wear.
The trajectory of a fixer upper’s life, meanwhile, goes in the opposite direction: it starts out showing its age, but then gets rehabilitated over time as you make repairs and add amenities. That means you’re leaving the property in better condition than you found it, which allows you to charge a lot more than what you originally paid. Even minor additions can greatly increase a home’s value. And, once again, the cost of renovations pales in comparison to the amount you can make.
It’s a blank slate
This might seem obvious, but sometimes the most obvious things are the most important. A fixer upper has one thing to offer that a newer house doesn’t: a blank slate. Think of your house like a canvas, with the homeowner as the painter. If you’re looking to make your mark, it’s a lot harder to do that with a canvas that has someone else’s brush strokes all over it. A fixer upper needing more work means you get to choose exactly what that work looks like.
While it’s true you can always tear out a previous owner’s additions, doing that adds more work and more expense just for you to get rid of a bunch of stuff you paid for even though you didn’t want. Buying a fixer upper means you only paid for what you want, not what the last owner wanted. And the things you want that are unique, you can add yourself. In other words, you have a canvas perfectly suited for crafting a masterpiece.
To read more on topics like this, check out the Budget category
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