Okay, all you folks who observed that seven rooms sprawling over 1,860 square feet is a bit much for one single old bat: how d’you like this little patio home?
Needs work, IMHO, but it’s kinda cute, isn’t it? That thing is about a block from the church — maybe a little less, actually. I could walk to choir practice (though walking back at 9:00 p.m. might not be well advised). It’s very central. On a good day I could actually walk to my favorite purveyor of gourmet groceries. I could even walk to my son’s house. Wouldn’t he be thrilled! 🙄
Theoretically the area is in a prime part of Our Beloved City, off North Central between Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. In reality, though, it’s on a street zoned some decades ago for high-density housing, and so is part of a motley collection of aging apartments and patio homes. One of these little developments, right across the street from the church, has been converted into a rather grim-looking nursing home. If you can get to the page that lets you view the street, you see it’s right next door to a sixties-looking two-story apartment building. It must be pretty much surrounded with those, plus it’s sandwiched between two schools: noisy, crowded, and starting to run down at the heels.
On the other hand, the price is incredibly right: $129,000, and you probably could get it for less.
But back on the first hand…if I cleared $180,000 from the sale of my palace and scored that thing for $125,000, I’d have $55,000, all of which would probably be consumed in making the joint habitable.
Those pink carpets…OUCH! They make your eyes hurt just looking at them in a photo. The walls appear to be painted shiny raspberry, perfectly godawful. Or green. Or white. Whatever…I hate shiny paint, especially on the ceilings (!!), and so even if it weren’t Kool-Aid Pink, it’d have to be repainted. That glossy stuff would take some prep and might require two coats to cover: $1,000.
But before we painted, I’d be wanting to do something about the slit-shaped pass-through between the kitchen and the living area. Actually, the kitchen is kind of amazing for such a little place: look at all that cabinetry. Yes, it does appear to be pickled oak…yet it redeems itself by its plenteousness. But…it’s ugleeeeeeee! One might paint it. Or dub it “retro” and get used to it.
I’d want to take out that soffit with the long row of single-door over-the-counter cabinets. That would open up the space pretty well. Removing the ledge thingie and making the countertop flat would complete the effect. Imagine that countertop, flat, with no ugly soffit over it, and made of granite… Hm.
So, another eight hundred to a thousand dollah to pull out the soffit with the cabinets and do some drywall work. Countertop? Anyone’s guess. Can’t tell how long it is, really, so I’d hesitate to hazard a guess. It appears to be formica, not too offensive…if it’s in good condition, it could sit there for a few months or years while one dealt with more drastic offenses.
Like, for example, that fluorescent ceiling. Oh gawd, hideous, eye-scorching fluorescents! What I’d want to do is take the lights out, and then build a skylight into the cove. Then install recessed lighting all around the perimeter of the thing, with maybe some cool glass hanging lights hovering over the countertops. Skylight plus drywall plus rewiring: about $1500, I’d guess.
Those pendant lights that used to be blindingly expensive when they were at the pinnacle of snooty high style are now available at Home Depot and waypoints, pretty reasonably priced. Could be kinda nice over a completely flat, ledge-free counter, demarcating the living room from the kitchen.
Then the flooring. Holy mackerel. Tired vinyl (undoubtedly tainted with asbestos) in the kitchen and gaudy rose carpets throughout the rest of the joint. I’d probably want to put down wood or a convincing imitation thereof. Hm. Fifteen hundred square feet of it. What? $8000? Bet you couldn’t get it done for much less than five grand.
And we have the accursed electric stove. The place has gas service. “Gas heat” means they probably have a single line going to the gas pack on the roof that’s not a large enough gauge to serve any other appliances. So if you want a real stove, what you have to do is switch out the gas pack for a heat pump: $5,000.
Then you have a plumber run a line into the kitchen. Cost: depends on the difficulty of the job. I got mine done pretty cheaply, but it usually costs a pretty penny. All told, though, this project is going to run around $5,000 to $6,000.
New gas stove: $530 for a decent Kenmore free-standing gas stove; about a hundred dollah less for one that looks flimsier but would do the job just fine. Delivery & installation, probably another $100.
Usually the dishwasher has to be replaced: $500, plus or minus.
I’ve never moved into a house whose water heater didn’t have to be replaced forthwith: 40 gallons, nine-year, natural gas, $485. Plus installation, prob’ly another hundred bucks.
That strange little alcove behind the square arch looks like an add-on. It probably started life as a patio. That or a one-car garage: notice the ad doesn’t say anything about parking. Though it looks like a professional job, add-ons are notoriously hard to air-condition here in Arizona.
Notice all those floor and table fans. What are they trying to say to us?
There’s only one bathroom, and it looks like it only has a shower. Seriously? No bathtub?
If I’m right that the place has no garage, then the only storage may be that kitchen cabinetry. The bedrooms don’t appear to have anything special in the way of closets, and nothing else is highlighted in the ad. Explains the uglification, anyway.
No patio roof, meaning no shady place to sit and read the paper over coffee. No private place outside at all, though it must be said that the grounds are pretty pleasant.
Don’t you love the way the Realtor doesn’t mention what kind of plumbing is behind those walls? Interesting. Built in 1963…were they still installing black iron in those days?
Over here one finds a little more information: you get a storage shed, a carport, and a “slab” (i.e., uncovered parking space).
The homeowner’s association fee is a bracing $367 a month…but it includes a lot. My water, sewer, & trash pickup bill this month was $91; I pay Gerardo $75 a month for the yard work; I’m paying about $70 a month for the high-speed Internet connection, which is cable that doesn’t include television. So we’re at $236 right there, and that’s for a month when the water bill is low. In the summer water can go up to almost $200; so let’s imagine the bill averages around $145: total out of my pocket for services covered by the HOA fee would be $290, and the HOA fee also covers exterior maintenance, roof repair, and roof replacement. Looks like it’s about a wash.
It’s in the Arizona Public Service electric district, which means $300+ power bills in the summer. Way more than I pay APS’s competish, Salt River Project. It probably would cost the same or more to live there as it does to live here.
What would the fix-up and doll-up costs come to? Let’s see…
Mm hmh. I’ve never had a move into a pre-owned shack cost me less than 40 grand, but that’s always included landscaping work. Ripping out the lawn and replacing it with desert landscaping ain’t cheap, even if it does pay for itself within a few years. So let’s assume the figure in the “realistic” column, conservatively adjusted for Murphy’s Law, is about right.
Maybe, I might clear around $55,000 in cash on the sale of this house after buying that patio home. Fifty-five grand minus $36,700 leaves $18,300, enough to buy a pretty nice new car, assuming a trade-in value of $3,000 on the Dog Chariot.
Not bad.
Think I should hurry out and buy it?
I love playing this game! I do it with listings our realtor friend in Utah posts, because we will never ever move there.
I know you do this alot and never have any intention of moving…..buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I’ll play anyway.
My caveat would be mixed zone housing. Would no longer want to live on streets with lots of apartments…….for all the usual reasons.
And across the street from a nursing home would be depressing for me. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it would be.
Yeah, the surrounding apartments are getting tired. Possibly in other parts of the country it’s different, but here what happens is an investor owns a new apartment building for about 20 years, during which time rents are pretty good. By then, though, it’s running down and needs upgrades, so the investor sells it.
The new buyer does a few minimal upgrades but now can’t command top rents. Over time, the building attracts a lesser quality of renter. The second buyer usually also holds the building for about 20 years. The third buyer typically does little to upgrade, because by then the whole area is running down and because people expect amenities that would be expensive to retrofit into the building. Often the middle class is starting to move out and schools, if they were any good to start with, are deteriorating. During this buyer’s tenure, the place turns into a tenement.
That whole area around that garden apartment complex was built in the 50s and 60s, five or six decades ago. So even though it’s in a high-demand area, the age alone of all that high-density housing renders it suspect.
I find that particular nursing home profoundly depressing. They’ve thrown up iron fences all the way around so the inmates can’t escape. And sometimes you’ll hear the poor old people yelling and crying. It’s one of those places that makes you hope you’ll drop dead or get killed in a crash before you get much older.
Odd that they specifically mention the fans, but with no mention of what other type of cooling system is installed…
It has regular refrigeration-type central air conditioning. The fans are visible in the pictures. Looks like there’s one in every room. Even where there’s a ceiling fan, a table fan is also visible.
That’s telling you that the AC isn’t keeping the place cool or it costs too much to run the AC enough to keep the inside temps in the comfortable range.
Block construction here works like a trombé wall: it absorbs ambient heat all day, and along about 5 p.m. it starts to radiate the heat into the interior. Effective in the wintertime, but in the summer it turns a structure into a heat box. The solution is to fur out the exterior, attach pyrofoam or other insulation, and stucco over it, or to pull out the drywall inside along the east and west walls (or, preferably, all the exterior walls), attach pyrofoam slabs, and re-drywall. Neither of those is easy or cheap.
and oh god – is that carpet in the bathroom? Eww…
You probably don’t want to hear this and may not post it, but I’m going to voice the views of someone who has a whole lot less money than you do. If you are truly worried about money, you don’t spend it. You live with what you have. True that pink carpet would be a trial and I’d probably have to rip it out, but my guess — SW, 1963? there’s terazzo underneath. Live with it. Breakfast bar, soffit, fluorescent lights, electric stove — live with it. Painting? do it yourself or…live with it. It would make sense to move only if you didn’t spend more than $5,000 on renovation.
@ Holly: What’s terazzo? Houses here are built on concrete slabs; if you pull up the carpeting, you find concrete to which carpet strips have been bolted all the way around the walls. Actually, some people stain and polish the concrete, which can look very nice in some kinds of houses.
The $5000 figure would be ideal. To pull it off, you’d pretty much have to move way out into the suburbs into a brand-new house. The North Central area was mostly built out in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s; those houses require upgrading. The ones that already are upgraded can be quite expensive.
New construction in the central area is priced out of sight, although during the recession you could get some hugely devalued fake “lofts” in the downtown area for a fraction of what they originally cost.
If you do buy a newer structure, either because you don’t have to commute or because you’re forced to live out in the fringes, construction is very flimsy. Few of newer houses are built to hand down to your kids… The standard Southwestern stick-and-stucco construction starts to sag and look tired after about ten years; a twenty-year-old suburban subdivision here can look pretty ticky-tacky. After ten years, you’ll be reroofing and shoring the place up.
These are the main reasons that every time I start looking for something smaller or further from blight, nothing I can afford is anything I want and nothing I want is anything I can afford. My house is solid block construction. It’s not built right on top of the neighbor’s house. It’s centrally located in a reasonably decent neighborhood. It has no HOA. It has a new roof. It has copper plumbing. It has a gas stove. It’s a half-block from a lovely, grassy park, and it’s in an area with mature trees and landscaping. It’s esthetically inoffensive. Soon, a lightrail line will pass within walking distance.
In chatting with the neighbors, I’ve found that most of them have come to the same conclusion. People in this small 1970s development will upgrade and add on before they’ll move, because it’s almost impossible to find anything comparable that’s centrally located.
In the “live with it” department, I think I’d rather live with four bedrooms and lots of room between me and the next guy than have to live with a place whose features I don’t care for or move a zillion miles from my friends and activities and end up elbow-to-elbow with the neighbors.
There’s a lot I don’t know about Phoenix real estate since it is so different than that of Chicago. I’ve never lived anywhere that has an HOA, but I did live in a condo for about three years. It was new conversion so there wasn’t much worry about special assessments, but my (now ex-) MIL who lived on a fixed income in a condo was hit up a few times for them and it really worried her.
The listing says it is a co-op. Isn’t that more akin to a condo than a house in a development with an HOA? Or is an HOA pretty much the same as a condo association, too, and could make special assessments if needed? Of course you’d want to investigate the financial health of the co-op first, too, because you really couldn’t afford a big special assessment, right?
Does “age restriction to under 14” mean that your neighbors could have small kids or no kids, but teenagers aren’t allowed? How does that matter if you’re surrounded by apartment complexes? Seems weird to me, but as I said I don’t understand Phoenix real estate.
In addition to all the expense of updating the house that you’ve so carefully calculated, think about what you’d be missing from your current house. That backyard of the listing looks completely open and sterile. Your current back yard has privacy and lovely landscaping. Yes, that is something for you to maintain, but it is also something that you take enjoyment in seeing over coffee in the morning and as you swim.
It just doesn’t seem like you, as we’ve gotten to know you from your blog.
In a condo, individuals own the structure and usually the lot beneath it in fee simple, and they own an undivided interest in common elements such as roads, common greens, pools, a clubhouse, and the like. In a co-op, a corporation consisting of the residents owns the entire thing.
Thus in a co-op, the residents may have the right to decide who will and who will not buy into the place.
In either event, a homeowner’s association decides on the monthly fees, and yes, when upgrades are necessary they can assess a hefty amount. One of the apartments I looked at in a mid-town high-rise I’ve coveted for some years was reasonably priced but the new owner would be paying an enormous amount each month toward an assessment the co-op board levied to finance the $1 million reconstruction cost for the crumbling parking structure, which was at risk of collapsing.
Let me add to this, to answer your question: A homeowner’s association (HOA) in these large developments operates much like the HOA of a condominium or a co-op board of directors. The development has some common areas, usually the roads (a handy way to shift the breath-taking cost of road maintenance from the city or county to individual homeowners…). Thus when the roads start to crack and need repair, the homeowners get a big assessment to do the work. Same is true if there are any common areas, such as a park, a pool, or a clubhouse. HOAs also have a say on how people will maintain their homes, what plantings can be put in the front yard, whether you can hang your laundry in the backyard, and on and on and on. IMHO, it’s better to move into an area where people are free to do as they please but WANT to maintain their homes than into an HOA where a bunch of little big shots can tell you how to live.
My siblings in Texas who bought late 50s early 60s suburban houses all had terrazzo floors to start with — maybe it was just a local trend.
Here’s what Wikipedia says: “Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of marble, quartz, granite, glass or other suitable chips, sprinkled or unsprinkled, and poured with a binder that is cementitious, chemical, or a combination of both. Terrazzo is cured and then ground and polished to a smooth surface or otherwise finished to produce a uniformly textured surface.”
Hmmm… That sounds like it could be kind of pretty, especially if the right colors (or maybe shades of gray) were used.
It could obviate the need for wall-to-wall carpeting, depending on your decor style.
The corgi and I vote no. We like your current house – and want to see the flowers when the bulbs start to grow!
LOL! It has one common wall, too…I suspect the neighbors appreciate your vote of no. Arf! farfarfarfarf…..
Sounds like someone completely forgot about closing costs (said the man who just wrote enough checks last week to almost throw up)
Argha! The closing costs will kill you!
Yeah, the net figure for sale of my present shaque is an optimistic guess at post-closing-cost net. I’m figuring about twenty grand.