We Bought a Hoarder House – part 1

This June we closed on our next home, and our newest adventure. A 3,800 square foot hoarder house with the contents left inside… And yes, all 3,800 square feet were stuffed to the brim.  How did we end up with this mess on our hands? To answer that, let me rewind to November of 2017….

If you guys read my personal financial philosophy post, you know that I feel strongly that money is one of your best tools to control your life. We each owe it to ourselves to harness the power of this tool to create the life we want.  I don’t want to delve too deep into this philosophy in this post, but if you’re interested in learning more, you HAVE to listen to Radical Personal Finance podcast by Joshua Sheats, I think that it is life altering.

So, with this idea in mind, Jake decided to quit his job in November of 2017.  There was no backup plan really, no clear path to what he would do next.  But, he knew that he couldn’t possibly work there another day longer. (Please note that this isn’t our advice to you, just simply our story and how it happened).

So just like that, he was unemployed.  Financially, I wasn’t worried because I am blessed to have a job that pays our bills.  Over the next several months we brainstormed paths that he could take and tried to figure out the best way to achieve the life he, and we, wanted.  It was a long process – sometimes exciting, sometimes agonizing—but we knew that this was his chance to start something that could build a new lifestyle for our family.

Jake had said for some time now that if he won the lottery, he would want to flip houses.  So, we thought, why wait for the lottery… why not start that dream job now? Well… to start that we would need to sell our house because we had invested most of our savings into fixing up and paying off our home.  With this vision in mind January of 2017 Jake set out to finish all the leftover renovation projects in our home so that we could put it on the market.

It turned out spectacular! He did such a beautiful job. We listed our first house after only under 4 years there in February.  Our realtor encouraged us to list even higher than we had envisioned we could get for the house. And thank goodness for that advice! Our house was under contract for over asking within two days of being on the market.

We closed in the end of March and moved into a month-to-month apartment lease.  Now, it all sounds very logical as I type it out here, but let me assure you: there were moments of panic and confusion as we set out to define our expectations for the next step. We didn’t see eye to eye on the timeline (aka I wanted everything to happen yesterday and Jake was willing to wait whatever time period necessary for the best scenario – which I am now eternally grateful for). We waffled over whether or not we should buy a home for us to live in or if we should dive right into flipping and live amidst the construction chaos.

Through April and May our realtor showed us many places, we put bids on several, and even went under contract on a house that we had to back out of due to excessive water issues.  Feeling discouraged, and maybe even a little bit desperate, I expanded our search parameters one evening in June to the town of West Chicago. We had always considered it to be too far west and for some unknown reason (despite never having visited it before) had a not-so-nice impression of it.

In that search I saw this:

Dang, right? I mean wouldn’t those photos make you at least curious??  And then the description said:

Opportunity is knocking for those with vision to see the potential of what this home could be! It’s just waiting to be restored to it’s full grandeur! Situated on a breathtaking wooded lot with massive windows showcasing the privacy and stunning views of this unique property. You’ll feel as if you are in the north woods, yet it’s only minutes to shopping, dining and everything “in town” living has to offer. Two story addition added in 1995. The home is being sold AS-IS and much work is needed but the potential is there…so bring your creativity and an offer! Agents: Please see agent remarks before scheduling a showing.

Ok, sounds kinda promising right? I mean breathtaking lot, north woods feel, recent addition… So what’s the catch? I emailed our realtor to find out about those agent remarks:

The home has no interior photos at the request of seller. There is still a great deal of personal property in the home that is being removed on an ongoing basis. The framework of the home and the lot are amazing but much work is needed on the interior, so please only bring buyers who are interested in a FULL REHAB. CASH OFFERS OR CONSTRUCTION LOANS PREFERRED. PRICED TO SELL.

Yikes… haha! I timidly showed Jake the listing, knowing he would be pretty skeptical after a description like that.  Because through this process we had learned that when real estate listings intentionally do not show interior pictures, it’s because it is REAL BAD. Like seriously, hazmat suit worthy. At first he dismissed it, as I expected. But after he checked the listings that day and felt like there were absolutely no other promising houses to view, he agreed to go see it… if only to “crush my dreams.”

Our realtor set up appointment for that night and we headed west. As we pulled into the neighborhood we were blown away. The neighbors each had full acre lots, the homes were beautiful and custom.  It felt like an old resort town. The house we were viewing was so overgrown that you literally couldn’t pull into the driveway without getting your car scraped from the trees and brush. (And if you’re wondering about the pictures in the listing not being overgrown.. yeah, turns out they were from 20 years ago!!!)

And then it emerged from the dense overgrowth and we saw the spectacular cedar mid-century cabin home of my dreams. I mean, if this isn’t an impressive entrance, I don’t know what is. We entered the unlocked home (because apparently the doorknob and lock were not functioning) and we then understood what the description was implying. This was a hoarder house!!!

Despite the piles of junk and 10 years of grime and spider web buildup, we fell in LOVE with this home.  From the massive addition to the unique floor-to-ceiling windows, to the walk-out basement, and the full acre wooded lot. We knew it was meant to be. And we knew that this couldn’t be a flip house for us.

I now realize that I couldn’t have designed a more perfect home/layout for us that this place (and I make a LOT of dream home layouts!). So, we set out to make an offer….

The price had recently dropped by over 10%, but we knew we had to come in even lower than that. I mean, the house needed tons of work and there was a lot of square footage to remodel which means a lot of money.  So, with baited breaths we offered 15% less than list price (around 25% less than the original list price). We offered as is, with the appeal that the homeowner would not need to clean the house out before sale.

And we heard back that night, to our great shock…. she verbally accepted!!!  As the backstory unfolded we learned that she was in default on the home and had 3 mortgages on it. Because of a special government program, the mortgages had been negotiated down and the final lender agreed to take whatever was leftover from the sale as long as the homeowner walked away without any proceeds.  This meant that as long as our offer covered the first two mortgages, it didn’t make a difference to her if we paid any more. After we closed, we saw that the 3^rd lender received only $1,000, so we feel very satisfied that we got the lowest possible price on the deal.

Another bit I forgot to mention about the situation, this lady was not just a hoarder, she was a former antique dealer and much of her hoarding was actually really cool antique items.  We had seen furniture pieces and décor during the viewing and inspection that we would actually really want to keep! So, we waited in agony the days leading up to the close.  Would she leave anything there????

And is it crazy, that I was going to be SOOOO disappointed if the house was empty??? In my mind, I wasn’t just buying the house, I was buying all of her crazy cool antiques! Jake would’ve been happy to have it all cleared out, but at least a part of him was curious to go through and search for treasure in the nasty piles of garbage.

Closing day was approaching, but the buyer requested an extra 3 weeks. I was devastated, tired of living in the temp situation and ready to get on with the adventure, we pushed back and it extended just 1 extra week.

Finally it was closing day and we eagerly headed to the house for the walkthrough.  With baited breath we entered… would there still be piles of stuff there???  And surely surely, it was still a hoarder house.  Granted, there was about 1/3 less stuff than when we originally saw the home (thank goodness!). But still, PLENTY of stuff to sift through.

So, that is how we became the proud owners of a hoarder house… Next post I’ll share some details of what we found and our experience the first few weeks of owning it. In the meantime, anyone have use for 6 vintage enamel stoves????