Purchasing a ‘fixer-upper’ (a home that requires extensive work to make it livable) may not be something that everyone is eager to undertake. After all, it’s expensive, time-consuming, and there’s a lot to think about at each stage of the process – it’s a huge job, in other words. It’s much simpler to purchase a home that doesn’t need any maintenance and move in right away. Despite this, there are some excellent reasons to purchase a fixer-upper, and you might decide it’s the perfect thing for you after reading some of them.
You Can Get A Bigger House
When you buy a property that needs to be renovated, it’s typically sold for less than the market value. This is because the real estate company marketing it understands that money and effort will be required to improve the home, and in order for it to be attractive, it must be offered at a far lower price than a house that can be moved into immediately and doesn’t need any repairs.
When you look at it this way, you’ll see that you can buy a lot larger property than you could if you weren’t prepared to put some work on it. You could even purchase a home that would be out of your price range if you paid full market value. Or you might buy in a much better neighborhood.
Of course, you’ll need to add the cost of improvements to your budget to make this plan work. It’s possible that when you add all of this up, the property isn’t quite as cheap after all, so you’ll need to delve deeper into how much the repair work will cost you.
Buy More Quickly
Again, this depends on the circumstances, but in many instances, a home that requires a lot of work – a true fixer-upper as opposed to one that only needs a few cosmetic improvements – will not have anybody living in it. In other words, there will be no property chain to contend with. This means that the purchasing procedure will be considerably faster, particularly if you don’t need to sell your current home to finance the new one.
You can sometimes find these fixer-uppers at auctions. When it comes to real estate, this can be an excellent way to get a good deal, but be cautious; any commitment made at an auction is binding, so do your homework beforehand.
Develop Your Own Vision
One of the most incredible things about purchasing a fixer-upper is that you can make whatever changes you want to it. It’s a blank canvas for you to fill with your own ideas and build your image of the perfect house. If you want to start from scratch, you can take everything back to the bare walls, or if there is a feature you really like, you can keep it and use it as the foundation of the remainder of the design.
It’s not often that we have the opportunity to create our houses exactly as we want them, but when you buy a fixer-upper, it’s not only something you can do, but it’s also something you’ll almost certainly have to do.
