UGLY HOUSE?

 

 

 

1.  Ugly house in Houston?

 

Do you have an ugly house in Houston that you need to sell? We buy all kinds of houses and would be glad to make you an offer on your ugly house.

 

2.  Ugly houses we buy include some of the following ugly house problems.

 

An ugly house comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, we buy many different types of ugly houses and find many different kinds of problems with an ugly house. Here are just some of the problems that we commonly see.

 

3.  Ugly house in an ugly neighborhood.

 

Most ugly houses are in what you might call an ugly house neighborhood, that is a neighborhood with a lot of ugly houses. In fact in a rundown neighborhood the ugly house you're trying to sell, may in fact be nicer than the other houses on the street. When you drive through a rundown neighborhood, you'll often see a lot of overgrown areas, with wrecked siding, torn roofs, vacant houses, houses in serious disrepair, houses that have not been maintained in a long time and sometimes a lot of foreclosures.

 

The reason that we bring up the neighborhood as an issue, is because the condition of the overall neighborhood has a lot to do with the selling price of the house. For example an ugly house in a very rundown neighborhood will not fetch a very high price even if it is completely rehabbed. So the investor has to look at the house for the value that it could become in its fixed up state, but also compared with the overall neighborhood.

 

On the other hand an ugly house in a pretty nice neighborhood, or at least houses that are well maintained, could fetch a very good price after being fixed up and repaired. So investors must seriously consider what we would call the ARV (After Repair Value) of the house when they make an offer on it and the ARV of the house will be determined by the sales price of other comparable houses in the neighborhood. In other words other houses in the neighborhood that have already been rehabbed, then those could be compared with to find the after repair value of your house.

 

Of course your house is not "After Repaird" if you're selling it "as-is" an ugly house right now. So an investor needs to take into account all of the repair costs that will be needed to fix it up into its after repaired condition and then deduct their other expenses, holding costs, closing costs, etc. and of course their profit margin, in order to come up with an offer they would like to make on the house.

 

Current market conditions will also have everything to do with the price any particular house can be sold for. It may have been worth a considerably higher amount in years past, but if the market, or area, is in a down cycle then the buying value of the house may be considerably lower than it used to be. If there are many foreclosures in the neighborhood for example, or vacant houses, or other rundown houses, those will also significantly bring down the value of the property for sale.

 

So this is why each particular offer on a house for sale must be tailored to that particular situation and repair estimates and market comparables will play a significant role in coming to any decisions in buying that house.

 

4.  Ugly house in a flood zone.

 

An ugly house that has flooded, is likely to be in a floodplain of which Houston has many. This means the house may be in an area where there are a lot of other houses that have flooded as well, which may or may not be rehabbed already. If there are many vacant houses and rundown houses they could also be bringing down the price of the overall neighborhood.

 

An ugly house that has flooded can still be sold, but the flooding condition the damage from water, mold damage, location in the floodplain, are all conditions that must be taken into account.

 

A house that has flooded which may have been in very good condition is likely to need some or all of the following repairs. It will usually need to have all of the inside of the house stripped out, to the framing. In other words all of the drywall, all of the carpeting, all of the insulation, all of the carpet pad and any wooden siding that may be in the house. In some cases if the flooding damage is moderate this can be done with just tearing out the one or 2 feet, of the siding and insulation, carpeting, padding, etc. But in most cases this can cause other problems and risks as there may still exist mold and unseen flood damage. So an investor must usually look at a house that has had considerable flooding and evaluate the cost of stripping everything out of the inside of the house and then replacing everything to like new condition. Kitchen and bathroom cabinets will usually all have to go as well, as they are quite highly susceptible to water damage, water retention, warping and molding.

 

Of course some houses are built differently and some houses that are in the floodplain may not have even flooded at all, thanks to houses built on pier and beam which have sometimes even been raised higher and are therefore not low enough to have received water damage during any flooding. Again each house must be considered on its individual pros and cons and the merits will be evaluated when making any offer on an ugly house.

 

5.  Ugly house with a damaged foundation.

 

An ugly house with a damaged foundation, cracked foundation, sunken foundation, are all quite common in Houston because of the humidity, weather and soil conditions.

 

For someone with a little experience, it is actually quite easy to tell when a house has shifted on its foundation, or there has been some settling to it's foundation. Even an untrained person can go outside and look along a wall from an outside end corner to corner and see if there is an uneven line along the siding, or the brick. If you see there's not a straight line from corner to corner (like it's bowed in the middle, or warping in parts) it may mean there has been foundation settling. Latter stage foundation problems will show much more serious defects, such as cracks in the exterior siding, in the interior drywall, on the exterior brick veneer, etc. These more obvious conditions are far easier to tell and distinguish.

 

Most investors who have bought an ugly house in Houston are familiar with these conditions. So they can evaluate and make a reasonable judgment regarding their costs of repair, rehabbing and overall valuation of the house.

 

6.  Ugly house with bad siding and damaged roof.

 

In cases where an ugly house is structurally sound, but may just have a very ugly exterior, investors will still be able to total up their costs by looking at the current condition and should be able to tell quite reasonably if there is any structural damage, or not.

 

Many houses have serious siding damage in Houston because of the weather conditions, humidity, rain, hurricanes, or even tornadoes.

 

More modern kinds of siding can be be repaired quite easily. Such as siding made of Hardi Panel, or even vinyl. Hardi Panel, or Hardi Plank siding lasts a very long time and may only need moderate cleaning and or, painting. Vinyl siding does not last as long and some particular brands can be extra sensitive to warping in the sun. Warped vinyl siding cannot be repaired and must be re-placed.

 

The biggest problem we've seen with siding though, is older types of siding known as MDF Board, which are more or less sawdust boards, with wood chips glued together. Many houses used to be built with this type of siding, a lot of houses were even included in previous class-action lawsuits regarding this type of siding. This type of sawdust board was easily saturated by water, breaks apart, molds, cracks and deteriorates and looks very bad on a house. In most cases where we've seen seriously damaged siding, it is a result of this MDF Board.

 

In these cases all of the siding will need to be replaced in any of the damaged areas and often investors will go further and just replace the siding all the way around the house, rather than trying to salvage some of the MDF Board.

 

7.  Ugly house with structural damage.

 

An ugly house with structural damage was covered somewhat under the above topic of foundation damage, but there can be other structural damages that can occur which are not directly related to the foundation.

 

In some cases the wood beams in a houses frame have twisted and bowed under poor weather conditions, or due to leakage, or even just bad wood. And the house may have damaged walls, or other structural damage as a result. Structural damage may also include houses that have been more seriously damaged by hurricanes, or tornadoes, where a tree has fallen on a part of the house. This structural damage although quite severe, is not beyond the realm of many investors who are familiar with buying houses and know how to repair these types of conditions.

 

8.  Ugly house with peeling paint, mold and mildew.

 

Some houses may be very sound structurally, but may just not have been maintained properly. In these cases we might see houses with a lot of loose and chipping paint, mold, even toxic mold and other paint weathering conditions. Although not as serious as houses with structural damage, costs for these types of exterior repairs, peeling paint, mold and mildew, etc, can still get prohibitively high. Especially because some of these conditions may cause other problems such as toxic mold, which if discovered would mean the house would need to go through more expensive mold remediation. Again, these are conditions that will be taken into consideration whenever making an offer on a house.

 

9.  Ugly house with termite damage and rotten wood.

 

An ugly house with termite damage and or, rotten wood, from drive rot, or other types of rotting, can be quite expensive to repair. Because of the warm temperatures and humid conditions in Houston, it tends to be an ideal climate for termites and we see many houses with serious damage from termites. A house can even look very nice and be in excellent condition but have the base of the frame, or a lot of frame boards rotten out behind the walls and underneath the house. Usually though, these conditions will exist in a house that is quite run down and already an ugly house, but as a point of interest termite damage can happen to the nicest houses as well.

 

10.  Maintain your house to keep from becoming an ugly house.

 

Almost all of these conditions above can be avoided by knowledgeable homeowners, who've done the necessary maintenance to their house and by planning ahead have avoided all of these conditions. If you're not sure whether your house has any of these conditions, you might consider looking into that and what if any maintenance you should be doing on it.

 

That is unless you're selling the house and then one of our investor rehabbers may be the one doing the evaluating and considering what they can offer for the house in it's current condition.

 

 

 

 

OR G110611

• Edit