海角大神

A year or so ago, a friend of mine purchased a home in the Des Moines area.

When I first visited his home, my first reaction was that it was just run down. The carpets looked worn. The cabinets looked very beat-up. The appliances looked straight out of the 1970s.

The main floor was liveable, but the basement and upstairs looked fairly gutted, as though the previous owners had just used the spaces for storage and nothing else.

It didn鈥檛 present itself well and because of that my friend got a great deal on the house. He paid a very low amount given the house鈥檚 location and access to nearby services.

However, with some time and labor over the next few years, the house is going to slowly turn into a gem. In fact, it鈥檚 improving with each visit. He鈥檚 replacing carpets. He鈥檚 installing drywall. He鈥檚 doing landscaping.

Bit by bit, this seemingly ramshackle house is turning into something beautiful. And valuable.

Does he already know how to do this stuff? No, not really. He just has a big handful of do-it-yourself books and a pretty nice set of tools out in the garage. He also knows that if he messes something up, it鈥檚 not a big deal. He can just re-do it.

Of course, he鈥檚 not tackling anything that鈥檚 too frightening. If he messes up installing a carpet, it鈥檚 not a big deal. If he messes up alterations on the foundation, that could cause major problems. Thus, he鈥檚 avoiding things that could cause permanent expensive damage to the home itself. That鈥檚 far outside what he feels confident doing.

There are a lot of benefits from this approach.

First, he has an ongoing project to fill up his spare time. There isn鈥檛 a bored evening for him. There鈥檚 always a piece of drywall to put up, a carpet to install, a piece of landscaping to work on. He has tasks aplenty to fill his time.

Second, he鈥檚 drastically increasing the value of his home at little cost. He鈥檚 not really investing a lot of money into what he鈥檚 doing, but the value of his home is going up significantly. He鈥檒l likely be able to sell the home for more than double his purchase price, but he will have put very little money into the situation.

Finally, most of the stuff he鈥檚 doing does not affect his living space. His plan is to finish the basement, turn that into living quarters for a while as he finishes the main floor, and then return to the main floor as his primary living quarters while he works on the upstairs. No matter what, he鈥檒l have space for guests and plenty of room for his own living needs.

This is an enormous success for my friend. You can do the same thing if you鈥檙e shopping for a home. Just have a little courage when it comes to home improvement tasks and be willing to accept a mess in parts of your home for a while and you can end up paying a low price for what will become a very nice home.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.