Ghost House

The guy across the street from me has his house up for sale. It's an unusual situation. When he bought the place, new, he was a young retiree. He also has a place up in the local mountains by a lake where he usually stays when in SoCal but mostly he and his wife have lived out of State, in the Pacific North West. I think he bought the place because he has two kids that live in town. He ended up hardly ever staying there. Sometimes as little as two weekends a year. Never more than two weeks total. For more than thirty years. He would have been better off staying in a nice hotel at the beach when he was in town. Even assuming he bought the place for cash, when you add up all the taxes, utilities, association fees and other expenses of ownership, I don't think he's going to come out too much ahead.

The place looks kind of nice right now, like a mid seventies time capsule. I think whoever buys it is going to have big problems. Once someone starts living there a lot of things are going to degrade quickly. It's not good for stuff to sit unused for three decades. The plumbing and wiring will go bad. The heating system won't work. The windows and screens will come apart. Once people start taking showers in the bathrooms and the humidity fluctuates, the wall paper will delaminate from walls all over the house. The carpet will disintegrate. The kitchen will be a disaster area. There's going to be all kinds of pitfalls open up when somebody gives that house a little use. Guy wants way too much for it. He's trying for what it was worth last year. Even if he comes down a lot it won't be a good deal. I don't think whoever buys it will get away with spending much less than $100,000, right off the bat to keep it habitable. If they hired a good contractor, anxious to keep his crew busy and did everything at once, they could get away cheaper. What are the chances of that?