If you followed our money pit condo story, you’ll know we had quite a rough time with home problems. Our condo was fixed and finally completely livable. I suppose we could have just settled down to enjoy it, but we thought it would be fun looking at new construction one Sunday afternoon.
We found the home we wanted! It was beautiful with 1700 square feet of living space, a two story vaulted family room, 3 bedrooms and 2 ½ bathrooms. We thought it would be the perfect home to invest in. So a week shy of 2 years in our condo, we sold it and took what little equity we had and pocketed it for our new home. We then financed our closing costs into our new home loan and did an 80/20 loan.
We bought our home with builder grade everything in it. First thing we did was replace all the faucets and light fixtures. We also put in a fancy front door handle. This was so cheap to do and only cost us about $300 at our local Home Depot. The next thing we did was fence our back yard ($700, only a partial fence needed). The next year, and 2 kids later, we painted ($400 for the whole interior of the house) the interior with warm colors and my husband put pavers down extending our existing patio. Keep in mind; we didn’t have much back yard. From the back door to the back fence was only 13 feet. We needed to maximize the space and make it functional as well. We laid down sod and planted 2 trees along with some shrubs around the perimeter. We only spent around $600 total on the back yard.
Less than 3 years in our home, we realized we needed a bigger living room. We sold our home. We initially paid $177K for it and sold it for $220K. May not sound like a huge increase, but it was good at the time.
We were able to get into our current home that is a new build as well. It is over 1000 square feet larger, for $350K. New homes have problems sometimes too. We had a roof leak last year in this home. Thankfully the home was under warranty. After living here for 14 months, we had comps pulled on our home. Thanks to the booming house market in the Portland, Oregon area, our home would probably list closer to $490K. Not bad. Hope the market sustains.
This home came with many upgrades so the only thing we’ve done is the painting of the interior, and what a difference a fresh coat of paint makes! I don’t think we’ll be moving up in square footage from here. The only upgrades we’ll be doing will be for our own enjoyment rather than investment.
( Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog )