They say the most important thing in real estate is location, and it really does seem to make all the difference. We had HGTV or some other home improvement channel on this weekend. One of the shows had a couple looking to buy a new house, and they ended up buying one for almost $350,000 - and it needed $80,000 worth of renovations. Seriously? I would think that if you're going to spend that much on a house, it should be gorgeous and ready to move into. Must have been their location, which I did not catch because I wasn't paying close enough attention.
Another show had a family already living in a house that needed some major updates and renovations, just to make it actually liveable. The show had a designer and crew working on their house and fixing it up, while at the same time a realtor was trying to find them a new house. In the end they'd have to decide if they'd love their house, with all the work that had been done, or if they'd list it and buy the new house. Their house had some serious issues - all the wiring in the house had to be redone because it was a fire hazard, and they had needed an emergency roofing ottawa company for a good long time because they had a flat roof over part of the house, and it had been collecting water which had run down and rotted the wood in the walls underneath it. They had to pull that whole section out and rebuild it. Needless to say, their whole budget was blown, and they had to give up some of the other things they wanted done in the house. Even though it wasn't completely finished, their house at the end of the show was supposedly worth about $600,000 - and it still needed several thousand dollars worth of improvements! Yeah, I didn't get their location either. I was just shocked that a house in that kind of shape, even after all the work, could supposedly be worth that much.
Compared to that, our house - at just under $210,000 - is very reasonable. And, it doesn't need thousands of dollars worth of work to make it liveable, either. A nice house in a very nice location - we'll never be on one of those shows!
