Needs A Little Work
I have two friends who have been informally house-hunting for a very long time. Problem is, even with prices tumbling down in some areas, prices in Boston are still high enough to close them out. So they figure that their only way of getting a toe into the market is to buy a fixer-upper. Half of the couple is handy, so buying a broken-down hovel and lovingly restoring it to chic splendor is not just a fantasy. The challenge is picking a neighborhood and a building where all that work will pay off in the long-term, even while the market gyrates unpredictably in the short-term. That’s a lot easier said than done (a delicate enterprise, a lot like tearing down a load-bearing wall in the fixer-upper I bought a few months ago!) The key is finding a great location and a property with “good bones” — a good layout and nothing obviously askew, like sitting right on the Mass Pike).
So I got to wondering what’s really out there in the way of fixer-uppers. Remarkably little, it seems. You have a better chance of finding a place in need of some work in Brighton than Brookline, but you also run a greater risk of getting less of a return on all your work. (What’s the point of restoring a Victorian on a street filled with student tenements?) In Brookline, it seems like the professionals may be jumping on all the fixer-uppers and turning them into “luxury condos” before normal people can get a crack at them. I didn’t find a whole lot, but here’s what I came up with:
114 Strathmore Road, Apt. 302, $259K, 846 square feet. I’ve had the benefit of visiting this condo. While it looks as if it may have been repainted recently, this unit definitely needs a little attention in the bathroom and kitchen areas (meaning total renovation, from appliances to countertops, to floors, to cabinets.) But the Cleveland Circle location is good, the building itself is decent, the layout is excellent, and a little bit of work in the right places will go a long way to increasing this condo’s value.
48 Wallingford Road, $580K, 3505 square feet. This one is actually listed as a “fixer-upper”. Certainly $580K for a seven bedroom single family home of this size sounds pretty sweet. Looks like wall paper needs to come down, and the kitchen needs to be updated, but if there are no other major problems (and who knows with a 108-year-old home of this size!) then you could be looking at a purchase you would never regret, even in a down market.
41 Park Street, Apt. 303 $298K, 793 square feet. This Brookline condo is also listed as a “fixer upper.” Actually, it looks like you could move right in from the pictures, although the kitchen and bath are probably not the latest in home design. The price isn’t a steal for a unit of this size in need of work. On the other hand, you can’t get much closer to Coolidge Corner.
167 Brook Street, $739,900, 2620 square feet. A five-bedroom house in Brookline Village, this house appears to have the location, but not the good looks. A victim of aesthetic neglect, a little bit of work (like stripping a bedroom of 1970s dark paneling) will go a long way to improving the sex appeal of this place. Hmm…. still not sure about the price for a place that needs so much cosmetic work, though.
Know of any other good fixer-uppers? Let me know!
Image: freedigitalphotos.net.
