Selling (one of a few) Childhood Home

[qtlaw]

Stepdad built the house on weekends and after work and finished when I was 13. So was there from 13-18. Parents started living to the city about 15 yrs ago and permanently moved there about 5 yrs ago. So now I'm in charge of getting it sold.

Its a little different because the house before, when I was 9-13, held fonder memories for me because that was in a tract home neighborhood with my buddies over the fence or around the corner. This one was on some land my dad bought and about 10 miles out of town. Still, is the place where my kids visited when they were young, they first got up on a bike on their street.

I'm attacking this totally without any sentimentality, just want to clear everything out and get sold. Feels a bit weird. I guess I thought I would have a bit more emotion.

You ever go through this before?

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

I wanted to buy my childhood house almost 20 years ago when my parents decided to move into the country. I wanted a cheap place to escape Jersey. They would not sell it to me because they said it needed too much work and, instead, sold it to a neighbor who flips them.

Within two years, every tree had been removed from the property, including the big climbing tree at the end of the driveway, replaced with much and picket fences. The giant lawn was covered by a giant deck and above-ground swimming pool. Gray siding replaced the white. Larger windows were installed.

It still remains unrecognizable.

 

[BTExpress]

My dad died 13 months ago. After months of hauling away clutter, we put my childhood home on the market Feb. 17, had an offer the next day, and close this week.

Purchased for $8,000 in 1954, an 850 sf dollhouse expanded to a whopping 1,300 square feet in 1974. Best part of the remodel? A 30x30 basketball court in the back yard.

It may scream 70s, but I still love the wall paneling from the 1974 remodel.

 

[Splendid Splinter]

My grandfather built his own house around 1955. My grandmother still lives in there - she refuses care, so she will die in that house. None the less, there are already many people wanting the land, and when it does go on the market, it will probably sale for a couple of million dollars.

 

[Scout]

Doing it now for my wife, but she didn’t grow up in the home.

Doing 15 years of upgrades and repairs in two months.

Where it is, the real estate market if crazy. This home could go for 550 or 850. We have no idea.

Two cleared acres north of Charlottesville with a pool and a full basement. Big house.

 

[Moderator1]

I just looked up the house I grew up in, my folks bought it for $42,000 about 60 years ago. Sold last year for $720,000.

My dad put in a fireplace, a wet bar and a ton of bookshelves in the rec room downstairs. Bar and bookshelves gone now. But the redone kitchen looks great.

 

[Starman]

My parents built a 5-bedroom, 2100 SF house in 1964 (I was 5) for $36,000 in what was then a farmland outskirts area of a college town.
The contractor allowed my parents a lot of input on how the house was to be built; they suggested stairway placement, laundry chute location, etc etc. I was even consulted on how I wanted my bedroom to look: I sketched out the closet, bookcases, bed location, etc etc. (My sister, then 2, suggested she wanted the walls in her room to be pink.)
So they built the house, and our family (3 more kids arrived over the next 12 years) has lived in it ever since. I moved out in the late 70s, my siblings one by one during the 80s, and my youngest sister left for college in 1992, leaving my parents alone in the house.
My mom died in early 1994 and over the next 6 years three of us took turns living in the house with dad for a few months to give him an occasional hand.
Dad eventually died in early 2001; the house comprised the bulk of his estate.
By that time my youngest sister was married, with two kids of her own, and in law school.
As the oldest, I had been designated by dad as the executor, but my brother (10 years younger) had an MBA and had been managing a business for 10 years, so Dad had accepted my recommendation that he be named the formal executor.
Bro and Dad suggested that Sis and hubby buy the house from the estate at a formally appraised price, so all five siblings would benefit equally from the house.
So the house built for $36K in 1964 ended up selling in 2002 for $225,000.
After Dad died, we spent most of the summer of 2002 doing a down to the drywall remodeling job -- there really hadn't been any substantial remodeling work done since 1964. That cost about $40 grand all told, but it was worth it; the place was fixed up awesome.
So now it's 2022 and my sister's nest is starting to empty out, too. Her oldest just turned 22, is about to graduate with 3 bachelor's degrees, the next oldest will be 20 next month and is a junior In college herself.
They have twins now freshmen in high school and a sixth grader bringing up the rear. So I guess in another decade, Sis and Hubby will be coming up on a decision on what to do with the house; by that time it'll be 70 years since our family moved in.

 

[Batman]

I was going to write some long post about the three houses we lived in while I was growing up, but I looked up the first on Zillow and had a trippy experience. We moved out in March 1986 and I can still see every inch of it how it was. It sold last year (for probably 10 times what my parents paid for it in the early 1970s) so there is a photo gallery on Zillow. Seeing how it's been remodeled and modernized, but still has some of the same landmarks, is strange. My dad had a bar and pool table in the basement, and I had my own miniature pool table. I can still see that whole layout when I look at those pictures. And then seeing the bedroom I slept in until I was 9 ... it's weird.

Still not nearly as surreal as seeing what happened to House No. 3, though. This was the one I really came of age in, and can never go back to now.

Mom killed, 2 daughters injured in house collapse in Hamilton

 

[Scout]

I was going to write some long post about the three houses we lived in while I was growing up, but I looked up the first on Zillow and had a trippy experience. We moved out in March 1986 and I can still see every inch of it how it was. It sold last year (for probably 10 times what my parents paid for it in the early 1970s) so there is a photo gallery on Zillow. Seeing how it's been remodeled and modernized, but still has some of the same landmarks, is strange. My dad had a bar and pool table in the basement, and I had my own miniature pool table. I can still see that whole layout when I look at those pictures. And then seeing the bedroom I slept in until I was 9 ... it's weird.

Still not nearly as surreal as seeing what happened to House No. 3, though. This was the one I really came of age in, and can never go back to now.

Mom killed, 2 daughters injured in house collapse in Hamilton

Whoa... did your family own it when the first popping sounds were heard?

 

[Starman]

Yeah, Zillow can be pretty freaky to check out your early childhood home.
I looked up the house my parents lived in before 1964; I haven't set foot in the place since the weekend of my 6th birthday. But I remember how the stairway looked down into the living room, and a really cool paneled glass doorway leading into the kitchen.
They have remodeled the bathroom; the old school claw foot cast iron bathtub is gone and they've put in a shower unit. They (well, somebody since 1964) also tore down a drafty old "Florida room" porch on the back of the house (that was only habitable about half the year) and replaced it with a cool wooden deck. So thumbs up on that project.
They still have the "Michigan basement," an ominous, gloomy, half-dirt floor dungeon, where 57 years ago, my dad had to pour buckets of water into the furnace every three or four days to keep it running properly.
My parents bought that house in 1955 for $8,000, and sold it in '64 for $14K.
Funny enough, one of my sisters is retiring and looking for a house, and entirely independent of everything else, the house came up in her search. It's now on the market for $102,000.
We all had a good laugh, but she never lived there; she was born four years after we moved out. She's never set foot in the joint. So to her it's just another house.

 

[Batman]

Whoa... did your family own it when the first popping sounds were heard?

No, that would have been about five or six years after we moved out. I left for good in 1998, and my parents moved out about a year later. We rented the house. My mom said the owners offered to let her buy it in 1999-2000, but she passed for a couple of different reasons.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Both my parents are getting up in years, and, unless they leave it to my kids, I'm pretty sure they're leaving their house to me. Naturally, I'm dreading that day.

We moved in when I was five. I still have a memory of my parents looking at the empty place with a guy, and the living room rug was rolled up. I got bored because I had no clue what my parents and the guy were talking about, laid my head on the rolled up rug and fell asleep. Woke up a while later feeling refreshed, couldn't find my parents, and saw them outside meeting the neighbors.

They've renovated the kitchen, and I think they're planning on doing some more work now. They installed a second bathroom downstairs with the kitchen renovation in the early 90s. My parents bought their house in 1978 for about $28K, and now, Zillow has it worth somewhere around $250K. When they go, I'm hoping my Oldest will want to move in and pay (a reduced) rent to me; otherwise I might rent it out for a while and see if I'm OK with being a landlord. I'm thinking it might be hard to see someone else who isn't a family member living there, though.

Prior to that, we lived in an apartment area on the grounds of a school for troubled kids, where my Dad worked as a maintenance man after he graduated from that school. The apartment was attached to an old stone building. We moved, both because my parents bought the house, and because the school was closing and converting to a substance abuse treatment center. Our apartment became offices, and my Mom had to go there a few years later for something, and said it was weird seeing our place as offices. A few years after that, our ex-apartment caught fire and burned, although the stone building was fine. The fire actually made 1-A of our local paper.

Last year, when my Dad was sick, my Mom and I visited him in the hospital, and, on our drive back, we were passing the old school grounds. We took a detour, and saw that the old stone building was still looking nice as a residence. It was a nice little trip down memory lane.

 

[Flip Wilson]

My parents had the foresight to sell their house -- where I grew up -- as they were getting older and less able to take care of it. They moved into a duplex a few minutes from where I live, and they actually spent less each month on rent and utilities than they did at their house, even though it had been paid off for years. No yard guy to pay, less electricity, etc.

And it crushed me a few years later when I drove by. The new owners had pretty much trashed it. I think it got repossessed, and it went on the market for way less than what my folks sold it for. Last time I saw it, it was in better shape than than, but not nearly as neat and clean as it was when Mom and Dad lived there. It made me sad.

 

[Starman]

My grandmother's family had been lumber millionaires in the 1870s-90s in Michigan. Her grandfather, the main guy in all this big money, built a 24-room mansion in Detroit as their family HQ.
Up in the Upper Peninsula, hard by the shores of Gitchee Gumee, he built a factory town in and around Baraga, where he ran a huge sawmill.
As part of the operation, on "company row," he built matching 12-room houses for himself and his five children.
My grandmother was born in 1896 in Detroit, but after she was born, the whole family packed up, got on the train, and headed up to Baraga. She lived there until she was 16.
The lumber business eventually petered out and the company town went away. My grandmother lived her life downstate for 70-some years when she went back for a visit. She was greeted like royalty by the local historical association, who gave her a tour of the town.
Most traces of the huge lumber operation were long gone. The football-stadium sized sawmill was torn down in the twenties.

Of the six family houses on "company row," the only one still standing was the one she had lived in.

She said it was now owned by hippies who were using it as a commune. "It looked like hell," she said. "It looked like a pig farm."

Somewhere Tom Wolfe chuckled.

 

[qtlaw]

Mom was divorced and she bought a two BR condo for $16k in 1972 and then they sold it in 2008 for over $250k; crazy. (dropped to about $60k in 2009, and is now back up to over $200k).

 

[goalmouth]

Good time to sell. Around here lack of inventory is getting 16 or 17 offers.

Makes it easier to realize it's just stuff.

 

[tea and ease]

I'm attacking this totally without any sentimentality, just want to clear everything out and get sold. Feels a bit weird. I guess I thought I would have a bit more emotion.

You ever go through this before?

I think if your parents haven't passed on, the sentimentality of clearing possessions doesn't hit as hard, but I am sensing the nostalgia of your childhood home in your post. We lived on a small farmette when I was growing up with 4 siblings. Free play, turkeys, pond, dogs... my Dad buzzing the house in his plane on National Guard weekends. My parents divorce had us move to the outskirts of Pittsburgh, but I think my brother's longing for that earlier life never left. When his first was born, he bought some land with a pond, built a house, got a couple dogs.

 

[Songbird]

I would love to buy my childhood home. This is it with renovations like the tree in the middle of lawn, which wasn't there. That's the lawn my brothers and I and neighborhood friends played baseball on. These owners also added the fancy walkway. They redid the porch too. My grandparents owned house before my parents bought it in 1975 or '76 when I was 5. I lived there till 1989. Big backyard with an orange tree.

 

[dixiehack]

A year or two ago I told my parents just to plan on giving their house (not one I ever lived in) to my younger brother. They’ve been generous supporting me through the years already when I needed to get back on my feet and he’s the one who stayed around the old hometown, which I was never interested in doing.

At the time they seemed nervous about it, figuring he wasn’t up for the responsibility. Now that he’s freshly married with three step kids, my guess is they’ll decide to take me up on it.

 

[WriteThinking]

During my childhood, we had something that wasn't a house, but an actual tiny hunters' cabin located in Manorkill, N.Y. (population about 300 at the time) where we went for frequent family gatherings and vacations.

Calling it rustic was an understatement. It was about 700 square feet, with two small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen area in which I still, to this day, remember once seeing a rat scurrying across the inside of the refrigerator when I opened the door. There was no indoor bathroom until much later years -- yep, we used an outhouse across the meadow that was the front yard, and unless you wanted to brave the dark outdoors, you learned to "hold it" through the many cold nights we spent there with only a front-room furnace, sleeping bags and blankets to keep us warm.

We all loved it, anyway, and have a lot of fond memories of that place.

That's because it also had a large front/living room with a thick, solid oak table around which we ate and played many family games together, a good-sized screened-in porch that was great for playing with cards, Lego, marbles and tops, as well as eating barbecue-grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Under that porch were frequent wildlife visitors like deer, turkeys, and even a peacock that were always welcome. The little cabin sat on two acres of child-height grassy meadow-land property that was all ours, and had to be mowed and cut down during each visit so we could use it for all our station-wagon car rides with the tailgate down, go-kart races and sled rides down the hill with each other, and so we could more easily maneuver around to the many tall pine trees that were on the perimeter -- a few of which we cut down for use as Christmas trees during the holidays.

Grandparents and close friends made regular treks up there with us, minding us kids and going along as we all took daily walks along the dirt side of the one road through town to the one nearby convenience store for pickles, candy and cola and visits with the friendly shopkeeper, who always knew all the few people came through his door. (Picture Opie Taylor and his dad ambling along with their fishing poles in the opening credits of "The Andy Griffith Show," and that practically could've been us).

Later on, after our last move to California, my dad took one of my teen-aged brothers back there, the two taking the 3,000-mile car trip and spending three weeks alone together, fixing up the place in hopes of my then-troubled brother straightening out, and then the place being sold. He eventually did, and it was, ironically, to one of my mom's high school friends' sons, for a measly $2000, because by then, we were across the country for good and my dad was just looking to unload the property.

We all still think about that place, though, and it has been immortalized both in photos and in some grainy old family films that my oldest brother broke out for us to look at a few years ago. That was a trip, almost as good as all the ones we always took from Long Island to upstate N.Y. to get there.