Buying An $18,000 House: Inside America’s Cheap Old Houses

so recently i was scrolling through instagram and i came across an account called cheap old houses and yes it's exactly what it sounds like it's an account that posts cheap old houses that are for sale all over the country it's really cool and just like everything on instagram it's really addicting but while i was scrolling through i thought to myself okay there's no way anyone actually buys these houses right there's got to be a reason they're so cheap wrong people do buy these houses and i was able to find someone that bought one of these houses this is betsy sweeney and she just bought a cheap old house so i messaged her and asked if i could come see her house and i thought she would think i was totally crazy and not respond but to my surprise she said yes and that's how i found myself on a plane ride over to wheeling west virginia to check out this cheap old house if you were to drive just an hour southwest of pittsburgh you would find yourself in the city of wheeling hi i'm betsy sweeney and i bought a house for 18 500 in wheeling west virginia here it is folks the 18 thousand dollar house for that price tag betsy got a 4 000 square foot victorian style home that features four bedrooms a tiny house and a very spacious lot but before we head inside let's talk about why it's so cheap the city of wheeling was established in the early 1800s and it was quickly considered the gateway to the west with it being situated on the ohio river steamboats made it extremely accessible to import and export goods it really began expanding though in the industrial era and factories started popping up for everything from glass production to steel iron nails even these pretty tin ceilings that you see willing was the biggest producer for those people were becoming really wealthy from it and as a result grand buildings were constructed all around the town it was very trendy then to show off your wealth with a big building eventually that gold rush came to an end and the great depression hit with that job started going overseas and these factories became obsolete the population has been in decline ever since therefore we have this cute little city with many beautiful buildings that are extremely cheap and vacant like many industrial cities wheeling is never fully recovered from that downturn but now with such a rich architectural heritage and cheap cost of living this younger generation of people like betsy are moving to wheeling and working to revive the community so if you enjoy this video be sure to subscribe to my channel and also please give it a thumbs up it really helps the video's performance with youtube and maybe share it with a friend so let's go check out her house so this is my house this is my favorite part of the house this like stair hall which nobody really has anymore back when this house was built in 1892 this would have been a really public space it's where you really like wanted to show off so that's why the staircase is the most kind of elaborate part of the house [Music] and then i love this fireplace this is one of the reasons i bought the house i own rescue dogs i've researched dogs in my professional career and so seeing this tile vignette was really special and really sold me on it so how much cash did you end up putting down i put 18 five down in cash and then my third party loan of 25 was my down payment for my construction loan my renovation costs are expected to clock in right around 125 000 i would say that's pretty in line with what you can expect with a house of this scale in wheeling betsy will be serving as her own contractor designer and doing a lot of the heavy lifting herself the city of willing also gives a 20 tax credit for restoring an old home so she's taking advantage of that as well this will be the living room it's actually kind of interesting when i think about the far away goal of decorating it's not actually a huge room as massive as the house is i'm not putting a huge sectional in here it's kind of hard to furnish so i don't know what i'm gonna do i think maybe just like a cozy sofa here i see a huge christmas tree here at the holidays [Music] and the other thing that's super exciting about this room is that my pocket doors work which usually they're trapped in the wall or broken and these work they both close [Music] this is the dining room so again i have another pocket door that works i love this fireplace and these stained glass windows are not original to the house in like the 1920s a presbyterian church owned my home so they salvaged those windows and had them [Music] installed this area there used to be a stair so when we go upstairs it'll make more sense but there would have been a secondary service stair that came out right here at some point in the 20th century that was taken out and they put this little half bath in here but i love it it's a great size it's super practical i love this sink and this will have like crazy wallpaper and just be like a very cool room and then this is my kitchen [Music] this corner of the house was like collapsing so all of that was reinforced and then this floor was laid down and so i think the plan in here is cut in starting here the whole way up all the way here the whole way back to create one straight wall to hang a pant like a full set of pantry cabinets on range here refrigerator here weird corner i still have to figure out it's like here it's a challenge and it might change because it's an old house and they didn't they didn't have kitchens like we have now [Music] this pressed metal would have been more than likely manufactured and wheeling just like down the street all this will eventually come down get cleaned get repaired go back up and be painted it's going to be probably the worst part of this whole process and then we'll go into what will be the master this is actually one of the rooms that needs the most work this scaffold somebody will be standing in here like in between the floor joists fixing things up in there i definitely get some second looks especially when i meet contractors for the first time they come in and they really haven't seen this house and then they certainly haven't seen me and they walk in and they see this like young woman with a house that looks like it's falling down and they think are you cracked lady and i'm not this is my job this is what anyone that's worked with me will tell you that this house is in the best hands it possibly could be um this was a doorway this was probably actually a sitting room originally for the main bedroom back there i'm gonna make this wall and just like two rooms and then this will be my office so i don't know if i'm gonna put a wall or a door here or part of me sees like big velvet curtains or something to make it pretty [Music] that's part of my fireplace for my bedroom oh and this is the um service stair or what's left of it you originally would have come all the way down and ended up in the hall and exited or whatever but now this is the ceiling of that halfback i am a big meditator a big reader so this whole little space is just gonna be like my little nook i'm weirdly into this room too even though it is just a guest bedroom and honestly probably shouldn't be as big of a priority as it is for me but i think it's a really pretty room it's a large room and it looks out into the backyard which i really like [Music] so like when my parents i didn't tell them i didn't tell them i was buying this until i was under contract and i didn't let them see it until it was too late i expected when i came to this house you were going to be incurring costs such as you know floors falling through does that happen for other people that buy cheap homes like this or it really runs the gamut like i have some structural issues but mine are more related to exterior things because i don't have gutters and there's like water running down the side of my building but i have a good roof if i had gutters but a hole in my roof you might have a hole in your floor so it's really like where the water goes the problems follow and this house did have some big structural issues in the basement and it still does have some but for the most part like structural in that it needs to be repaired before i live in it yes not so bad the house is going to fall down though and a lot of that is just the quality of materials used so it's impossible to get wood framing members that are as strong as these trays were was there anything unexpected that's happened since buying this house um my dad and i were downstairs in the half bath like doing some wiring and we heard a crash and so we went into the living room we kind of heard it and like some drywall fell or something and we're like no it was it was heavier like what what was that so we went upstairs and like seven or eight bricks from that corner had just fallen into the pool this project is expected to take about a year's time with six months of construction and another six months of finish work betsy's hoping to be in the house by the new year and entertaining by next summer bathroom someone got a little bit into a modern bathroom update in here this will be a big walk-in shower this is all original so this will just get stripped and painted this will be white tile white hex on the ground probably some cabinetry or something to like hold towels and stuff but this is one of the closer rooms to being finished this is fitted for a washer dryer cabinetry above a closet here maybe a mirror there and then there's gonna be another closet here because it's already naturally cut in because again this is where they borrowed for the bathroom shoe closet in here and this will function like a master closet laundry room [Music] historically that's up here is where they would have put the kids in the maid and there's this giant room here all this has been ripped out because i'm getting new gutters who knows if i'm here for two years it'll probably just be storage if i'm here for 10 years maybe kids room i really love this view because you can see the dome of the cathedral and a lot of the rooftops of downtown and little like vignettes of the neighborhood this is where all the different roof lines of the house kind of meet so you get all these different angles i honestly was going to use this as like a utility room but it's my boyfriend's favorite room in the house no way yeah yeah he loves it i know and there's a ton of wallpaper up here too oh my gosh noticing i think this probably would have been a maids room i totally see two twin beds here i just really like this little room for some reason so that's the house that's the house [Music] and then there's a mini house in the back oh yeah let's go to the mini house the mini house is super cool and actually the previous owners lived in it this will be fenced and then that side lot is mine as well really yeah you could like build another house i could i'm not going to but i totally could everything that was in the basement of this house which is a lot of stuff is here it was if you can kind of imagine this space back here was like a dry sink kitchen and then in here they had previous owners a little camp toilet this was their living space and then up here there's steps to a law so this building was actually a shed like behind a fancy house in south wheeling another neighborhood and the previous owners salvaged it took it all apart brought it here all of it is just like bits and pieces of houses that have been saved from the dumpster essentially i'm like honestly in shock right now because this right here even this like i would pay 18 000 just for this yeah just for this it's like essentially a tiny house it totally is a tiny house it could be anything i could run a business out of here i could make it a she shed i could make it a guest house it already has electricity it's insulated it's warm that's so cool yeah in this whole space there'll be a fence back there there'll be a fence here i don't know if i'm gonna make this grass or beds or patio or what this will be a retaining wall and then this will be a privacy fence and then the street facing side will be a brick wall and then it'll also create like a little secret garden vibe back here so you work with old houses for a living when did you realize okay i want to own my own old house one day probably when i was like four okay i've always dreamt of it and it was when i decided to move to wheeling that i saw the quality of life and the cost of living that i could have here would really allow me to do the extreme end of what my kind of goals and dreams were and buy something like this i can't afford to do this in dc or brooklyn or like i'm not a millionaire so in wheeling yeah i can pull the juliet balcony off my attic west virginia is a scrappy little state and wheeling is a scrappy little city and when people come in and embrace it they are happy to have you to be honest i was not expecting much out of wheeling west virginia but it did surprise me it seems like an ideal place to live with a beautiful waterfront and mountains it's just an hour outside of a big city an international airport with nice people a low cost of living it's no wonder she moved here what do you think it will take to you know keep growing as a city wheeling is definitely on the cusp of revitalization and while we feel like we're doing a lot to kind of make it up that hill it's a slippery slope so we have to have more people that want to be entrepreneurs and want to kind of take the risk and maybe start a business or buy a building or open a storefront getting more young people here that maybe are you know working from home indefinitely or just kind of rethinking what workplace or home looks for them i think this is a great place to move to and try thank you guys for watching this video i truly hope you enjoyed like i said if this is content that you like give it a thumbs up subscribe and share it with a friend and i'll see you guys next time bye welcome to my latest life crisis i know your first question is why why did you buy this

Channel: Monica Church

Views: 3,889,364

Rating: 4.9525042 out of 5

Keywords: monica church, monica, hairodynamic, gymnastics, cheap old house, cheap old houses, cheapest house, cheap house america, america cheapest house, cheap real estate, cheapest, cheap mansion, cheapest mansion on the internet

Id: YD_AyFEaWwU

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/LittleSpiderGirl]

Interesting. I guess she knows what she is doing but I don't see $125,000 being enough money to renovate that house. I'm also confused as to why the structural issues she vaguely mentions weren't the first order of business.

[u/sds0918]

And then you have Morgantown, WV where a condemned shit hole will run your at least 200k.

[u/paulawalla121]

Yes, get it, Betsy!! Really happy to see Wheeling and cool old houses highlighted like this.