What would you do? Stay or go? Free to me house but kinda a pain.

[Sean Ridlon]

My family and I were asked to if we'd like to move in to a old country house on 3 acres owned by my wife's extended family.
My wife and I own two cash flowing rentals, as do my brother and I. Of course we'd like to keep adding to the portfolio.

So we moved in to it.

Here's the situation:

1) I tried to buy it from them outright and they declined to sell it. No option to turn this into a rental or to flip.

2) We live here for free, but pay the minimal county taxes, electricity, and garbage.

3) There's a lot that needs work, or is frankly unfixable. It needs a roof, plumbing is old but works, electrical is old but works, etc. There's no heat or A/C except window units.

My options are to keep fixing stuff here (so far I've spent 4k on top of the taxes, electricity, and garbage) or to just buy something somewhere else to fix up and turn into another rental. My wife has been working for a year after a 17 year hiatus to raise our children, and I am in my second year of self-employment so our financing options are kind of limited. I do have a good nest egg saved up.

In this situation, would you stay at the basically free house knowing it was going to need periodic work to it which was never going to pay you back or would you go on to the next deal?

[Scott Mac]

Hi Sean,

Living for free seems to me like a rational choice.

If it were me, I'd pay to have to have central A/C put in simply for my own comfort.

Good Luck!