Single Family - New Build

[Josh Williams]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence other investment.

Cash invested: $200,000
Sale price: $242,000

Wife and I built our "forever home" from the ground up. 3 bed 2 bath 2,500 sq/ft w basement. Spent the better part of 3 years working on the house nights/weekends/days/mornings. We took out a construction loan for $150,000 to build the house which was given to us in 5 "draws" from the bank. This project was at times a lot of fun and at times the worst idea i've ever had. At the end of the day we ended up walking away from the closing table with just over $100,000.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

The challenge of building an entire house by ourselves was intriguing. To know that once it was complete it would be exactly what we wanted.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

I looked for land around where we wanted to be, at the time it was really expensive due to New York being on the verge of passing the laws to drill for Gas (which ended up never happening). I reached out to my Uncle who owned the family farm and he agreed that I could build my house on a 5 acre field he had.

How did you finance this deal?

My family is amazing and they ended up gifting me the 5 acres of land, I only had to pay for the attorney fees to transfer title

How did you add value to the deal?

This 5 acre cow pasture turned into a pretty sweet yard with a nice house on it. Turned a wet spot in the lawn into a pond with a little help from a bulldozer and backhoe i borrowed. We planted edible landscaping/trees around the whole place to attract wildlife and built the house with both front and back decks to sit outside and enjoy it.

What was the outcome?

We ended up selling the house shortly after we finished building it and moving our entire lives to Knoxville TN. Life is too short to not be happy, 3 years of our lives were spent building this house and in the end we just wanted to go south and be warm and enjoy life more.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The biggest piece of advice I can give from this experience is don't try to do everything yourself. Yes it may cost a little bit more to hire someone to come in and install the radiant floor heating system but I spent 3 weeks running pipes and gas lines and hooking up the boiler. The quality of life and time I could have spent with family and friends was instead spent laboring at my house being miserable and resenting the house in the end for what it took away from us.