Keep an open mind & plug your nose-diamonds in the rough/hidden gems

The purpose of this post is to encourage keeping an open mind & wearing a mask/respirator when needed or old school plugging your nose (haha) but still considering the smelliest and worst of the worst houses to result in an incredible and rewarding transformation. Some of the best advice I can give after several hundred home sales and many successful restorations is don't overlook diamonds in the rough and the hidden gems when it comes to homes and their contents. 

First of all, don't just let everything get thrown into the dumpster! Hire someone knowledgeable in antiques or furniture restoration at project houses where items are left behind if it isn't your specialty. Sometimes surprising treasures can be found under what is seemingly just junk (and you won't be contributing to more waste since many things can be used by others).

Some of the investors I've helped have sold these types of diamonds in the rough for profits of more than $100,000. I give my clients first priority for any good flip projects - but profits over $100,000 in our market are rare but we find them on occasion. Some of the biggest profits my clients and I have personally earned have been by buying the houses that few others or NO others bid on for some of these reasons (or better yet that no others knew were for sale) or by using strategies to beat out competing bidders as I'll note here as well.

One of the houses I'll write about here that is quite the example of a hidden gem even was hidden by the overgrown trees...no curb appeal here!

 Over the last 10+ years I have been known for buying the houses with the awful curb appeal, hideous exterior paint colors,  unsightly wall-to-wall carpet, crumbling wood paneling or awful wallpaper everywhere and transforming them. In more recent years I have been going more extreme to buy the houses that are unappealing to most buyers at first glance with very rewarding results. Many of my restorations have been fixing up what literally was the worst house on a block to the nicest or one of the best. On some blocks I have renovated multiple homes on the same block to help transform neighborhoods and increase values substantially in some cases.

An HGTV star asked with a twinge of jealousy "how did you score that house?" on a block where she was fixing up another foreclosed house in an area with many vacant and boarded homes that needed restoring where some of the vacant houses had been magnets for drug dealing, trespassing, vandalism and other crime. I gushed that although it was on the MLS for a short time, the photos were terrible of just corners of walls - NO photos of the woodwork & rare corbels, original 100 year old light fixtures and magnificent art deco hardware upstairs. But the bones of the house were intact with some magnificent original features. One of the hidden gems that too many overlooked with the photo of the front of the house with the collapsing retaining wall and stairway pulling away from the house. Inside was full of 100 year old original treasures like light fixtures, art deco door hardware & much more. Neighbors said the people who they saw view the inside came out hurriedly plugging their noses and gasping, horrified at the stench of the poor squirrel inside who didn't make it back out in time. 

That house ended up being one of the most popular houses in the area on the Minneapolis St Paul Home Tour and many hundreds of people shared our ideas with each other and many professionals and preservationists who visited even gave me great ideas for the finishing touches on that house (hundreds of minds are always so much better than one, great to always be open to advice and ideas like many of us here learning from each other on this site). My aunt who was living in another house I have on the block helped greet visitors along with my mom, who works with me. It was such a fun weekend and I highly recommend locals feature their own homes after doing major renovation projects - such a fun way to share ideas and help each other with transformation of living spaces.

Here is a photo before the hardwood floors were refinished and before some other projects - new photos to come in upcoming posts:

That stately duplex is one of the most unusual of the tens of thousands of houses I've viewed over the years. The main level is in it's original 1914 glory with woodwork with dramatic corbels, 13 matching stained glass windows along with the 4 in the curved built-in buffet, half pillars with brass light fixtures atop (that took an hour to polish each one to transform from dusty grey to gleaming brass) and original french style light fixtures. The upper level wasn't finished for 13 years later until 1927 with remarkably intact kitchen cabinets, art deco door hardware that was rusty but just needed sanding to bring back to shiny pristine condition & hardware floors in good shape except for where the squirrel had been. Craftsman and art deco under the same roof is something I have never seen in any houses in the U.S. - two of my favorites!

Here are the specs for that house:

North Minneapolis craftsman duplex. 1914 main floor and 1927 upper level.
Foreclosed.

Purchase price $75,000

Repairs & holding costs $50,000

ARV $200,000

Another house where I bought a second house on the same block as another I had bought and renovated in the past was a house waist high with garbage - one of those houses where you need to hold your breath or wear a heavy duty respirator to view.

The porch was full of more than 10 bird cages stacked nearly to the ceiling and the back addition had nearly 10 fish tanks. This was a house of someone who had been a hoarder and quite the pet lover apparently!

I was thrilled to find out that despite the flood of more than 10 offers on the house within days despite the atrocious MLS photos, I learned my offer was accepted on my birthday. The listing agent later confirmed to my delight that other offers were higher but how I strategically wrote mine helped solidify being the winning bidder ($50,000 earnest money, no inspection contingency, etc.). Nothing says serious to a bank's asset manager like those kind of EM checks and no contingencies. My significant other protested - "Another house?!! You should have said something or talked to me!" I grinned with my wide ear-to-ear grin I have when excited about another old house - "Hey - but it's my birthday present to myself!"

He knows too well that unlike many of my peers - I don't have a collection of shoes or purses - I have a constant collection of houses from very different time periods (and antiques and staging furniture).

Here were the MLS photos (this is one of those cases where they probably should have just shown the exterior photo like many foreclosures are marketed, but at least it let prospects know what they were getting into):

**Warning - skip this paragraph if you have a weak stomach please** - A neighbor said no one had been in the house in months after the owner had passed away, his estranged relatives rummaged through the house, and the house went into foreclosure so he watched curiously as the bank's listing agent walked up to the house, entered, then within seconds run in a hurried frenzy outside to lose her lunch in the bushes. He told me that after the owner had passed away animal control promptly came to take 36 cats out of the house one by one in their vans...yes, you read that correctly, 36 (!!!) The house had a dead bird inside during the showings and a stagnant stench in the basement. The field service workers for the bank had told the listing agent for months they thought something must be dead down there but couldn't find it. And sadly, even though animal control had collected the cats more than a year earlier, on day 6 of the renovation we found a deceased black cat in the basement, aw! People had been apparently stepping right around it without knowing (the basement was so dark during the showings and was until we installed light bulbs after I purchased). 

This is one of those houses like many foreclosures where there was no key to the padlocks on the garage and none of the buyers on showings were able to view the garage. Using a bolt cutters I had no idea what to expect - the listing agent had joked that maybe there will be an old Mustang in there! No such luck...haha!

In the garage, under lots of the junk and decades of collected garbage,  a back corner of the garage was painstakingly uncovered revealing the remnants of a garage sale from the early 1990s it appeared. If I wasn't such a tree hugger conservationist trying not to throw away anything of use to someone or not dispose of any furniture that could be restored and had hired a crew to just hastily dispose of everything in the house and garage, many rare antiques and thousands of dollars worth of treasures wouldn't have been discovered (and many of the neighbor kids wouldn't be enjoying playing Nintendos, Sega Genesis and Game Boys I let them keep when they were all excited in addition to payment for their help working in the yard and garage).

Surprise finds include a telescope, antique pool cues, antique fly fishing rod, two mink coats, light up world globe still in the box from the 1980s, several brand new sewing machines in perfect condition, two neat record players and mint condition 1950s-60s washing machine, dryer & range (all "recently serviced by NSP" the sign remarked (NSP in MN changed names in the mid 1990s so this garage sale was from at least 20 years ago with the items untouched in that back corner)! So intriguing! Future posts will detail the fun finds and surprises inside the house as well.

Here is an in-progress shot after items were nearly cleared out with the nice columns & built-in buffet (quite the contrast to see the decades old textured wallpaper was originally white as shown at the bottom but had been discolored after decades of the owner smoking inside). Very rare to hear of a house that had housed 36 cats so this has been quite the experience! 

It is starting to look much better, amazingly the floors were able to be salvaged and with a stain the floors look incredible:

Here are the specs for this house:

Uptown craftsman single family. 1908 built. Original kitchen cabinets intact, art deco pulls, art deco light fixtures, hardwood floors throughout house now that we have removed all the old carpet.

Purchase price $130,000

Repairs & holding costs $40,000

ARV $275,000

There is no longer a single transition strip in the entire house! All wood floors throughout even in the top floor 3rd story, kitchen and bathroom which was a nice surprise. Despite extensive water damage from a roof leaking for years and 36+ cats, the floors were all able to be salved surprisingly!

Many thought the house should be torn down or gutted based on how it looked at first glance and some floor refinishers thought it would take a black stain to cover which would look bad, but I chose a cherry look and it still covered fortunately. We preserved the floors as we hoped to and they turned out beautiful!

Takeaway

So the takeaway is not to overlook hidden gems - keep an open mind and wear a respirator when needed. This particular rehab will be one of my best and one of the biggest transformations which is really fun to see and rewarding when neighbors are so thrilled (this is my second house on the block in the last 10 years and neighbors are so glad this one is finally being cleaned up from the worst house on the block -one where literally people walked to the other side of the street since the smell outside was so bad - to one of the best). 

Some of the best advice I can give after several hundred home sales and many personal restorations of old homes - don't overlook diamonds in the rough and the hidden gems when it comes to homes and their contents. :) This has been such a fun adventure and there's plenty more to come! Stay tuned!