I think I stumbled onto something fabulous!
My husband and I are in our early 20s. We currently rent an apartment in a rural suburb community. We’re not intensively looking to move, but we know we’re going to want a place in the next 5 years or so to start a family. With that being said, we casually keep our ears open to hear news about local real-estate.
About a year ago, my husband and I saw this ratty house but with good bones on nearly 7 acres for a wonderful price. We thought it sounded great, but it sold before we could even call the agent.
Well, it’s been two weeks shy of a full year, and my husband happened to see the old listing pop up online. It’s not on the market, but we thought “what the heck” and decided to check out the house and call the old agent anyway.
We went by the house – actually all the way up to the door. The current owner hasn’t even taken down the agent’s sign from a year ago, the yard is completely overgrown, and it looks like it hasn’t been touched since it sold. I don’t know why the person bought it if they weren’t going to do anything with it.
The husband and I poked around the property, and we absolutely fell in love. Yes, it’s a major fixer-upper (like, the inside needs to be gutted), but it’s honestly a great price even if we just demolished the house and started over.
I got online and found a mailing address for the legal owner, and we’ve tried to make contact. Hopefully, the owner gets in touch with us and will sell us the property. If not, my husband and I love it so much that we’ll just go squat on the property and see how long we can get away with it.
I had the idea for just squatting on the property, and I honestly thought my husband would shoot down the idea immediately. It turns out that he had the exact same idea on his own – which is strange… he doesn’t like risks at all, and this has the possibility of being an illegal venture for a while.I feel like this property was made for us. I’ve wanted a fixer-upper for a while now (I’ve verbally said that I’d like the challenge of buying and fixing up a trash heap, and this is a trash heap). I also wanted somewhere slightly more rural with a few acres of land. This property is on the edge of our rural community with 7 acres. It’s also in our price range. It has city utility hookups. It’s off-market but still seemingly available. We found the owner! I know it’s public record, but it still astounds me that we were able to find the owner. And my husband’s on board.
I know that we haven’t bought this place yet or even spoken to the owner, but even so, so many things have already had to go just right for us to get this far. As far as I’m concerned, this place is our home.
Frugal Treehugger 