Great Blogger Name
(This is mostly for Erie area readers that perhaps haven't seen the houseblogs.net blogroll.)
I was browsing through the Houseblogs.com blogroll and found one that made me laugh. The name is great. This Old Crack House It's a great blog, with a great name. It says under the headline, From log house to farmhouse. Farmhouse to townhouse. Townhouse to apartment house. Apartment house to crack house. Crack house to our house. Our house to our home.
If you follow her link to "My Web Page" on the right side bar you'll see lots of great pictures of their Dayton,OH home.
I wish the originally beautiful, historic homes turned "multi-family" apartments and frat houses in our area would get taken over by families like this one and restored back to what they were meant to be. I hate seeing the mutilation of Erie's great old houses by greedy landlords just to make a few bucks. There aren't many of the grand houses left. And if you restored one in the city of Erie, they'd tax you right out of it. Thank goodness for the Watson-Curtze Mansion Museum. At least Erie will have that.
I was browsing through the Houseblogs.com blogroll and found one that made me laugh. The name is great. This Old Crack House It's a great blog, with a great name. It says under the headline, From log house to farmhouse. Farmhouse to townhouse. Townhouse to apartment house. Apartment house to crack house. Crack house to our house. Our house to our home.
If you follow her link to "My Web Page" on the right side bar you'll see lots of great pictures of their Dayton,OH home.
I wish the originally beautiful, historic homes turned "multi-family" apartments and frat houses in our area would get taken over by families like this one and restored back to what they were meant to be. I hate seeing the mutilation of Erie's great old houses by greedy landlords just to make a few bucks. There aren't many of the grand houses left. And if you restored one in the city of Erie, they'd tax you right out of it. Thank goodness for the Watson-Curtze Mansion Museum. At least Erie will have that.
posted by Erie's Argonaut at 4/03/2007 12:51:00 PM
2 Comments:
I feel exactly as you do when seeing lovely old houses with so much history neglected or torn down. As pretty as some of the new homes built according to old style plans may be, they can't possibly replicate everything that makes an old house so appealing.
By the time people wake up to the value of some of these old homes, it is usually too late. sigh.
Here's my take on the whole thing.
Consumers are bamboozled into buying new; it's a racket set up by the builders, mortgage companies and banks. Rook some hapless homebuyer into buying something she can't really afford by pretty much lying about the type of loan (which will probably bite her in the butt in a couple years) or saying it's a "safe" neighborhood, everything in the house is new, blah blah blah.
It is almost impossible to find a mortgage company that will back a loan on a home that is over 50 years old and hasn't had all of the updates. Either the wiring is "too old" (nevermind that the house has been around for 75-100+ years and still hasn't burned to the ground), the plumbing isn't "perfect", the furnace/boiler are antiques, the roof isn't brand new, there may be some black mold (although I have yet to ever see any myself) etc. the list goes on and on. This is why so many of the old beauties sit empty and eventually collapse. It is disgusting.
People who buy these old 'clunkers' for peanuts end up way ahead, in many cases they are bought outright (because for many you can't secure a loan) and through lots of toil, they are refurbished. The best part is, if you don't let yourself go into deep debt or continually take out equity loans getting them fixed, you don't owe anyone in the end. That is smart investing!
Also, in Jackson, we have many of the 6,000+ sq.ft. victorians that are multiple units. Some of them are well-kept with nice roofs, fresh paint and manicured lawns. But far too many are owned by investors who are nothing more than slum-lords. The porches sag, they need paint and the roofs need repair.
Still, I hope!
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