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Has anyone heard of old schools, churches, malls, restaurants, clubs, etc being converted into houses and mansions? I saw(online) an old brick school from the 1930s converted to a mansion for $500k partially finished(you pay to finish converting) size was 11k square feet and several acres of land!
Someone mentioned lots of old vacent churches in America being put up for sale and you can do whatever you want. Convert it to a mansion perhaps. Some of them are supprisingly cheap(but needs TLC and remodeling)
There are other old buildings that are being sold as residental. Anyone hear or know of this? It would be a dream to live in a big mansion-like building!
Yes, I've heard of it. In the 1950s, my grandparents moved from the farm into town and bought a church that had been put up for sale. They remodeled it into a house and it was very nice. I believe they got it rather cheap, but it cost a lot to convert it to a house.
Also, I know a couple who bought an old school house and converted it to a home, but that also cost a fortune even though they did a lot of the work themselves.
I talked to my dad about this and he says its a touchy subject. Some of the religious locals may object and some could even get violent. If anyone were to do this, they should first make sure the locals dont object. A church is a religious symbol and some dont like it being used as a house/mansion.
How expensive is the TLC and conversion anyway? I could buy a nice 1900s brick house, like 2000 square feet for $50k in some cities, no conversion needed.
Yes, lots of non-houses have been converted into housing. That includes old former fire stations, missile silos and on and on.
The but's to it all today are the costs of building materials. It has gone bananas. Any construction project will be a challenge. The prices are totally unpredicatable week to week. The worst are things with copper like wire, copper tubing, etc.
They blame the Hurricane Katrina for much of it. Maybe a bit true, some is just plain olde price gouging. A box of nails for an air gun that we used to pay ~$9 is now going for ~$64. It is nuts. I used to be a contractor, we did mostly remodeling type work. Ain't seen nothing like this over the years, seen good times, seen the bad periods.
A typical job used to use 15% contingency to account for the variables that occur in an estimate. I don't know what you would have to use today. Maybe 50%. If your project is larger and going to require some time, you could be in for lots of surprises. Bring your checkbook, everything costs more.
I bought a house that needed work, no real big ticket items but lots of smaller things that required a pretty good rebuild. Been at it myself going into the second year. I knew it was going to go crazy after Katrina and tried to stockpile all the materials. Good thing, I was as far along as I was. Not only did the prices go nuts, the time to order things like windows went out of sight. Before I was getting them in 20 days. The last few, I needed after Katrina took like 3 months.
If you do normal construction with hired labor and must meet a schedule, lots of luck, bring that checkbook for sure, be sure to call the banker. I would hate to be in any type of construction or contracting business today, can't be much fun. Everybody probably makes money except you. Doing novel or oddball projects like converting non-standard structures into a house must be a real scream from so many angles. Most restoration or rehab projects in my neck of the woods make no economic sense today, even if you do all the work. Strange World and it is getting Stranger. In fact in many of the smaller towns in SE Ohio, they are burning older houses in need of work down for fire dept practice, in many cases the land is more valuable as a parking lot.
Yep heard of it,there is a show on tv..on TLC that shows people renovating schools,banks, firehouses and things like that, I can't think of the name of the show though..This will bug me all day so if anyone knows the show I'm talking about please tell...lol
It might be on HGTV ,I love both of those stations.
building materials is indeed nuts. I can get cheap land in north Florida but the cost of building even a small house is more than I can afford. Older houses sure go for a good price and some look fine. Its probably not worth a handyman special unless the repairs are minor due to cost
I know a couple who used to live in a converted church, and I know another lady who lives in a converted barn. Both homes are in eastern Wisconsin.
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