Retired at 50?

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by lenora

Somewhat related...Didn't you build the interior of the home to perfection while leaving the exterior "so-so" in order to discourage the tax man from assessing its full value? I hope I remember that correctly because I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Our house is a steel building kit with 2400 sq ft. The sheet metal panels are baked on enamel, I thought they look fairly nice on their own. We have not done much to the outside. Most of the work I have done has been to the interior, I sprayed two inches of spray-on urethane foam to the inside of the sheet metal walls, then I hung 9 inches of fiberglass batting and covered that with paneling and wood trim. I cut nearly two dozen holes to install windows.

After we lived here five years, one summer I took on the project of extending our roof out 8 feet in three directions to give us a wrap-round porch [and 20 feet in the last direction to give us a carport with bays for three vehicles, a tractor, and a boat], to keep snow from piling up against the house and to keep a clear walkway from our front door to our carport. Our total footprint is now 5,000 sq ft.

I do not recall ever really thinking about making the outside look less finished to discourage the tax man.

I remember the first time the tax assessor came by, he was asking me what the outer finish was. I told him sheet metal with a baked-on enamel. That was not a standard option on his form.

His biggest concern was the exterior dimensions, our floor surface and whether we had a finished basement.



After we were living here ten years we decided to get home insurance, those people had an extremely difficult time coming up with their assessment. It seemed that they needed to compare it to another home of the same style of construction, and they could not locate another one in our county.