This contains literally every relevant detail that a buyer might want to know which I am able to remember.
There are two very big issues, and lots of little issues, and there are things too trivial to list, such as chipped paint or whatever which a person may see by looking.
House will be sold "as is, where is", meaning I don't plan to clean too much. It will have pots and pans and a little bit of food, etc.
The two big issues, if a person wants to skip the long text below, are
1) Neighbors are very intrusive and the property would be excellent for a person who wants to build a 'good' neighborhood by keeping out the rifraf. This appears to have begun with the previous resident who may have been growing marijuana. I'm not interested in this kind of neighborhood, and would not recommend it for anybody who is not very mainstream, but for a lot of people it would be a good fit. This appears to be a very deep rooted thing, involving several couples, both husbands and wives. For me it is not a place to have a family nor even a domestic animal but it could be a great place for certain types.
2) There is a lot of work that needs to be done to level the foundation. Mainly the north side needs to be jacked up a little, and a retaining wall needs to be built along the south side of the crawlspace. The garage also needs to have the south wall supported better due to cracked concrete. I put a bunch of jacks in already but very amateurish. A person with handyman skills could do a much better job. The house has withstood the full weight of the 20/21 and 22/23 winter snows. 20/21 roof raking was started in April, and in 22/23 the roof was not raked.
How much would you need to spend to fix the house properly? My guess, only a guess, is that professional leveling might cost $5,000 to $15,000 and other issues, described below, a few thousand more total. A person who wanted to do it themselves could do most of the work with what's already here.
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Lengthy details
House will be for sale soon and will be available to view, walk through, etc, at that time. It is not available to walk through before then.
The photos were taken by the previous owner and haven't changed much. I'll take new photos probably around November. If a prospective buyer wants me to upload a video of the areas that need work in the basement crawl space, and garage, ask and I'll do that.
The price will be listed high now then drop week by week, then sometime after the last major snowfall it will drop 1k or 2k or so each week until it sells. The house was owned by one family from 1946 til I bought it and they are welcome to buy it back any time at a discount.
The roof is not being raked this 2023/2024 winter, so if it holds then you could bet that by simply raking the roof you would get several more years without any major work. If the roof collapses then the price will drop too, of course.
These are the most important things to know about it.
1) There are some broken timbers on the north side.
I moved in April 2021 and saw there were some broken timbers on the north side. That winter had a very heavy snow fall so I quickly got a roof rake and removed most of the snow from the roof. I put up some extra supports on that side, 2x4s and 4x4s with jacks. The first thing a person would notice about that work is clearly I am not a carpenter, it has to be redone properly, but there haven't been problems.
The next winter 2021/2022 I raked most of the snow off. My circulation was getting a bit rough but I was able to clear most of the roof working 30 minutes or so at a time.
This last winter 2022/2023 my circulation was bad enough that I could not work outside and did not rake the roof. The good news there is that the roof held the snow load with no problems, but it was probably the lowest snowfall of the three winters.
A person who buys this property should rake the roof when there is snow until they have done a good fix. There is enough lumber here, and jacks, and tools, to do the work, or you could hire somebody, but it should either be fixed properly or you should rake the roof. There is a very distinct unevenness in the north floor on the main level and it's at least several inches that side needs to be raised.
2) The garage too has roughly similar problems. So far it has held the snow weight but you must either fix it, by raising the south wall a few inches or rake the roof in the winter.
The garage goes literally up to less than 1 foot of the south property line, actually inches. I was planning to get rid of the garage but lost interest. The house was built around 1946 but the garage later. There was a zoning variance requested when it was built, decades ago, and quite a bit of nastiness from neighbors in the public comments, so it was probably built up to the property line as historical neighborhood pettiness.
There are roof rakes and ladders.
3) Electricity and plumbing have worked so far. Some outlets don't work but it might be a matter of changing fuses. There are electrical conduits and a few breaker boxes so it looks like somebody put in new wiring some years ago. You would probably want to have a professional electrician and plumber do some work, at least to figure out the wiring and draw an accurate diagram.
4) The house has a System2000 boiler which has been pretty reliable. Also a Black Max 3600/4500 watt generator which you would have to set up. It has never been run, I bought it new in 2021. Also some cheap electric space heaters and three 20 pound propane tanks and a propane heater in case everything else doesn't work briefly.
There is a problem with how the zones are wired. There are 5 heating zones plus hot water, but only 5 spaces on the control panel. Whoever installed it thus combined two zones on the control panel. The result is that there are two zones that close after the call for heat stops, rather than continuing to pump until the water isn't hot. The pump continues pumping even though the zone is closed in those two lines. It isn't a big deal, but it probably should be fixed. I usually set the temperature on those zones very low so that when they are running there is also a zone running that is open, and that probably reduces stress on the pump. If a person leaves the garage unheated then that would create a free space on the control panel that could be used. It might be something a person could do themselves after reading a lot, but probably smarter to hire a boiler technician.
One important issue a person should solve is the air intake. The boiler has a 2 inch air intake, When it is very cold this is feeding cold air into the basement. If you block it then the cold air will come in through somewhere else, and warmer air will be used for the boiler which is not great since cold air has more oxygen per cubic foot. A gallon of fuel uses about 1400 cubic feet of air so it is important to have that intake feeding from the outside, but it noticeably cools the basement. The solution would be to put a photoelectric sensor in front of the burner light with something that opens the intake only when the burner is running.
5) There are mice in the house. They have never gotten into my food, even when I had things they might eat stored in the garage or downstairs, aside from some bread that was stored frozen in a separate part of the garage used as a freezer. I feed them peanuts etc and they continue eating through the winter. Not sure what the end game is there, maybe you will need a cat.
The number of mice does not seem to have increased in three years, probably because I feed them only in the winter, so summertime they look outdoors for food and either wander or get eaten.
6) There is an upper space above the house that can only be accessed through a small door by climbing onto the roof of the front part of the house. A person could cut a hole through the inside of the garage or house and put in stairs or a ladder and have an easy large storage space. There is a massive amount of storage space which could be turned into rooms.
7) There are a lot of raspberries along the back of the house, and a chokecherry tree in front. That tree produces a lot of edible small fruits with large seeds. Two large branches have been knocked down by malicious neighbors, but they are still attached to a root system and fruiting so I leave them up. One blocks the driveway so if you have a car you might move it or remove it.
8) The neighborhood is great for certain types of people, not suitable for others. If you are a very mainstream person who likes to socialize and 'join' then you will be very comfortable.
The first thing I saw before I bought the house, even before I stepped inside, was that there are a few 'inclusivity' placards on houses. Something along the lines of "We tolerate people who are different, because everybody is special". Usually signs like that are a sign of recent or ongoing problems in an area.
Next thing I noticed was a red car that drove up and down the street and stopped in front of the house several times as I was viewing it. That same vehicle continued doing that for several weeks after I bought the house and I got the impression it was a 'neighbor watch' type thing. Also immediately after I moved in vehicles started parking in front of the house. In the first few weeks it was mainly a white van and white pickup and a smaller car, but then a wider variety of vehicles.
One day there was a package missing and I noticed that the vehicle parked at that time had its back gate down hiding the license plate so I photographed it. See photo. The next day one of the large choke cherry branches was broken.
Several times trash, including trash bags, have been dumped on the property. The first time was right after I moved in. Another was after a conversation with a neighbor. The neighbor who appears to be dumping trash has complained about the previous occupant for things like laziness and not paying bills. I'm neither aware of nor interested in what the quarrel is they have with me.
There were several other interactions that led to the conclusion that at least two and maybe three adult neighbor couples were behind the mischief rather than bored children.
So if you are a mainstream type who wants to work closely with your neighbors creating an upscale community then you will enjoy this area, if you are not in that category you might not.
There are indications a similar problem existed for the previous owner/occupant, and that might have been part of why they left. If you are very mainstream and 'normal' etc you will not have these problems. At least two neighbors have plowed the driveway. All of the neighbors, including those involved in maliciousness, are friendly in passing.
The incidents above were done by adult neighbors, not children. Some other incidents, for example for some time after moving in somebody would shine a laser pointer in the front window, could have been done by kids. Sometimes kids are on the street walking by, and shining a laser pointer is not something an adult would do, but the dumping garbage, and breaking fruit trees, were done by adult neighbors.
9) There is a lot of insulation placed around the house which substantially lowered heating costs last year, but it was placed mainly for effect and not much attention was given to esthetics. I was okay with loose fiberglass batts everywhere, and that does reduce heating costs, but if you want a more mainstream interior decoration then you will have to figure out some way to make it presentable.
The bulk of the heating cost in the winter is the garage, and you could cut heating costs substantially by not heating the garage. ****The problem is that there is a Modine heater that heats the garage and you have to figure out how to drain and/or remove the water from that.
update 2024 / At this point I am no longer heating the garage.
10) Something has to be done with the south side of the basement crawl space. Underneath the garage is earth, and where that meets the basement there needs to be a retaining wall or something. It could be fixed with a strong panel that holds the dirt in place, or with cinderblocks.
11) The deadbolt on the north door does not align properly when it is cold, and the main door also doesn't close well when it is cold. The garage door i.e., where a car would go, does not go up, as far as I can tell, and the back garage door i.e., regular door that leads to the back of the house, opens outward so probably shouldn't have a handle.
A lot of other trivial things might need work depending on your tastes. The house was built in the 1940s so it is possible, or likely, that there are other issues I am not aware of.
12) There is not the refrigerator in the photo, just a small 3.3 cubic foot mini fridge. I accidentally punctured the refrigerant reservoir when scraping ice from it so now it is just a well insulated igloo cooler. I'll leave various appliances, cookware, tools, etc.
13) The pipes under the bathroom and kitchen sinks need to be changed, and the kitchen faucet works but is of unusually low quality, it is literally made out of plastic and would break if you dropped a baseball on it, but it works.