Estate sale=gut renovation?

T, I am either brave enough (or crazy enough) to want an estate sale apt. When I see a listing as 'estate', I assume it needs a gut reno; which is not to say that you couldn't live there for a while as you figure out the best course for renovation and accrue funds. It's all relative, right? What is considered to be an acceptable living condition for one person may seem beyond horrible to another.

An estate sale, by most basic definition, is an apt. that is for sale because the owner is dead and heirs are trying to sell it. An estate sale doesn't have to be a wreck or a place where the owner lived for 40+ years, but that seems to usually be the case. At least when the word 'estate' makes its way into a listing, this is how I interpret it.

Gut renovation: it means updating everything on both sides of the walls: plumbing and electrical, CAC if applicable, phone, speaker, cable wires as well as refinishing all of the visible surfaces (floors, walls, ceilings, woodwork details, perhaps window and door replacement) and then adding new kitchen and baths. You might even get into shifting walls and reformatting the space. All in all, a long, expensive job, but one that will eventually allow you to live in a space that you really like.

An estate sale occurs because its owner died and the owner's estate wants to liquidate illiquid assets.

Whether the apartment needs a gut renovation depends upon the condition of the apartment, not whether the person selling it is alive or dead. That said, it is generally true that apartments that belonged to older people who have died are outdated and so would need gut renovations.

Its possible the co-op could force the new owner to make 'minimum renovations?'

it's your life and if you buy it, your apartment, no one says you have to renovate... idiot...

Bugelrex, my coop requires anyone doing plumbing-related renovations to replace the feeder lines back to the risers. I don't know that we've ever REQUIRED someone to do a renovation, but it is generally expected that people will do some work if they are buying really outdated units. An example of how board policy would increase renovation costs: I priced out renovating my pre-war bathroom (which had already gone through one renovation, so it wasn't in true original condition). The cost nearly doubled because I need to do the feeder replacement. If I were just replacing fixtures and slapping up new tile, it would be half the cost.

anybody want to throw out a ball park price per sq ft not including kitchen and bathrooms?

The estate coops I looked at were universally not placed I would live without renovating. Without exception the ones I viewed were disasterous. My goal was to find one with good bones, at a great price, and spend money saved to bring the place up to market value but with updates completely to my liking versus someone else's. Why are most basically uninhabitable? Unless the death was untimely, the owner was old. Maybe they updated when they retired 20 years ago. But older people are mostly on fixed, limited incomes and the updates often stop about two decades before death based on what I've seen. In some apts I saw evidence of the owner's physical decline with grab rails affixed unattractively and intrusively all over the place, bedroom walls ripped open to allow a wheelchair to access the bathroom, and other geriatric accomodations that would not be easy to live with for a younger buyer.

The practical impact of this? Bathrooms are a wreck with tiles coming loose, yellowed finished, water damage from cracked and deteriorated caulk and grout. Mirrors are chipped and tarnished, sinks cracked, faucets worn and leaky. Kitchens have avocado laminate counters from 1974 with peeling edges, Caloric ovens that haven't been cleaned in 10 years or more, cabinets with doors falling off or mismatched by one or two that were replaced by the owner's helpful nephew 8 years ago. Radiators and doors have 20 layers of paint. Floors have been refinished too many times to redo again without nails sticking out or are parquet that wasn't very high end when installed in 1960 and is now warped. Walls are often a disaster of scars, layered paint, holes, patches, etc. Closets are often poorly cut plywood shelves in highly ineffecient configurations.

Could you live in all this? Sure. You could live in a box if you had to I suppose. Would I want to? No way. To spend hundreds of thousands to end up living like a squatter would tip the scales for me to renting until I could afford to buy and renovate.

I feel like no one is really answering the OP's question.

That's because it's a really complicated topic -- like, do you need that knee surgery, or can you live with the twinge?

In general, if you can possibly afford to, do the floors before you move in. That's a few thousand -- but it takes days to sand a floor and to coat it, and the dust is horrible, and the smell is horrible, and it's pretty much annoying enough that it's nearly impossible to live in the living room while the floors are being done in the bedroom. I did the floor in one bedroom in the beach house, and I locked the cat in the basement, and she pretty much went bananas and tunnelled through half the house in order to come back and check on me. That's pretty symptomatic of what floors are like.

Everything else CAN be compartmentalized, if you're strapped. Wiring and pipes and rebuilding walls and ceilings and repainting CAN be done a room at a time -- though it's awful to live for months without a kitchen, it's possible.

Just bear in mind that you're going to pay for waiting -- for example, a bathroom job might be $12K if it's fairly cosmetic but twice that if you've got to fix the pipes while you're in there.

The stuff that you don't get around to -- affects both the price and speed of your resale. I want to sell the studio and I never got around to doing the bath and the kitchen; my choices now are $25K worth of freshening or discounting the place by $50K to get a buyer like you to come clean up my mess for me.

Even if I do that, it will sell "slower" as a project than it would updated.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

There is an apartment that I looked at recently that answers to this exact question. The apartment is priced to sell but it needs an overhaul. Could you paint it and get new kitchen stuff at IKEA...sure. This is always an option. To live in a space that is experiencing renovation is a nightmare. If it's going to be your home you've got to renovate before you move in. I recieved a rough estimate on a gut reno for a 1700sq.ft. apt....$325,000. Read it and weep. A little checking around confirmed this contractors estimate. I asked him how long? He said,"plan for a year from the time you close!. Plan for the worst...hope for the best". In todays market don't forget to add the reno costs, cost of living elsewhere and, the painful time consuming horror of construction. Now if you can get that estate sale at a steal......................

Just to balance the scales... I've seen a few "estates" - mostly on Park and CPW - that were absolutely beautiful. The common denominator? Household help and buildings with great staff. Of course, sudden, untimely death is a plus too.

My parents moved into their apartment when they married during World War II. It was a rental for the vast majority of their tenancy but they did invest in "updated" refrigerators and a few other improvements over the years because they knew they weren't moving (in fact they eventually annexed the adjoining apartment after I arrived). Otherwise nada, aside from periodic painting and floor sanding which eventually left the floors full of cracks and holes. Eventually I purchased the apartment, my father was already deceased and my mother wanted "band aid" changes made which I was reluctant to do because I knew whoever purchased the place would need to gut rennovate so I would be adding no value for anything I invested in. With my mother declining, was thinking of moving in myself but my mother would not allow a gut renovation with temporary relocation, and I could not consider living in the place in its current condition. The wierd thing is that my mother was one of those old school "homemakers" whose house was always sparkling and meticulous--it was really depressing to see it so down at the heels.
Anyway, my mother passed away after living in the apartment for 65 years. I can't imagine anyone living there without a gut rennovation--I wouldn't and I grew up there. I know the people I sold the apartment had contractors set to start immediately after closing, I'm sure it looks gorgeous now...and I think my mother would enjoy seeing it although she'd probably say "not my style, too modern".