#4 - Buy The Ugly House, Silly!

It never ceases to amaze me when I watch these home renovation / house flipping / real estate shows on HGTV. Time and time again a property sits around until somene drops a few thousand bucks on paint and repairs, stages the place, and then buyers are all over the place, and a bidding war ensues! If you take any notice of these shows, they illustrate the simple fact that when buying a home, a purchaser is willing to spend up to five or even ten times the money that a seller will put into fixing a place up! Does it make any sense to buy a house for say $350,000 that is nice and pretty and staged, when the same place could be had for up to tens of thousands of dollars less because it is in need of paint? Save yourself tens of thousands of dollars by not getting sucked into the real esate buying phenomenon of staged homes. Find the right house, and get a better price because it is a bit dumpy!