SoapZone Community Message Board

So my mom absolutely hates where she's living and it's costing a ridiculous amount of money (it's gone up $700/mo in just three years), not just for rent but food but the food sucks so she ends up cooking all the time herself anyway. She offered to give us a chunk of money for the down payment on a house if she could come move in with us. So we've been searching.

There's one house that fits so many things - a large kitchen, a decent piece of land, four bedrooms, an apartment in the basement. But the kitchen needs renovation; most of the appliances look like they're original to the house, which was built in 1966. The cabinets seem to be in good shape so we could maybe get by with just painting/refinishing them. I'd need an island put in. There's no exhaust fan at all, anywhere in the kitchen. The floor is sloping. All the hardwood need to be refinished. The basement kitchen seems great but the entire layout makes no sense and needs to be reconfigured. We'd need to add a chair lift for the basement stairs. It's oil heat and well and septic. We don't know about the age of the roof or the HVAC system.

My brother is a general contractor and he said that there's probably $50-75k of renovations that need to be done, including new appliances. And while the per square foot cost is really good, the house is at the top of our budget BEFORE renos. I keep getting texts and calls from my mom about if we've put in an offer yet and I have to tell her that I just don't think it's going to work. My brother recommended really lowballing them - the house has been on the market 82 days and has dropped in price twice. So I don't know that they'd go for such a drop. We also haven't gotten prequalified for a mortgage yet, though we both have excellent credit. Right now, if we bought it at close to the price they're asking, our mortgage would go up over $1500 from what it is now. If this had been last summer we might have just gone for it, but now we had to both replace our vehicles over the past 5 months and the car payments are nearly $900 for both of them together.

On the plus side, there are a bunch of houses that have just gone on the market that are definitely in our price range. But none of them would have more than a bedroom for my mom, not a full apartment like she wants. I also don't know if I can live with my mother again. I love her but living together is a LOT.

Anyway, I just needed to vent a little bit.