After being forced to withdraw an offer on a home in Pittsburgh during the winter of 2017, my wife and I did not tour a single house until September of 2018 (more on that later). I hadn’t realized how long of a span that was until I started writing this post. For years we had been scouting homes in Pittsburgh every few months, whenever we were in for holidays or just visiting family and friends. After the debacle in 2017, we were out of ideas. We still didn’t have any substantial savings, we were still paying off student loans, and our jobs continued to lock us in New York City.
About New York City. We moved to the city in 2013 as wide eyed kids just out of graduate school. My wife had been there previously during undergrad (if you were interested in where a chunk of our student debt came from), but despite growing up in upstate New York, I had only been to the city for occasional day trips. We grabbed the first apartment we visited, a $1,600 a month, 800 square foot, 1 bedroom in a pre war building in Washington Heights. It was a big apartment by New York standards with a large foyer and kitchen and still had hints of a more glorious past in the molding and high ceilings. That said, it was also dirty, roach infested, rat infested, and plagued with the problems you get with slumlords. After the city discovered our building had been illegally siphoning natural gas to fuel a bootleg laundromat in the basement, cooking gas for our entire building was shut off for 6 months, including the period of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hot water and heat were frequently out for long periods of time. Cigarette smoke filled the hallways. We were occasionally woken up by gunfire in our alley way. Eventually a young man was gunned down on the doorstep of our building.
Anyway, one of the reasons we didn’t look at any new houses between February 2017 and September 2018 is that we had become resigned to staying in the city and had started to look at apartments. Somehow our crappy apartment had a value of 500k, so we had to look even further north in Manhattan to find apartments that were anywhere close to our price range. We saw a few one bedrooms but never once considered making an offer. They were still well above what we wanted to pay and were more than we were currently paying in rent. More than that, in our hearts we still hoped to find a grand old house we could make our own. Those dark one bedrooms in pre war buildings didn’t generate the same spark in us.
I have mentioned before that I grew up in Albany, NY which is about 3 hours North of New York City. If you are not from New York, one thing you might be surprised (or not) to know is that New Yorkers can be very territorial. Western New Yorkers don’t like people from Albany. People from the North Country (the Adirondacks) don’t like anyone from farther south. People from Albany believe they are the most important in the State. New York City and Long Island are, independently, their own separate worlds, far removed by distance and culture from the rest of the Empire State. As a self assured Albany child, I could conceive of living in New York City but NEVER the Hudson Valley, the area North of the City below Albany. Westchester? Rich jerks. Yonkers? Industrial. Never. Not once chance. Those places were not worth my time. It’s 2018 now. My wife and I have looked at NYC apartments but don’t love them. We want to get out of the city but don’t know how to feasibly do that with our jobs.
Cue the Hudson Valley.
My wife was surprised when I showed her my first Zillow listing from the Hudson Valley. That was never an area we had considered before. I mean, we had looked at Zillow homes in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Boston, in Ohio, but never Southern New York. Homes in the Hudson Valley were pricey. Most were out of our price range, however, there seemed to be stock within our price range in Poughkeepsie, a roughly two hour twenty minute drive north from the City. For added context, I travel frequently for my work. If I am near an airport within a couple hours of New York City I can generally get to where I need to go for work. While I am based in New York City, I do not usually work in the city itself. On the other hand, my wife has always worked at places that require 5 day per week minimums in the City. As we started to look at Poughkeepsie for homes, we were forced to consider the commute because she would be expected to travel that two and a half hours, twice a day, five days a week, to get back and forth from work.
Whether or not that commute was possible or sustainable was TBD. First things first, we decided to visit Poughkeepsie to see the area and understand if the houses there fit what we were looking for. I connected with a realtor and set up visits for 3 homes. The first was a full rehab candidate that I had found on Zillow. Priced at 150k, it was a huge and beautiful Victorian with a grand staircase and slate roof, that also had not been occupied since hurricane Irene in 2011. It was missing windows, had a hole in the roof with buckets to collect water, no longer had any plumbing (the copper had been stripped out during the financial crisis), and had an unspecified warning of “strong mold” in the basement.
https://www.zillow.com/…/39-Virginia-Ave…/83937011_zpid/
The second was a nearby home picked out by the realtor. It was priced at 330k and had a bit more of a craftsman feel to it. While not as grand or flashy as house one, the house did not need any major rehab. It was cute and within a seemingly quiet neighborhood.
https://www.zillow.com/…/14-Crescent-Rd…/30083568_zpid/
The third home was also one of my Zillow finds and was an absolute Victorian stunner. It was fully redone and needed nothing. It was located in the Poughkeepsie historic district and included a full apartment in the basement that could be rented out and a large lush garden.
https://www.zillow.com/…/19-Garfield-Pl…/30082840_zpid/
House 1
Before we entered house 1, my wife pulled me aside and explained that the house needed too much work for us. We had been forced to withdraw from our offer in Pittsburgh because the expected work exceeded our capacity to do it. While our incomes had gone up slightly since then, it wasn’t much and we still had roughly the same handicap. As we got in the house though, our mood started to change a bit. Yes, the house needed work but we were drawn in by the potential. The woodwork was still in pretty good shape and the house was huge. We started to envision parties with family and friends, and Christmases in the parlor. Given that the house was essentially gutted, it was ripe for imagination.
The first floor had no major issues aside from the obvious. As we moved up to the second floor, we started to see where the previous owner had stopped their renovations. Central air ducts hung unsteadily from the ceiling where they had been placed but never fully completed or secured. Moving on to the third floor attic, the space was large but, oh boy, I didn’t expect to see a hole in the roof THAT big. According to the realtor, the roof had potentially been in disrepair since Irene in 2011. Most of the roof looked in ok shape, but several large pieces of slate had broken and shifted, causing the leak. A tarp had been unsuccessfully placed on the floor of the attic to stop water from leaking down to the second floor (why not on the roof to stop it from getting in?). It was surrounded by buckets filled with water. The last part of the house we visited was the basement, which supposedly had been flooded also during Irene. The realtor put her shirt over her mouth as she opened the basement door (bad sign?). BOOM. That was the sound of the smell. It was like all the mold in the basement had formed a boxing glove that punched me in the face. I would have respiratory problems for a few weeks after that. Apart from the obvious black mold, the basement didn’t look all that bad. We walked out of the house and got back in the car, ready to get to home #2. My wife turned to me with excitement in her eyes. “We could do this!” she said.
House 2
In the story of Goldilocks, the middle porridge is, “just right.” This second house was, “just ok.” Don’t get me wrong, this second house was cute but it also was not inspiring. It has a fireplace and some stained glass and a nice central stairway with a balcony on the second floor. The home did not appear to need any major renovation, although I saw a partially buckled wall in the garage which is built into a hill. I would like to say more but both my wife and I knew from the moment we stepped in the home that it was not for us. If we were going to make the move from the city, commute two hours each way, and take out a huge mortgage, the home had to be “the” house instead of just “a” house.
House 3
The third house on our list wasn’t really in our price range but it was too beautiful to pass up. The current owners had spent at least 15 years restoring it meticulously and were being forced to move suddenly. I never got the full story but it seemed like the husband’s job got transferred across the country. My wife and I walked into house 3 knowing that we were not buying it because of the price. The realtor let us in through the front door and we were in awe. This home looked like it walked straight out of “This Old House” magazine. The foyer, with its grand staircase and stained glass was immaculate. The kitchen and accompanying butler’s pantry were freshly renovated and stunning. Everything was so clean and bright. There was fresh paint on the walls and the glass sparkled. The house was filled with great hardware touches, including push button lights that were also dimmers. If there was one negative about the house it was that, despite being a large Victorian, it felt a little small. Obviously it is not a small house, but it felt a little cramped. It wasn’t as big or open as House number 1. The space felt fine for family gatherings but larger parties could be an issue. A second “negative” is that the house was done. From the basement to the attic it was finished. It needed no renovations, no painting, and no upgrades at all. All of that is not necessarily a negative, but it was a stark contrast from house number 1 that needed everything but was full of imagination. We looked at the house and took no pictures apparently (looking through my phone records) since there were absolutely no areas of concern. We left and went back home.
Later that evening, my wife and I were back in our New York City apartment drafting an email to our realtor. We were making an offer on house #3. It was out of our price range but since it needed nothing, we figured that maybe, just maybe, we could stretch it. Our offer was for 20k under asking, hoping that the family needed to sell fast due to their situation. I clicked “send” on the email and then it was our turn to wait.
The Round Hill House 