Incrementally Diminished

Regular reader and commenter and interfriend Gringo has apparently pointed out our little hovel project over at the Chicago Boyz website. I’m always grateful for this sort of attention. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Chicago Boyz before, but I recognize the names of some of the contributors. The title of the post in question is The Most Wrecked House on the Market, and to my semi-delight, the house in question is in Frankfort, Maine. I’ve been in Frankfort, Maine at least once, and I’m quite familiar with the larger burghs that surround it. I’m familiar with the General Grant style of the house in question, too. So the author has my nose, as they say.

Now is generally the juncture in the proceedings where I disagree, of course. I’ll try to avoid becoming unintentionally disagreeable. I am a serial failure at that, but we do try. The most wrecked house on the market? I think not. Actually, I know not.  Not even in Maine.

It’s vanishingly easy to find much worse than that in Maine, and in much less desirable locations than Frankfort. Viz:

Of course, if you need more examples of arson-ready domiciles, you can always refer to Great Moments in Maine Real Estate.

Now let’s take a look at what they think is “The Most Wrecked House on the Market“:

Hmm. I said, let’s look at it. Bah, there’s a tree in the way. Let’s try again:

Well, now we’re getting somewhere. The tree is clearly a maple. Probably a sugar maple, but it’s hard to tell.  Dadgum it, fortune favors the bold and ill-informed, so I’m going to stick my neck out and say it’s an acer sacchurum. There may or may not be a house behind it.

No, I mean it this time. Let’s look at it:

For crying out loud, where is that door? Why is it pictured in a vertical letterbox? Are you trying to sell this house, or aren’t you?

Well, you see, you can’t really tell anything, because realtors refuse to do their jobs. Their only job is to convey information, and open the door if it’s locked. It doesn’t  matter if they can or can’t do these things, they won’t, so there’s no difference, really. There maybe one useful photograph of the exterior, and none of the interior. Hell, I’m pretty sure the only picture of the front of the house is taken without getting out of the car.

Never mind, I’ll do a driveby and we’ll see what we can see:

Now we’re getting somewhere. According to my new best friends at Chicago Boyz, this house needs nothing short of gasoline and a match. I’m not qualified to argue about arson with people associated with Chicago in any way, but I don’t see any cows or lanterns in the yard, just an old Sunfish sailboat. I’ll cut the author some slack. Both she and I are laboring under imperfect information. That’s the primary tool in the real estate agent’s toolbox, so we’re cooperating nicely by drawing conclusions without knowing much of anything. But the author says her daughter is an agent, and she says houses like this one aren’t worth saving. In internet yelling, that’s called an appeal to authority. It’s also like waving a red flag at a bull to say it within my earshot.

I’m trying to avoid snark, because we’re talking about relatives here. But in my experience, which is voluminous, real estate agents are the least competent person to offer input on the renovation of a house. Any house. They have no idea what things cost, how to go about fixing them, or what is dangerous as opposed to plain icky. They don’t know a cape from a split level. In Maine, their advice usually consists of informing you that can install ceiling fans in every room, paint every room gray, and vinyl side the place. If that won’t do the trick to double your money, you can always knock the place down and put a double-wide on the lot.

Let’s go around the side:

There’s a junk removal sign by the stop sign. There’s one problem solved. The authoress has made an assumption that the interior must be a total wreck because the realtor refused to enter it. That assumes facts not in evidence, your honor. Your typical realtor thinks they’re participating in a very, very unfashionable fashion show at all times, and they don’t draw any distinctions between icky and dangerous. They’re wearing open toed shoes and won’t go inside.

So I’m a pro. What can I tell from looking at the Google Maps images and the listing?

1. The house is architecturally interesting and significant. It’s worth saving for its own self.

2. Previous owners listened to a realtor, and put a big addition on the back, even though the main house is probably 3,000 ft2. As is usual, they thought construction was like going mall shopping for cute tops, and ran out of money before they finished. The addition has a solid roof, however, and modern windows and doors. It also has stainless steel chimneys galore, for wood burning appliances. There’s nothing much visibly wrong with it, except it’s a dumb idea.

3. The eaves are quite rotten. The authoress assumes that means it’s been raining indoors for decades. Not so fast. It’s a General Grant house. The eaves project from the sidewall of the house. They need beaucoup work, but it’s not raining indoors from the eaves.

4. The (granite) foundation is OK, at least as far as I can see. The sidewalls are perfectly flat and don’t sag anywhere. This is a big, big plus.

5. The glass is still in the windows. That’s a good sign. It’s probably not full of vandalism and raccoons.

6. The front porch is in great shape, which is miraculous. Even the balustrade is complete and restorable.

7. There’s very little paint left on the siding. It makes it easier to repaint. And there is no evidence of water getting in the sidewalls. The paint weathered away, it didn’t jump off because of water leaks.

8. The original wood sashes are there. They have a curved top, which is kinda wonderful. All the trim around all the windows (but one) is in really good shape.

9. It’s only $79,000. I’ll bet you they’d jump at a lot less than that, too. The house probably has a well and private septic. A lot of land nearby with those would probably cost way more than that.

10. Bangor, which is a plenty big metrop to find a job in, is only 30 minutes north of this place. Bucksport, which is lovely, is a few minutes away. Belfast, which is in the running for the prettiest town on the eastern seaboard, is twenty minutes south, hard by the Atlantic Ocean. My children performed at the Belfast Harbor Fest once. Taxes are low, and Frankfort is a nice place to live. Hardly anyone lives there to prove my point. I gather that everyone wants to step over bums, syringes, blood and shell casings, and human excrement to get to their crummy apartment building in a big city. You’ll have a hard time amusing yourself like that in Frankfort, Maine.

OK, so I’ll admit that Ray Charles could tell this house has been neglected. I say thank god for that. You see, that house can be restored because it’s been neglected. Neglect is the optimal situation. The former denizens no doubt exhausted their Home&Garden ceiling fan/slipper tub/gray floor urges on the crazy addition, and left the real house alone. Neglect is always preferable to active, flipper malice. I can fix neglect. As they say, I can’t fix stupid.

Let me give you an example. In 2022, someone bought a house down the street from this one for under a hundred grand. It looked like this:

There’s an iconic Maine house under the plastic carapace. It was an end-entry Greek Revival farmhouse that the realtor no doubt would call a “cape-style home.” It has a small version of the “Little House, Big House, Back House, Barn” that Mainers used to build to work the land. It was defaced with vinyl siding and plastic shutters and so forth, but the bones weren’t bad.

Well, they’re (trying to) flip it for $260,000 now. Here’s what you get:

The interior is a ridiculous incoherent gray mess, like someone ate a Home Depot and vomited it in the house.

So I can assure you that I could probably fix that pale yellow wreck of a place, and wish I could. And it would probably be worth a half a million when it was done. But I couldn’t fix the second house. How can you explain to a realtor that you’d have to rip out $160,000 of plastic crap and start over again? That is the house that’s not worth anything anymore, because it’s fixed. This is the house that should be bulldozed. But it won’t be, and the other one will, and the world will be incrementally diminished.