How YOU Can Afford a House in 2026!

We bought this $27,000 house and it needed a lot of love. There was a lot of foundation stuff, re-wasting up the house, new floor joists, everywhere basically in the house. There was a lot of big problems in the house that spent easily $50,000 of our budget. And I think the biggest concern that we had was any back taxes, any prior leans, anything that we needed to clean up. That's a little bit of a scary piece of purchasing one of these houses that you can get into someone else's trouble. What's up, rich friends? Welcome back to another episode of Network and Chill. I'm your host Vivian Tu, your Rich BFF, and your favorite Wall Street girly. There are two things I always heard about when it came to my generation and money. Millennials ate too much avocado toast and ruined the economy. And there's no chance in hell that any of us would have to be able to get to the bottom of it. And I think that's a good thing. And there's no chance in hell that any of us would actually ever be able to afford a house. And both of those things are, you guessed it, wrong. The number of first-time home buyers is half the historic norm, but it doesn't mean you should just count yourself out of the race, even if the housing market seems to be grinding to a standstill, there are still ways to sign your dream home. I should know because I did it. It just means you might have to get a little bit more creative. Luckily, the guests on today's episode of Net Worth and Chill know all about getting creative about home buying. Ethan and Elizabeth Finkelstein are the hands and brains behind who's afraid of a cheap old house. The HGTV show on HBO Max and Discovery Plus that follows the couple as they tour and restore houses all under $150,000. Their Instagram at cheap old houses has over 2.9 million followers, and they are stopping by today to share all their best-kept affordable house buying and renovation secrets with us. Ethan, Elizabeth, welcome to Net Worth and Chill. Oh, thank you, we're so excited to be here. Hey, Viv, it's great to be here. Thank you so much. And to kind of just warm us up, I would want to know if there was one feature that you could put into your dream home, whether it's like a realistic one or like a fantasy one, what would it be? Support for the show comes from Amazon. We've all been there. It's the night before your flight, and despite your best intentions, you've procrastinated on packing. Only to realize that your favorite travel-size moisturizer only has half a pump left, what we're not gonna do is stretch that half a pump over 10 days, and we're definitely not going to try and find it at the airport for a 200% markup. Not when there's Amazon. Get your essentials ahead of time or get them overnight if you live for the drama of panic packing. Shop Amazon and save on essentials, save the everyday. Fireplaces, ooh, all of them. We actually just put seven in a house. Seven? Story. Is your skin dry? I walk the walk. Yeah, yeah, but that's not the fireplaces, that's to me. What would be my, oh my gosh, there's so many housing fun things that you can add. I guess something that I've been geeking out about is a geothermal system for, it's underground heat, using underground heat. So we put that in this same house and it's electric heat, but it's a sustainable way of heating a house. So it's kind of an affordable way and it's really, you're not burning fossil fuels in the house. That's so thoughtful. Besides the fires, of course. Yeah, of course, of course. It's a balance. All right, I feel like I was going with a much more insane answer, was I wanted a slide that would go straight into a panic room. Well, that's Richie Rich, I mean, come on. That's my childhood dream, for sure. I think I gotta get out of my cheap old houses space a little bit and get more in your space. That's so funny. But today we are going to be talking all about cheap old houses and fun renovation projects of homes. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you guys got into the world of renovating? Elizabeth grew up in a cheap old house. It's kind of been in my bones. I watched my parents, they bought a house for under $100,000, it was from the 1850s, and they just restored it over the course of my childhood, and I watched them save their pennies, do the work themselves, really express themselves through that house. And so it's kind of been in my blood for a very long time, both seeing a house as a source of sort of creativity and expression and also just pride in your home. I mean, they had so much pride in that house, and the house was very special and special to me. But I think as Elizabeth and I met, we were both digital folks in the city, in New York City, and we met here in New York City, and we really wanted that home ownership dream. That was sort of our goal and dream. And before we got married, we kind of just started doing some steps, and Elizabeth got her master's degree, and we were both just working professionals, and we kind of did some little we work stuff where we would have like office spaces in Brooklyn, and basically kind of rent out spaces. So we were always like hacking this space issue because New York City is such an invaluable space for everything. And so that kind of helped us kind of get our leg up into, okay, we gotta like do some grind here to kind of afford this dream that we want is ultimately a house. So we looked forever for like a brownstone. Oh, I still want one. Yeah. And we knew, you know, Elizabeth's mom was always like, oh, you gotta like get out there and we can find one cheap. So this kind of led us on this perpetual hunt of finding an affordable house for ourselves. And this is, I don't know, maybe 10 or 11 years ago. And, you know, at the same time building our careers. And I think, you know, after kind of doing that, we afforded our first house. It was a $400,000 house, not so cheap, but we put 5% down. So that kind of allowed us to kind of get into the home ownership game here in Niaq, New York, just north of the city. But I was still working and commuting. So I was giving up a lot of my freedom or time at home to kind of do that. And then that kind of let us dip our toes into the restoration world of fixing up a house and really diving in. We don't come from contractor backgrounds. We're both digital professionals who were dying to kind of use our hands and get more experience at restoration. Kind of a big philosophical question, but why do you think owning a home was such a big goal for you guys? Well, we have talked about this so much. I think it's very built into the American psyche that if you don't own a home, you have somehow failed. And I feel like I'm the worst messenger for this, but I completely disagree with that. I don't think everybody should have a home. I think financially it makes sense for some people. And also just lifestyle-wise, it makes sense for some people. I think there are a lot of places where it makes a lot more sense to rent. And I think there are a lot of people who, you know, don't want to be spending all their time working on their house. And we know from experience, we happen to love it. And if you are the kind of person that wants to do that, that's great. But I think for us, though, we're just house people. I really, and I think because of my upbringing, it was such a source of expression for me. And we find that so many members of our cheap old houses community really want this. They want to nurture it. They want to work with their hands. It feels so different from the digital world we've created in so many other ways and the ways they're spending their days at work. And you guys mentioned looking for cheap houses broadly. Your first home, even at $400,000 in the state of New York, is relatively affordable. What are the ways that these days, people can find affordable housing? And I ask this because I see so much on social media about, oh, you should buy a house at an auction or the foreclosure homes, but what is legit and what's not? Right. Yeah, there's, I think starter homes are one of the most interesting phenomenons piece of this that we're missing as just a overall economy. We don't have a lot of starter homes. We have a lot of apartments and then we have some townhouses and we ended up buying a 1200 square foot house. It was $400,000. Everyone looked at us like, you're crazy to buy like that much square footage and to buy that. And it did well by us when we sold. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges, I think, is the lack of starter homes. But there's, I think a ton of avenues. We've talked about land banks. We've talked about the foreclosure market. COVID had a stop for that. Now it's kind of back up and running. Land banks, if your county has land banks, they can offload those tax foreclosures. We really don't post on cheap old houses foreclosures because we just post cheap houses all around the country. So I think location, location, location has been one of the biggest fallacies for us. I think for us to be able to create independent jobs that don't really require us to have a location has helped us break that code of location being the only way. And that was the biggest, I think, win for us anyway. Yeah, I think you have to open yourself up to different locations and you have to open yourself up maybe to a house that needs work. It's gonna be one of those things. There are a lot of places we post. A lot of houses in places that they're inexpensive because it's just the average cost of real estate there is a lot lower. So if you're looking in a more expensive area, you're gonna have a fixer upper. And when it comes to kind of like this perspective of like this generation right now, it's confusing. People are very stressed out about the housing market. Like from your perspective, who has the actual advantage? Who might be getting the shorter end of the stick? What are we looking at here? I think the biggest advantage is for people who aren't tied to a specific location. I think if you can, and I think that we live in the most exciting time for that right now because remote jobs are much more out there. Are there, I feel like everybody's trying to get forced back into office, no? Definitely forced back into office, but I think creativity in terms of jobs, I think there are more different types of jobs in different ways to create your own lifestyle than there ever have been in the past. I think there's, what we see is the creator economy in the younger generation creating their own jobs that never existed. And you have this dichotomy of a lack of the workforce of people coming into the workforce, but then you have people who are creating YouTuber jobs or creator jobs and they can work from anywhere. I've seen this guy who's a farmer who, I think he's in Australia and he does like weightlifting and does all this weird stuff. And he's like a creator in Australia. I don't know, doing this really weird obscure things that the internet kind of loves. So I think that's for regular jobs, I think yes, it's harder to kind of get a regular job working for a company that's remote, but creating your own job has never been a better time, kind of creating your own job and your own sort of capabilities through business. And in terms of like, if you're someone like me, I'm a young urban professional, I don't know anything about fixing upping, but like, if given the opportunity, like I know what your answer is going to be, would you rather buy a brand new build or buy a dump and then be able to restore the whole thing? And if you guys say it's better to buy and restore, like how does someone who maybe doesn't understand that process even get the knowledge to do that? Yeah, well, first of all, I think there's a little bit of an idea that all old houses are huge dumps that need 100% work and all new houses are moving ready and amazing. And I think there's a lot of nuance there. There are a lot of old houses that might need work, but you can prioritize that list. Not everything needs to be done day one. If it has major structural issues or water issues, that's the worst offender. Any water in your house, you have to seal up the house. New houses as well. I mean, yes, might be shiny and new now, but for the most part are built with subpar materials. Let's be honest, all houses need maintenance. All houses, new houses, old houses, everything. One to 4% of your purchase price every single year. So annoying. A lot of times with a restoration, you can get in at a lower closing cost, which allows you money to save up in the end. And I would truly rather work on a house that has quality materials that I can put my own stamp on and that maybe I can do slowly over time versus somebody else's either new flip that they did very quickly with subpar materials and their only goal was to get in and out as quickly as possible, where your goal is to buy a long-term sustainable asset. Those are not the same goal. So it isn't necessarily just newer is this and older is this. I think there's a lot of nuance in the middle of that. I think, yeah, buying a house in the middle of your question would be probably my perfect solution. Buying a house that's old enough, that has character and that's fun to work on and that you have projects but not and not new enough where you're spending, overspending on your mortgage and your daily living expenses, I think is kind of a great starter house for someone. But again, the problem is that these don't really exist. So then we kind of create ourselves these massive extremes, extreme for $800,000 house or a $27,000 house. And so it's just like, where's the sort of middle ground here for stuff and no, it's hard because I think if you, I would not recommend buying a really, really an expensive house if you don't know what's going on. I think you wanna get into the home ownership game, kind of learn a little bit about it and then kind of build on from there. It's just like, it's almost like a mini business. You don't wanna just jump into business and do everything all at once. You're never gonna get there. You're kind of managing this own little piece and nor maybe do you wanna get some $800,000 house. I think there's debt and problems in both sides, right? You can have an $800,000 house that you're way overleveraged and you're gonna have issues with later. So, you know, trying to find something in the middle that is attainable. And Elizabeth, you mentioned a little bit earlier, you just said a bunch of subpar materials, subpar materials. Point blank, do you think houses are crappier now than they used to be? Absolutely, I really- Tell me about that. So, a lot of older houses were built with old growth wood, which is wood that had had years and years and years to develop and it's sturdier, it's more solid. And I think now we're building with materials that are more quickly produced and honestly, they're just cheaper. It's also another thing is that materials are very expensive right now because of inflation. So, if you can fix an old house where the materials are already there, so for instance, if you wanna fix your floor versus replace it, even if it nets out to be the same cost because it's labor versus materials, you're putting your money toward a local craftsman and not to Home Depot, right? Like you're kind of, it's also where your money is going. So, it is a misnomer that everything in an old house is a better material than in a new house. But by and large, especially the very old ones that were built before Prefab came around, definitely have more quality materials. What's Prefab? Sort of in the 1950s, we started to build houses where there was sort of prefabricated materials that would come together and kind of put house together. So, you get aluminum windows. Oh, like a Lego house. Yeah, you just get materials. For instance, vinyl can't be replaced. In the old house world, we talk a lot about old windows because old wooden windows, you can fix, you can endlessly repair and patch wood. A vinyl replacement window has a shelf life of 15 years and then it goes in a landfill and you have to replace them again. So, materials that can be repaired versus materials you have to replace for a long-term investment. We were talking in the car on the way over here about how sometimes in this economy, you might not be able to move out of the house you're in. You might be in it for a lot longer and the stats are showing that people are living in their houses longer because they can't afford to move. And so, you want a house that you're gonna be able to live in long-term. So, making those long-term investments upfront, even though they might be more expensive or require more labor, is a better investment in the end. Oh my gosh, it's just like Terry Pratchett's boot story of like, if you buy a good pair of expensive boots, they last you season after season. Otherwise, within a month of wear of a pair of cheap boots, there's a hole at the bottom, there's water leaking in on a rainy day. Like, sometimes cheap is costly. Absolutely. And that's kind of the sort of fun misnomer about our name of cheap old houses is that these are really quality houses built with quality materials, but they're pretty inexpensive because people forgot them at one point. Okay, so I want us to pivot a little bit. Everybody who listens to the show wants to be taught how to do something. Let's just pretend, okay? I am about to go and purchase a quote unquote, cheap old house. I have $50,000 saved up in a high old savings account. I'm ready, I'm so excited. How would I do this? Like, walk me through like a pretend scenario and let's do it step by step and what are the things that I would prioritize? So did you purchase the house already and still have the 50 or are you? Oh, okay, great question. How about, okay, how about this? I have $50,000 that I spent on, no. I have $25,000 that I spent on the down payment and we'll say it's a, right now, half a million dollar home. So that's what, let me do the math really quick. That's 10% down. Okay, no, that's not right. 5% down, yeah. And we did that, we did a $400,000 house and 5% down on our first house. And then I'm paying PMI every single month, private mortgage insurance because I don't have 20% equity yet, but now I still have $25,000 left. I have this in theory, older home that was worth half a million dollars on the market. What do I do now? I wait for a while. I let that $25,000 grow. It depends on if you have water leakage and you have something urgent you have to do, then you have to fix it. But you see what the house is gonna kinda tell you at first. This is like the first three to six months. Okay, step one, three to six months, we are waiting. We had a water heater break. You want that money at the onset of that purchase to know what is already failing. And then you're like, oh wow, did they replace everything at that period 10 years ago or 15 or 20 years ago? And then we had our oven was kinda acting up and all these little things. And I think, that's how we did it anyway, was we waited to spend that 25,000. Now what we ended up doing was we increased our square footage. That was our second bigger investment that we spent probably $20,000 in, was increasing our square footage in the basement. We made it an office. We only had a 1,200 square foot house, it was tiny. And so we made more square footage and that immediately upped the value of the house. Which I think is, you have to do those small fixes, but then if you can or if is possible, that's what we did and I think it helped us in the long, long run. I think when you look at a house and you've just walked through it a couple of times, you have a lot of ideas of things you wanna do. And if you do things too quickly, first of all, you might live with them a little while and realize actually I kinda like the way it is and I'm not gonna spend that money. Like Ethan is saying, other priorities might come off that take precedent. So it's important to wait. Our last staff member just bought a $400,000 house, waited about, they're only in there a month. And they're getting used to home ownership, all the stuff and they're loving it. And then the furnace is like, hello, knock, knock, knock. I might be going out and they're like, oh God, this is a $9,000 issue. And they're not 100% ready, but they are thinking about this problem. So I'm glad that they waited before jumping into X, Y and Z little things. Because then they would be even more in the hole for other stuff. They'd be even more in the hole, exactly. So. Okay, so let's go off of that case. Say I do wait a couple of months, now we're on to step two. A problem has arisen. So there's a problem that we need to address, but maybe I also still wanna change out the kitchen. What does that look like? I think it's a little bit of, so a lot of old house restoration is either, you need time or you need money. You need time to be able to invest in learning some DIY tricks that you can do to save money. If you don't have that, you're obviously gonna have to pay someone to do it. So I think it's prioritizing which is which, what you can do. Are your kitchen cabinets okay? Cabinets are just boxes for things to sit on. Like a lot of times the cabinets are not the problem. You don't necessarily have to gut the entire kitchen, bring in everything new. If they're real wood cabinets, you might be bringing in less quality cabinets anyway. So look at what you can keep in the space and what small changes you can make that can go a really long way. So some fun things that are small could be countertops, some of your fixtures, maybe a new sink. Sure, the appliances. Hardware. Hardware goes a long way and it's not that expensive. Paint, wallpaper, something fun, tile in the space. That can go a long way that you can do yourself. We like to do one of the biggest tricks that we have is unfitted furniture in spaces. So it's antique. Can you ask, can you explain to me what unfitted furniture is? Like an unfitted kitchen. An unfitted kitchen, sorry. Yeah, so kitchen that's sort of composed of different pieces. So you might, you don't have to bring in sort of custom cabinetry to perfectly fit the space, but maybe you have a sort of antique hutch that you get on Facebook marketplace that has the same amount of storage as cabinetry would have, but it also adds character and it's the period of the house. And then maybe you have like a standalone sink and sort of a kitchen that isn't necessarily something that has to be custom built for your space because anything custom adds a lot more money. Cost, of course. So anything you can get secondhand or DIY you're always gonna save on. What are your, like just give me like your top three DIY favorite hacks. Easiest ways to level up a room. Support for the show comes from Amazon. Obviously we love a solid budget, especially for fun things like travel. But a vacation budget is one of those sneaky things that can grow and eventually get out of hand before you know it. And I'm not talking about surcharges on flights and hotels when you're trying to book during peak dates. I'm talking about all those last minute must haves, the neck pillow that'll perfectly match your plane outfit, those packing cubes that your favorite influencer just reviewed, and let's not forget the things for your home, like the new pet camera, except this one shoots treats across the room so you can still play fetch with your fur baby from afar. These are the things that add up if you're not careful and suddenly your fabulous little getaway can feel like more of a financial burden than a reward. Here's a tip, Amazon. Whether you're shopping for travel sized versions of your everyday essentials or indulging in an impulse buy that you swear will actually make your trip better, chances are you'll find it on Amazon for way cheaper than you would on the road. Which means you'll be relaxing on vacation and when you get home. Shop Amazon and save on essentials, save the everyday. Oh, I'm a big lighting person. I feel like people put bad lighting in places, makes all the, I love like switching up lamps with good shades and sconces. I'm always going around to antique stores, secondhand stores, buying good shades that glow really nicely. I feel like that's a big one for me. We have a room in our house that has, I'm not even kidding, a hundred different types of shades. I wanna buy it. It's our storage room of like, and she's not lying when she tells you about this lighting thing. I'm a big online auction person and I throw low bids on things that I love and I won like, how many lampshades? Like 400 lampshades one day and I'm like, this is my dream. This is how I find out that Elizabeth is the low baller on eBay. That's very funny. Yep. And it's shades and lights and light fixtures and we have collections of lights. Like part of our basement is full of hanging chandeliers and lights and things and she gets them rewired. She has a rewiring guy and she brings them to him and for $25, $50 he rewires like an antique something that could have been like gas done or, okay, we can go down a rabbit hole just on lights, sorry. What other time? Oh my gosh, paint, paint stripping, wallpaper. How do you put wallpaper up without the bubbles? Oh, it's tough. I mean, it's time, it's definitely time. What I like about these things though is they're DIY projects that are neither toxic nor are going to set your house on fire. I feel like that's where I draw the line. If there's very intense chemicals, and this is a personal choice. I know a lot of people who put a hazmat suit on and they get right in it and I'm kind of like if this is gonna horribly affect my health, I'm not gonna do it. And I don't really, I wouldn't necessarily wanna run my own electrical. That said, I know a lot of people who do it. So it's kind of a personal preference. But things like paint and decorative things, even tiling, I mean, if you mess it up, it's okay. You're out the cost of the tile or the paint, but you can go back and do it again. That's what I like about it. It's kind of light DIY and it's fun. It's fun, it gives you an instant result. And I think you, we can talk about the practicality of this and the finance side of this, but I think a lot of this is love and having fun with it. And I think a lot of people buy old houses because the character keeps them excited. And I feel like for me, that's been a huge part of it because there are times when it's very difficult. And you have to be able to see the beauty at the end of it. I think my favorite is just landscaping, curb appeal, getting that curb appeal up from the outside, cause that's the first photo that you're gonna see on the real estate listing. It's the first thing that someone's gonna walk up to the house and see and get a first impression. So that goes a long way. Okay, now, so we've done our step one, we waited. Now we've done our step two. We have done some of the cheaper DIY projects. I think Elizabeth was so kind to share that we would not be wearing our hazmat suits. We as a team have decided we're not doing that cause I don't wanna do that either. Ethan will do that. Ethan will do that, scary. But we have decided as a unit that we are not doing that for this scenario. How do you find a good professional, a good contractor, a good person who can, you know, the electrical, the rewiring guy, because I have heard so many horror stories of people who give money to a contractor who then gets a subcontractor and then somehow my friend is out $300,000 and has nothing to show for it. Right. This is like everything in life. It does take time. Even, we have been doing this now. We do this professionally and we work with people all the time who do it and it happened to us. The first few people we hired, really, remember that we brought in for some of the houses. Like we, you just kind of have to go through the process. You have to find people, you sometimes have to mess up and then you find your people. And then once you get in with your people, you have people that you can call and trust. My favorite way to basically know and to work with folks is to test. And it's just like running a business. You're testing someone to kind of see if they're a good fit for you. Test on a small project. Sometimes it's hard to get those contractors in to do those small projects. I get it, but it pays off in a long term because if you do that test and you see the quality of workmanship that they give and the follow through for that small project, you know you can trust them for the bigger project and build that relationship and build that trust. I think that's, it takes a while though because you're really building that network of folks who you can call upon. And they're gonna answer your texts a lot quicker when you've already done some work with them than some rando that you found on the internet that you're, or someone that you are getting. You're just a lead. Right, you're just a lead. And I think obviously asking friends and neighbors and people in your local area that have had good work relationships with people. And when it comes to old houses, I definitely find there are contractors who are fixers and like to look at something and figure out how to fix it. And there are contractors that are gonna constantly be like, just replace it with something new. And you want the people who think in terms of fixing because when it comes to an old house, you're gonna wanna try to maintain as many materials that are original to the house as possible. And if a contractor tells you to replace it, it's often because they don't know how to fix it and their default is to just put a new thing in. I also heard a designer once say, and I thought this was really good advice, find someone whose default is your standard. So if somebody normally does something this way and you're asking them to do it this special way that you really want and they're figuring out on the job, when you're not looking, they're gonna go back to their default. So try to find someone whose default matches your standard for what you're looking for. Oh, I love that piece of advice. Is there like a step after that? So say like we've gotten this contractor, they've done good work. Like once you're quote unquote happy with your house, do you keep putting work into it? Or you will keep putting work into it. It's a misnomer, first of all. These houses are never done. You have to fall in love with the fact that your house is just going to be a project. Now it's not gonna be the huge project that was when we bought it, where you have to fix the foundation and the roof and maybe all the other things, but. Those are our projects, not necessarily everyone else's. Don't just go buy a house that needs all that. But yes. Yeah, but it will get easier. And I think the more that you can get in the habit of just constantly maintaining your house, the less of those huge projects you're gonna end up having. And there's a little bit of a reputation that when you are buying an older home, they can be a money pit. Obviously, I'm sure people who have limited sources of money and are buying a cheaper older home, they have a budget set in their mind. But how do you also then assess what the total budget would be to do all the things that you want? Like is there like a little calculator online that we can use or is it finger to the wind? There are some AI apps and stuff that are coming out. But I think in terms of just like figuring out your overall budget for what you're looking to do, I think working closely with a contractor. And I think initially if you're testing, you're doing a small project and then you're kind of getting that set up. And then you can say, okay, now I have a multi-phase project. Let's line item this thing out and let's get a signed contract going. And then you're in agreement. I think we just ended a project that was a full-on house restoration and we got the CO last week. So we're feeling really good that everything lined up. The only thing that were different was the cost of materials. And that's great when you kind of can land on that partnership with somebody. And what's a red flag that buyers should be aware if they see in an old home that you're just like absolutely not would never ever take this project on? Hi friends, quick pause in our show to take a question from my besties in phone a friend presented by Amazon. MJ asks, what are some sneaky travel costs people forget to budget for, especially in the summer? Summer travel can be such a budget trap because everyone's focused on the big ticket items like flights, hotels and rental cars, but it's all those little sneaky costs that'll get you. Here's some smaller fees that can add a quick that you should watch out for. One, the gotcha fees. Hotels might come up with hidden fees that jack up the price of your stay, especially at beach or city destinations. They tack on mandatory resort fees of 30 to $75 a night that cover amenities you may never use, things like the pool, the gym, the lobby, wifi, et cetera. These are often not included in the advertised nightly rate so always check the full price breakdown before booking. Beyond hotels, even vacation rentals hit you with cleaning fees that can be $100 to $200 plus on top of your nightly rate. And don't even get me started on airlines. They now have baggage fees, seat selection fees, and some airlines are even charging for carry-ons. Make sure you know how much your ticket will actually cost you in reality, not just in fantasy land. With how much you are bringing, what is it going to cost? So what should you do? Build in a 20 to 25% buffer on top of your main travel costs for all of these little extras. That way you're covered for any unexpected expenses or I'm on vacation splurges. It's always better to be overprepared now. Back to our show. So I'll preface by saying that pretty much everything is fixable. Some things are very expensive. So it kind of depends when you go in with your budget. If you notice severe cracking in the walls, where it looks like the house is settling in places, especially as you get to the upper stories, I would say that might be an indication that the foundation might need to be looked at. Active water issues, but again, it might be a small patch in the roof or it could be having to replace the whole roof. Some things might also be sort of residual and it may have been caused by something that was fixed by a prior owner. So you need to look at the house history. Some things that look really terrible upfront are less terrible than you think and can be controlled. For instance, sometimes you walk in these old houses or we see a lot of cheap old houses where there's like all of the paint in the house is just totally peeling. And that's probably just because there was a temperature control issue in the house that may not have caused further issues. And once that's fixed, it's fine. And you just kind of have to scrape the paint off and repaint it and that's okay, but it looks like a big issue. Really scary. There could also be issues where, it doesn't look like much and then you find something bigger. Christiana, who works with us, who bought a cheap old church that she's now living in, when she walked in, there was a giant hole in the floor at the church. And she's like, oh my gosh, this is a huge problem. She talked to a contractor and he's like, you just put Joyce and a few boards over it and you fix the floor, it's not a big deal. But sometimes things that look like giant holes of the floor really aren't that bad. And one of our favorite tips is when you're looking at a house, if you look at it on a rainy day, a really rainy day, you can see where the water is the biggest problem for houses and any house and old houses specifically. But if you're looking at a house and you see water infiltrating, you can at least see where the problem areas are or where it's puddling up in the yard or whatever, in the basement, if you have a roof leak, you can see it coming through the roof. That's such a hot tip to go see places on a rainy day. Cause then you actually know what it looks like, like what the lighting is when there's no sun. Right. Right, right, right. Welcome to the Northeast. Now let's talk a little bit about money. Like obviously there's DIY, but what other resources are out there for me to be able to save money on buying a home, renovating that home, like especially when there might be multiple projects included some that are necessary, necessary, like ASAP water, furnace, or in others that are just like, it's nice to have. In terms of buying a house, I think our favorite tip really quickly is either a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA. You can take out 10,000, I think you would tell me if I'm actually correct there. But I think you can use that money without penalty for that first little nugget that you need to kind of get going. And then I think what we were talking about some other kind of ideas. Oh, if someone, if you're privileged enough where someone is able to give you a little gift, there's some gifts that you can get from a family member that you can get a little bit without them having a tax penalty. So know who your people are back there. You know, we were privileged enough where my grandmother was able to help us with our first down payment. She gave us $10,000. So those are two like little things. Obviously you're working hard, you're hustling, you're out there trying to make your money. And that's, but I think the traditional IRA or the Roth IRA is the first because you really need to start generating that flywheel for your wealth accumulation. If you're young, you're 20 years old, just even learning how to accumulate that money in your savings bank that you don't touch is the hardest training lesson you need to learn because life is expensive. And so just kind of accumulating that wealth. I think having a goal is huge. Having the mindset to just know that, okay, like this is what we're doing. We're trying to save for a house. If you don't have a goal, you're spending that money on that avocado, right? The toast. The avocados are not the problem. It's obviously the joke, but it's like, if you don't have the goal to save, then money's going all over. And then in terms of restoration. You know, a lot of people come to us and they say, I just bought a historical house. Are there any grants available? And there really aren't grants available to help you in your personal house. There are not a lot of handouts with this. So it's a lot of getting creative. There is a federal tax credit that's available to houses that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which sounds like only major landmarks, but there are entire districts in neighborhoods where you might just pass through that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We bought a house that happened to be in a National Register District and you get a 20% dollar for dollar tax credit back on your income tax for all the work that you do in the house. In New York state, it can be carried over, which is cool, and it depends on your state. So you have to look up the state rules. But yeah, we had to have a roof redone. If you do things historically, it can be for anything. And we had to have our roof redone. We got a ton of money back for just doing our roof, which needed to be done anyway. Right, yeah, it's a one pager you fill out. So that has been really helpful for us. There's a lot of these unicorn-ish houses that are out there. The federal side, if you live in a multi-family and there's a residential above retail in small town America, all over the country, specifically New York is what we are most knowledgeable about. But you can get a 20% statewide tax credit and then another 20% for 40% total, for federal. So if you, I mean, for your, let's say your roof, you're getting potentially a 40% and it's a one page form that a lot of small towns in upstate New York qualify for if they're in a district, a historic district. And that's just regular maintenance. And I'm constantly telling our neighbors what they need to do, what form it is, and I'm saving them money just by helping. Cause I want to see our community get lifted up with this program. So it's kind of a cool program. In terms of restoring or fixing, we always think saving the materials, cause then you're saving on material costs. So if you're saving a floor, if you're saving anything that's good, we are crazy enough to take off all of our clapboard siding that was very old, plane it down and put it back up. But anything, and that was saving on materials. So maybe we save $5,000 on that materials by just refinishing it ourselves. So that's the biggest tip, I think. And also just a sustainable one and a fun one to kind of be able to reuse old materials. What else? There's a lot of like, you know, Well, there, I mean, little things, like for the house we just restored, we found a whole bunch of materials at a surplus auction, like a liquidation auction from these big box stores. So we got all of our flooring, all of our baseboard, you log in, it's an auction, and we, I mean, we got it for very little, and it was everything. Now you have to, it's not perfect, it's kind of big box stuff. So in some houses you pick and choose where you prioritize. So maybe this house had no flooring. So there wasn't any flooring to save. So we had to put new flooring in. We weren't gonna spend all of our money on really, really nice flooring because we wanted to prioritize it elsewhere. So for times like that, those things are really good. And it's just kind of talking, one of the nice things about buying a cheap old house in a community that has a lot of them is you're gonna meet other people that are doing it. And that's kind of instant community, which is awesome if you're moving to a place, especially where you don't know a lot of people. So you tend to meet the other people that are doing this and they're gonna tell you about the tax forecows or auction coming up and they're gonna tell you about the liquidation auction and you kind of just kind of get in there and that's part of the fun of it. Yeah, and there's online tools to help you with this stuff like Facebook Marketplace, things like that, where you can find materials for much cheaper that someone overbought an insulation or something very basic that you just need to kind of fix up your house. And they're selling it at a discount and maybe there's no taxes on it. Maybe it's just, and it's discounted also and you're getting it for a little bit cheaper. So yeah, those are some quick tips anyway. I love that. In terms of saving some money. I wanna go and take it to kind of like this modern day social media era. It feels like a home is an extension of your fashion, your brand, what have you, each individual person. And it feels like a lot of young people now think that their very first home purchase needs to look like the Penthouse apartment in the south of Central Park. All of these young people want to have that turnkey luxury they wanna walk in and everything already looks like it's straight out of like architectural digest. What is your perspective? Or like what is just some like come to reality advice you might have for this generation? It's so funny because I actually have a specific story about this. Tell us. I have a, my little half brother is like, I like fancy things. You know, he's straight out just tell. I like fancy things. I go, well, here's the deal. I like fancy things too. But, you know, I could be pulling up next to a Tesla or a Lamborghini and they spent a lot of money on that vehicle, but I pull up in my $5,000 old, it's 1977 Ford. And you know who everyone's gonna be coming over to is me because, and I bought that thing for $5,000. And that's just such a little source of pride for me because it's just like a, like I can have luxury. I find this to be my own sense of luxury though, and a little different way of looking at what luxury is. I get to drive around in a vehicle from another time and enjoy that. Of course, do I like modern things? Do I like, you know, Teslas and, you know, yeah, I've driven a few racetracks and stuff like that. I've gotten a Lamborghini, like, yeah, they're really cool. I can hear Ethan literally convincing himself during his episode. But, you know. It is funny when we drive that thing, how many people just smile at us because it's kind of the great uniter. It's cool. That truck. So I think, I think binding your own unique, authentic version of luxury or authenticity or difference maker. What's cool to you? What's cool to you is more valuable than anything you can purchase or buy. Or just what we're told conventionally is what you should want. Totally, 100%. I also think what sells on social media, what works really well on social media is a quick snap, which is never how it happens. And so I understand why people on social media have to do that. I mean, we're on social media and we have to do that sometimes to get people over to then see the real work. Cause as I was saying to Ethan on the way over here and he refuted, cause he's like, I think this is fun to look at. But I'm like, no one wants to watch them and insulate their basement on social media. He's like, I love to watch that. I'm like, okay, well, you're the exception. Most people just like to watch, look at the pretty things and think that's what it is. So I think social media and sort of home design networks have done great because they've opened this up to people to consider, but you have to take all of it with a grain of salt. I mean, this person is pushing a brand and this person, this real is to get clicks and it's not for reality. And so you just have to know what's real and what isn't. What I think is cool though is to your extent, to your point that people have taken their home and their life, they've kind of extended their life into the social media side and made, there's a whole section of social media that's all about old houses and old house people and they have brand partnerships and they have social media accounts and they're creating this wild, many different versions of what their version of their home extension is. And we get to kind of get invited into their houses through social media, which is so interesting and some that are fixer uppers, major fixer uppers and some that are living very luxury on a farm somewhere and they're living the life and it's like, hey, is that everything that it's actually is? But I think it's just really fun to see and be invited into so many people's houses through social media. It's funny because we hadn't bought our first cheap old house until we had already started this Instagram account and started to see enough people doing it that we were like, oh, maybe we can do this too. So in a funny way, although we grew up in the world of cheap old houses, it wasn't until we started to see our own people do it that we bought our cheap old farmhouse that we're now, we've been working on now for a while. And so yeah, it really is inspiring to see other people do it and enjoy it and then buy another one and you're like, well, if they bought another one, it couldn't have been that bad. And speaking of buying another one, I heard that you guys bought Ethan's mom, a $27,000 home on auction, which literally feels like a fake number in this economy. Like talk to me a little bit about that home buying process. My gosh, that was such a funny night. Why does it sound like you guys got drunk and did this? Basically, not even kidding me. Everything except the drunk part, but yeah, but basically, I mean, there was a train station as part of this tax foreclosure auction. So this was the first tax foreclosure auction in our county since COVID. So there had been a buildup. They hadn't done one for a while. So there were a lot of properties in there. And there was a cool train station. And we honestly didn't know what we'd do with it, but we're like, we have to have this building. It's so cool. And then we had gone around and looked at a lot of other ones that were on the list. And the train station went pretty, or the train station got pulled off at the last minute. That's what it was. But this guy had had in his head he was gonna buy a house tonight. And I knew, I'm like, oh man, you know that feeling when you're at an auction and you're like, I gotta go home with something. And we ended up buying this house. And then coincidentally, shortly thereafter, Ethan's mom sort of needed a place to live. And it just worked out. And we've been working on it for her ever since. Yeah. So. Yeah, no, there was a guy actually, or a person, I think his name was Guy. So I think there was a specific gender attached on the account when he was bidding. And he kept bidding on me on other properties. So I was like, this guy can't beat me at this property. And it was kind of, Elizabeth was like. We don't recommend this, by the way. I don't recommend this as a way to buy a house. But it ended up working out for us. So sometimes the best things we've done in our business are just the fun, silly things that we've done and taken a chance on and it worked out. So. No, I think, you know, it's a sensitive topic. It was a foreclosure. And I think the fact that we're moving my mom in is such a full circle moment. You know, we bought this $27,000 house and there was some restoration kind of happening. It was really just a complete mess. And it needed a lot of love. And someone to really take care of it and really get it back up on the market. I think the county obviously wanted that. They wanted the taxes paid. There's a lot of small communities all around the country that need this sort of support and they need that financial sustainability in their economies. And so we purchased the house. We purchased it cash. I think it's like, you have 90 days or something to actually, you put a deposit down, you put your credit card on the site. You actually, I think you pay immediately something and then you're required to go and pay the remainder in 90 days. And so we did. And I think the biggest concern that we had was any back taxes, any prior liens, anything that we needed to clean up. And I did call the county first to make sure that there was no issues. Because that is public information. So if you are interested enough. It's public information and they said that they would actually, they would clean it from its back owed needs. So I felt comfortable kind of getting into that. So I think that's a little bit of a scary piece of purchasing one of these houses that you can get into someone else's trouble with buying something that you didn't expect to be the actual price. And then, I think just over time, we were starting to do slow work on it with cash. And then we found out my mom, she moved in with us and we started a generational living thing. And she was like, I, she works for a bank. She has a great job. And she was like, I wanna be living close to you guys and help with the kids at home, but be close. And so we had this house 15 minutes away. We wanted to get her in quicker. So we started working on a construction loan for this restoration and construction loan. And we worked with a bank and we got a $150,000 mortgage. And even in this economy still, $150,000 mortgage seems like another dream. And now as of last week, we fixed up the house, $150,000 plus the 27 and some carrying costs. We have some heat and taxes and stuff like that in there. But it feels pretty good to be moving her in and having her close by and making this dream into a reality. There's still some work to be done. We still have to paint some of the outside and stuff, but like it's completely livable. The county inspected it. They're like, it's good to go, it's safe, it's all ready to go. And it is cute. We did this house on a budget. I think that's another thing with old houses. People think everything has to be customer, everything has to be antique or special. And a lot of this house, we were able to do with stock items and mix and match with old pieces. And it looks really, really cute. And I think if it didn't have, if it wasn't in such a high water table and like have these water problems that we were telling people about, it would have been a little easier. We would have been able to do it with less, but there was a lot of foundation stuff. There was a lot of re-hoisting up the house, new floor joists everywhere basically in the house. And so there was a lot of like heavier lifting, big problems in the house that spent easily $50,000 of our budget just on that kind of stuff. That's not sexy at all. It's not the appliances, not the paint, it's not the drywall even. And then you have your infrastructure stuff, electrical, HVAC and plumbing stuff. And then you have your final finishes for like that last 50. So yeah, it's pretty fun. I think ultimately too, Elizabeth and I are just like really excited about showing people about this possibility. And just the fact that this can be done and just educating people on this that there is other pathways out there to home ownership and it's really tested us to even like prove it to ourselves. We started running this account without our own Fixer Upper Project, so it's cool. We have a book and the intro chapter in our book is called The Lost Art of Imperfect Living. And I love that, cause I think that coming along with this, there is a little bit of a permission to live in an imperfect space for a while and that's okay. I think if you expect your house to look like you were just saying, not only is that impossible, but it's stressful, cause it's like, oh, if it's not perfect, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And it's perfectly fine. One of the things we love about visiting other cheap old house owners is going into their houses and then you notice that there is a rug and it's totally covering up the little holes in the floor cause there was no sub floor there and they have to fix that, but don't look at that. And it's like, oh, I feel so much better. My house isn't perfect. I think there's something about in this society we live in now where there's this pressure that your house has to be perfectly representative of you and it has to just, and you're gonna do things wrong. There's so much information out there and all the things you can do wrong and it's just nice to know that these houses are so well built that even this abandoned house we bought for his mother was still standing and honestly it was doing pretty well for all the water infiltration and everything else that was going along with it. And so it's okay, it's okay. Yeah, I think in terms of the money specifically, like this $27,000 house, it had a roof. The roof is slate. The slate is good for like 150 years. If it's good and you replace it and it had the frame, it had windows, it had a septic, it had a foundation. These things all cost money now. Foundations easily 10, 20,000, a roof is 10,000. You add all that stuff up already in two little line items, you're already past the number that I bought this house for. If you think about building that house new, what each of those things you just listed out would cost. And then you have something that has very little character. And that would be even doing it the cheapest way possible with like very not interesting stock materials. And this house has so much charm. And I think that is a perfect place for us to wrap up because guess what? A cheap old house has all that charm and it is a lot more interesting than just having the turnkey Lego house that everybody else has. Yeah. Any final pieces of advice or words of wisdom for our audience? Oh my gosh. Just go for it. We just love this so much and we feel so honored to be able to talk about it. I can literally feel your passion. That's the true thing is we made a business out of cheap old houses that has become wildly more successful than we ever could have thought. And I think just following your passion, your authentic self in creating your own little corner of the world. Amazing. Thank you guys so much for being here. Tell everyone at home who is listening where we can find you. You can find us at Cheap Old Houses on all the platforms and CheapOldHouses.com. And we have subscription newsletters at CheapOldHouses.com too where we send out specific kinds of Cheap Old Houses if you're interested. So if you want a farmhouse or a Cheap Old House abroad, you can find them there. We do a little podcasting with this old house. And what else? Our TV show at HBO or what is it? HBO Max? HBO Max. We don't even know what it's called anymore. You're fine. Exactly. It's changed a lot of hands. And we have a book available at all major retailers called Cheap Old Houses. It's amazing. Cheap Old Houses it is. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you Vivian. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Network and Chill, part of the Vox Media podcast network. If you like the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcast at yourrichbff.com, follow Network and Chill pod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcasts related news. And you can follow me at yourrichbff for even more financial know-how. See you next week. Bye. Thanks again to Amazon for supporting this episode. Whether you're trying to stay on top of your everyday essentials or on the hunt for an unexpected need, you'll probably find it on Amazon, probably for cheaper. So you can spend less money on markups and more on the weekend getaways and bucket list trips that make it all worth it. Shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday.