
We Bought a Crack House - nowherecat
http://torontolife.com/real-estate/parkdale-reno-hell/
======
nowherecat
And more here: How One Story Pissed Off Just About Every Non-Rich Person in
Toronto - [https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-one-story-pissed-
off-...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-one-story-pissed-off-just-
about-every-non-rich-person-in-toronto)

~~~
madeofpalk
This is a common meme in Australia as well with the 'housing affordability
crises' that's happening here (as well).

"See! Buying a home is so easy! All you need is your parents to give you tens
of thousands and you're set!"

~~~
ryankennedyio
Just for a reference point on how ridiculous Sydney is; $4,900,000 AUD will
buy you this[1] about 50 minutes from the CBD.

The mortgage loan book of the 4 major banks here is hovering at about 50%
interest-only loans. Nearly 1 in 3 people lie on their mortgage application
too [2].

[1] [https://www.domain.com.au/26-south-street-strathfield-
nsw-21...](https://www.domain.com.au/26-south-street-strathfield-
nsw-2135-2013586225) [2] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/mortgage-
fraud-systemi...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/mortgage-fraud-
systemic-in-australia-ubs-survey-shows/7911978)

------
oliwarner
They didn't view the house before bidding. They didn't get somebody else to
view/appraise it for them. Their bid went from $480k to $560k in one step.
They hired a cowboy without checking credentials, who went on to almost
destroy the house. They hired a cowboy mortgage broker who reneged on a deal
(or they're lying about it).

I really don't care how much money they have. Whether or not it's "privilege"
or not. It is but that's not the point.

 _They were idiots_. They deserved everything they got and —frankly— got off
lightly.

~~~
shakestheclown
Exactly. None of this was really an unforeseen accident that you might feel
sorry for; it's all avoidable circumstances by having the least bit of common
sense. And they took on this project with one of them part time and the other
on maternity leave. In the end, they were mostly saved by accident as well so
I doubt if many lessons were learned.

------
alaskamiller

      We weren’t particularly handy, but we’d seen all the home reno shows, and it seemed like everyone in the city was doing it. How hard could it be?
    

Hear this every day in IT projects

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Also, this nugget:

"Finally, Julian called in a professional. Peter was reliable, organized,
patient and came with glowing references. He was the contractor we should have
hired from the start—in fact, Julian had already interviewed him twice but we
had passed because he was charging market rate."

~~~
annerajb
I think they could have avoided almost all issues if they would have paid
market rate from the start..

~~~
alaskamiller
How hard could it be?

------
sqldba
"Cash-strapped", looking for a $560k house, and burning up to $1.1m over the
next few years - which friends and relatives lent them.

The level of privilege fucking burns.

~~~
Para2016
Yea, they can't spend 200k a year over 5 years as mature working adults.
That's just preposterous right?

You two in this thread sound like children. Grow up.

~~~
Trundle
They can do what they want. What they can't do authentically however is to try
to claim hardship status. Which "cash strapped" does.

These people had a backup condo to live in after selling their first house.
You don't get to use 'cash strapped' when you have a backup condo.

------
jacknews
OK I only skimmed to the bit where current house prices are in the $2 million
range. Sounds like the whole city, perhaps the whole capitalist western world,
is on crack.

~~~
digi_owl
You may be more right than you think.

I keep being reminded of when Oslo opened their second needle room, closer to
the more affluent areas of the city.

All of a sudden the got well dressed visitors driving expensive vehicles.
These were people that stopped by to get their dosage done before landing some
deal or making some high level decision that day...

~~~
vermontdevil
"Opened their second needle room"?

Not sure what it means?

~~~
DanBC
Some places have safe, clean, injection rooms. This is good because it reduces
some of the public health problems associated with injection drug use.

People use clean needles. They get information about rehab if they want it.
They can dispose of the sharps safely. There's help nearby if they overdose.
They can get other medical advice about infection or sexual health.

[https://theawl.com/vancouvers-supervised-drug-injection-
cent...](https://theawl.com/vancouvers-supervised-drug-injection-center-how-
does-it-work-c483cdd18b66)

------
nowherecat
Oh, it's getting even better: The story of how one young family found their
dream cottage for $59,000 - [http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-
how-one-young...](http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-
young-family-found-their-dream-cottage-for-59000)

------
staz
[https://www.gofundme.com/help-this-brave-gentrifier-
family](https://www.gofundme.com/help-this-brave-gentrifier-family)

Luckily they are still brave souls in this world, willing to help them

------
jagermo
Oh god, the story about their cottage is even better:
[http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-
young...](http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-young-family-
found-their-dream-cottage-for-59000)

> We offered back at $59,000, and the deal was done. We were proud owners of a
> riverside recreational property, an impulse purchase courtesy of our line of
> credit. Never could we have imagined that a cottage weekend getaway would
> result in a cottage of our very own. “You guys are so badass,” our friends
> told us. Once we knew the cottage was ours, I felt a rush of adrenalin—“Did
> we just do what I think we did?” mixed with “We can’t believe our good
> luck!”

> A month later, we got possession, and reality started to sink in. Our little
> cabin (“cottage,” we decided, was too lofty for what it was) had no
> electricity or running water. It had been abandoned for the past three years
> and was filthy.

------
michaelhoffman
We bought a $3 million bungalow full of bats and were not happy with the
result: [https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/05/bought-3-million-
bungal...](https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/05/bought-3-million-bungalow-
full-bats-not-happy-result/)

------
drewmol
>We were the victims of a shoddy contractor and bad luck, but also of our own
colossal ignorance and hubris.

I used to work as a residential remodeling contractor, I quickly learned to
steer clear of this type of client/"victim"

------
jnty
A series of astonishingly poor decisions. Why are they so mystified that the
people living there already are so hostile given that they've just strolled
into their home?

------
SmellTheGlove
How do a guy just finishing a PhD and a lady editing Food Network's website
float 3 mortgages? I should have stopped reading after the "Luckily we still
owned the condo..." but I kept going like an idiot.

What's the lesson here? Fall into money, and when that isn't enough, fall into
some more from a distant relative?

~~~
antisthenes
This is failing upwards at its finest. Despite multiple bad decisions, these
people keep falling into cushy safety nets.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
Don't get me wrong, I've had some luck in life too. Not to the tune of what's
described in this blog post, but then again, I'm not out there broadcasting
it.

I'm from an immigrant family who didn't come here with a whole lot, and I'm in
a good place now - a lot of it because my parents did all they could to have
us avoid _feeling_ poor even when that was reality, lots of sacrifice for our
educations, and also a good dose of luck. Some bad breaks too, some big ones,
but some really favorable as well. I know very well the feeling where you
strung together a few good decisions and it paid off, and where if any of them
had gone wrong, life might be very different at the present. Sometimes it's
good decisions, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's a combination. But the
worst thing we can do is pass off those instances of luck and circumstance (or
privilege as they call it these days I guess) as hard work bolstered by good
decisions leading to that outcome. If you rolled a hard six (Distant Uncle
showing up with $150k to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat), call it
that, you know?

This isn't because you're going to make people feel bad by admitting luck or
privilege, either. This is a matter of self-awareness. In life, you HAVE to
know where you did right, where you fucked up, and where you got a little bit
(or a lot) lucky. That all influences future decisions, and if you want to set
your kids up to be better off than you are, you just have to know and honestly
assess these things. All of this is magnified if you have less margin of error
for mistakes and bad luck.

There's no lesson in this article other than to demonstrate that you can fuck
up badly and come out on top if you have enough resources at your disposal.
That's life, but not a lesson, if that makes any sense.

------
gambiting
"I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the soon-to-be four of us sharing 900 square
feet"

What planet do those people live on. Am I the only one who grew up in a place
where 85 square meters is ample for a flat for 6 people, not 4, to live in?

~~~
literallycancer
I'd consider 4 people too many for 80 square meters. I thought the houses in
America were more spacious? Perhaps it's different in Canada.

~~~
na85
Toronto is full of small houses, as I'm sure are parts of New York City.

You don't see McMansions until you get out to the suburbs and bedroom
communities.

------
jonnathanson
While this is an interesting read, it's pretty much a textbook case of what
happens when you don't perform your diligence.

At every turn the couple seems to make monumentally reckless decisions -- from
spending more than they can afford, to buying a nearly condemned halfway home
and expecting modest repair work, to buying it pretty much sight unseen, to
hiring a friendly stranger as a contractor, to commencing $300k+ in contract
labor without funding secured, to bribing squatters with big wads of cash.
Squatters who obviously _know where the couple lives_.

Yikes. I do feel sorry for these folks. But I read this entire article between
the gaps in my fingers, my palm fixed to my face, my lips silently mouthing,
"Nooooo!"

------
kev009
I love how they pay people off that have fucked them over. Made the comment
thread here about privilege that much more funny.

------
bubblethink
How does one go about due diligence before buying a house ? Do you hire a law
firm ? What are their fees ? It is hard to imagine dropping half a million
sight unseen, especially since it is not insignificant for the people in the
article, but how much would it have cost them had they hired a lawyer/firm ?

~~~
Jach
Having researched home buying a bit I think it's too much to list in a HN
comment if you want to cover cases where every party is unreliable but maybe
someone will try. At the very least look at the damn thing in person. When
I've done rentals with a friend we do a fairly thorough inspection before
signing but it'd take 10x longer if we had intent to buy, we'd check a lot
more, and that's before involving various 3rd parties. If you're planning a
remodel from the beginning though your criteria will change.

~~~
bubblethink
Yes, I understand doing your own homework. I recently avoided a rental pretty
narrowly. Nothing quite as unsavoury as this, but due to a couple of layers of
indirection through agents, the fact that parking was tandem wasn't evident
until the very end. Own homework aside, I just wanted to get some ballpark
estimate on legal fees that one would incur with such an undertaking, and
whether this is all pretty boilerplate, or do you have to have to get some
bespoke solution from a law firm.

~~~
vermontdevil
Def cheaper than $1.1 million.

------
wsgeek
I just skimmed the article, but if that was a crackhouse then wouldn't it be
in a bad neighborhood? Then once their shiny new place becomes known to the
local denizens, break-ins galore!

~~~
watter
The author describes walking their children through the house upon becoming
the owner and finding two people smoking crack. So yes, it was a crack house.

It was also in Parkdale - not exactly one of Toronto's "best" neighborhoods.

------
vultour
"We were cash-strapped" and "$1.1 million later" don't really seem to go
together

------
Fifer82
It hammers home how poor I am

------
jheriko
how do people end up with so much money when they have such a lack of common
sense?

the story was a cringeworthy read.

glad it worked out well in the end... but life was gentle and kind here.

~~~
throwanem
My observation is that it works the other way around - it's the consequence-
insulating money that engenders the lack of common sense, rather than the
converse.

------
jagermo
I had hoped for a grizzly tale of DIY, but that takes the cake.

"Desperate, we pimped out our newborn daughter for some modelling gigs."

What?

~~~
heisenbit
And then pixelate her picture for the article.

------
Thriptic
Surprise! When you try to do things on the cheap, don't do adequate due
diligence, and are impatient and hasty, things go wrong.

------
therealmarv
TL;DR: Stupid decisions everywhere (should have never bought that house),
house looks good at the end.

------
heisenbit
Now what is the purpose of this story? Why is such a story published? Who is
writing such a story and why is it published?

It is a heroic tale of paying 560.000 for a crack house and it worked out all
well.

How healthy is the Toronto real estate market if they have to resort to
pushing such stories?

------
curuinor
This had a go-around in the Reddit and Something Awful bad-with-money
threads/forums

------
kowdermeister
So if you got steady walls and you have cash left to refurbish everything it's
a good deal compared to buying something ready to move in? Who would have
thought?

But at the end of the day it's a good way to test the stability of your
marriage.

------
Simulacra
This reminds me of one of those HGTV programs: my wife collects butterflies on
the weekends and I sharpen pencils four hours a day, our budget is $1.5
million

------
chippy
Is this a clever satire? Seems as if it could be a hoax.

------
fredsted
A whole bunch of bad decisions.

------
rl3
> _We Bought a Crack House_

As you do.

------
empath75
This would be the greatest episode of property brothers ever.

------
foota
Really enjoyable read. I'll think of this when it comes time to buy a home.

------
cup
This article would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I don't know whats worse.
The authors general ignorance about 'flipping' houses or their arrogance
around the disadvantages drug users experience.

The fact that they expect the occupants to just leave when asked as if they
have somewhere to go is bizarre. Who are these people?

~~~
yblokhin
Which utopian planet do you live on? Since when asking to leave the people
who're squatting in your house illegally is a bizarre thing to do? In most
places in the world, illegal occupants deal not with a couple of polite and
scared copywriters but with law enforcement & enraged legal owners of the
property.

~~~
icebraining
I'm not sure about cup, but what I find bizarre about it is because it implies
they are expecting it to work. Calling the cops is not bizarre.

