The Most Wrecked House on the Market

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So, I am an aficionado of a certain kind of YouTube series – of ambitious DIYers who most usually have either mad professional building skills, or a generous income (most often both), plus absolutely insane levels of optimism, who take on a decrepit bit of housing, or at least something with all or most of a roof on it. Over a number of years or months, these skilled, and hopeful masochists take on an abandoned or derelict rural property – a tumbledown pig farm in Belgium, a decayed village house or farmstead in Portugal, a ruinous French chateau, a French village hoarder house with half the roof fallen in, or a burned-out country cottage in Sweden. Usually at least half the time-lapsed video is of tearing out the decayed bits, and sometimes the finished result is a painfully ultra-modern interior and looks like one of the display rooms in an Ikea outlet … but if the owners are happy in it, who am I to quibble over their tastes in interior decoration.

Some of these spaces are very far gone – the Swedish cottage was burned out in a fire, and the Portuguese farm complex is such a tottering wreck that the best that the young couple can do with the remains is salvage the cut stone that it all was built from and use the stone to sheath new conblock walls of a construction in the original footprint. But I think this week, I have found the most thoroughly wrecked historic structure available in any real estate market – this first through a feature in the English Daily Mail newspaper. For some reason their newshounds lighted on a mid-19th century house in Frankfort, Maine – a mansard-roof mansion at the crossroads of a hiccup of a town, and one which is so visibly wrecked that even the most optimistic real estate listings can’t even begin to hide the decay.  When the listing warns you to wear safety shoes and bring a flashlight … and there aren’t even any pictures in the listing of the interior … yeah, this place is a real-estate disaster.

If it were built of stone or brick, there might be hope for a renovator – but if it is all wood, the roof has leaked for decades, with wood-rot and black mold throughout all three stories and not a shred of anything resembling preventative maintenance … no; as my daughter the real estate agent says cheerfully – nothing wrong with it that a couple of gallons of gas and a book of matches couldn’t fix. We had a friend in South Ogden, when I was stationed at Hill AFB, who were trying their best to renovate an 1895 Italianate brick three-story on 5th Street. It had been the wife’s childhood home, and she had a sentimental attachment to the place. It eventually turned out that there was nothing much of good quality about the structure, save for perhaps the thick and solid brick exterior shell. If they knew at the beginning of the project what they knew by the end, they would have gutted the shell and built anew, bottom to top. She wound up hating the place – and was inexpressibly happy when they purchased and moved into a well-preserved 1920s Craftsman-era bungalow several blocks distant. In reality, I suspect that many hopeful renovators share that discouraging experience.

The mansard historical wreck in Frankfort comes with an acre, which looks like woodland. Probably, the only workable solution is for a purchaser to salvage every shred of usable elements surviving decades of neglect, demolish the wreck – and build an exact replica incorporating those elements on a new site a bit farther back from a well-trafficked local road.

Well, I will be keeping track of the mansard wreck in Frankfort – it might very well turn up someday, as the focus of a madly optimistic, skilled and well-financed YouTube enthusiast. And I wish them the best of luck.

They’ll need it.

13 thoughts on “The Most Wrecked House on the Market”

  1. This reminds me of the series I used to watch on YouTube about this guy who would take old beat up cars and flip them after doing superficial repairs.

    Repairs that, after the buyer lived with it for a while, would see through the deceptions

    I would think trying to renovate an old large house would be like trying to buy an old beat up 60 foot yacht and renovating it

    You quickly realize you’d be far better off buying one of the same size that has been maintained and paying more for it.

    Whatever the difference is it would not approach the cost of trying to renovate something on your own

    I remarked to a friend of mine who is pretty nautically inclined that I keep seeing these 40 foot yachts on Facebook for $10,000 or $20,000 and he just laughs

  4. @Michael K – by the end – with the white paint – that boat looked beautiful. Kudos to you and your son for sticking through and restoring it all those years – I think that job would have broken a lot of people!

    I’ll bet many times you priced a Cal 40 in nice condition and compared…

  5. I finally sold it for $50,000. I had looked at others first for around $100,000. I found that I had just gotten too old and weak to sail it. It did look good and it did make a few trips to Catalina Island.

  6. Until reading up on it, I didn’t realize what a ground breaking design it was. I hope the new buyer knew what a great buy he had!

  8. conblock walls
    I had to go look up “cornblock.” It shows up in the results without the ‘k’, too.
    And “cornbloc” made me thing of a bunch of folks wearing coveralls, straw hats, with colored bandanas over their faces, protesting… I’m not sure what.

    (As “black bloc” is used for commie agitators in all black.)

  9. The idea of renovating something old and traditional and making it modern (in at least the construction sense) is so very, very American. Gut it, remake it, and the outside looks like history while the inside works in every modern way (plumbing, electrical, a/c, wifi, etc.) is almost a metaphor for America over the last century or so. It’s a form of optimism that has driven a lot. Oh yes, lots of failures – but also enough successes to inspire one more person to give it a go.

    :)

  10. Bill Brandt
    September 17, 2024 at 2:59 pm
    Whatever the difference is it would not approach the cost of trying to renovate something on your own

    There is one substantial difference, though – the rebuilt one is YOURS in a way that no bought structure or vehicle ever could be. Of course, that only matters if you manage to make it good again. But I think that’s the psychology that drives much of this: I did that.

  11. There’s a sort of opposite effect with very high priced houses. People in the market for multi-million dollar houses usually aren’t anxious to pay for someone else’s dream.

    I read an article that Michael Jordan’s Chicago house is still for sale more than 10 years later. Besides being in Chicago, who besides another NBA player would want a house built around basketball, and would they want one built around Jordan specifically?

    If it’s going to take years of remodeling, why not start from scratch?

  12. MCS
    September 19, 2024 at 2:44 pm

    who besides another NBA player would want a house built around basketball, and would they want one built around Jordan specifically?

    Someone who is 8 foot tall?
    It is a fairly niche market.

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