'Cheap Old Houses' Are All Over Instagram. But Are They Good Investments?
There are two overwhelmingly sad truths about the majority of houses bought and sold in America right now. They are expensive, and they are mundane.
Scroll through enough Zillow listings for whatever part of the country you happen to live in and, eventually, all the laminate flooring and fake copper backsplashes will blur into an antiseptic haze.
If any pique your interest enough to make an offer, you’ll compete with an average of 4.8 other prospective owners, many with offers well over the asking price. And if you’re lucky enough to win a house, you’ll pay handsomely: As of April 2022, the median home sale price in the U.S. stood at $375,300, a record high, according to the National Association of Realtors.
It makes sense, then, why someone like Randi Howell would be drawn to something different.
Randi, 40, and her now-husband, Dave, 38, were about to be priced out of their Denver rental when she came across a crumbling, 6,000-square-foot mansion on the website Circa Old Houses. Located in rural Illinois, the home had acreage, charm and 150-plus years of history that was in danger of demolition or complete decay if someone didn’t swoop in and save it. It also had a name: Duncan Manor, after the cattle breeder who built it in the mid-1800s.
As luck would have it, the couple happened to be in Illinois for a wedding a few weeks later and decided to take a spur-of-the-moment drive down the stretch of historic Route 66 that runs by Duncan Manor. Shortly after that, they bought it for $149,000, uprooted their lives in Denver and moved in.
“It was a whirlwind,” Randi says. “And it has been ever since.”
The Howells belong to a small, but passionate group of people opting out of the modern housing market — and the high price tags that plague it — in favor of homes from centuries past that need a little love to make it to the next one.
