Downtown Luxury Slum

We got our renovation estimate from Corey this week. It was $100,000 more than we had budgeted. Awesome.

After reviewing the estimate, our realtor was able to get it down to only $37,000 over budget primarily by removing luxury items that we didn’t want in the first place. At that point, I was able to look at the estimate without my head exploding and was able to work with Corey to get it down another $12,000.

If you’re doing the math, you’ll see that this still puts us over budget. So we went back to the seller with this information and requested a lower sales price. Our argument was basically that after renovations, the property wouldn’t appraise high enough to justify the cost. By the end of the week we still hadn’t gotten a response back from the seller.

The fun thing this week: My friend, Emily, did a title search on the property. The earliest recorded deed transfer was in 1899. If I’m counting correctly, there have been eight other owners since then. Emily also found a document that lists all of the houses within the East Raleigh – South Park Historic District, along with their character defining features, date, and status as a contributing structure. This lists the house as pre-1900 as a “5-bay hipped-roof duplex with hipped metal roof and weatherboard siding; original 4-over-4 doublehung-sash windows; attached porch with flat roof, twin wood-post supports, jigsaw-cut brackets, wood railing”.

We found the 1896 Directory of the City of Raleigh which listed the widow, Mrs Charlotte King along with three sons, two daughters, and a Lee Coy as residents at that time. The men all worked at Caraleigh Mills, which is now a unique downtown Raleigh upscale loft style condo community, but was built as a cotton mill in 1892.

Here’s some more history for you: Joel Lane sold 1000 acres of land to the State of North Carolina in 1792. William Christmas carefully drew a plan for how the city of Raleigh would be laid out. The downtown luxury slum sits in square #1 of this original City of Raleigh plan. Check out that map!