We Bought Our $23,000 'Dream House' For $50!

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LOOK POTENTIAL PURCHASES OVER CAREFULLY

Some places you can reject immediately. We began by looking at a gigantic, three-story home, for instance . . . but quickly discovered that moving the mini-mansion would entail slicing through (and then resplicing) a major trunk line of the telephone company across the street, at an estimated cost of $10,000!

Ultimately, we had to rule out all buildings more than 18 feet high because of the exorbitant cost of cutting and splicing phone, power, and traffic-signal lines along our proposed moving route. (Here in Michigan, utility companies are required to run all lines at a height of 18 feet or more above the ground . . . however, this regulation may be different—or even nonexistent—in your state. Check it out.)

We also had to rule out brick or stone residences. Highway load limits prohibit movers from transporting such structures on state highways in many parts of the country. As a result, some firms require that all the bricks (and/or stones) be removed from the edifice before they'll haul your purchase even one block. So don't get your heart set on that lovely old lodge with the fieldstone chimney. Unless you're skilled in masonry, the costs involved in taking apart and rebuilding the stonework could cause your already deflated pocketbook to collapse entirely!

One more thing: When scouting out a movable house, beware of any additions that may have been made to the original structure. The only damage that our place suffered in transit happened in the wall that separates the kitchen from a two-room add-on . . . an addition that (as fate would have it) had been built on an uneven foundation. As a result, cracks suddenly appeared all along the kitchen wall when we set the residence on its new—and level—base.

PREPARING FOR THE MOVE

With the above requirements in mind, Richard and I looked at—and rejected—dozens of residences before finding the one we finally purchased. Our "dream house" turned out to be a one-story wood-frame bungalow situated on a narrow city lot. Its interior was somewhat typical of an older home: The living room, dining room, kitchen, and breakfast area were lined up on one side of the abode . . . while three bedrooms plus an enclosed porch ran down the other. The furnace was fairly new, the construction was sound, and we did have some ideas about how to modernize the floor plan. So we went ahead.

The next step was to find a suitable neighborhood for our future dwelling. To our dismay, we soon learned that many subdivisions have prohibitions against bringing in houses that have been built somewhere else. Other areas—by virtue of "covenants" contained in the deeds to the land—had sometimes-restrictive rules about the minimum number of square feet any house in the area could have. We were limited, too, in our search for a lot by the sheer cost of transporting our building: The mover we used (the least expensive one we could find) wanted to charge us $1,000 just to lift the house off its foundation . . . and $1,000 for each mile it was then moved!

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