The Expert Podcast

Okay, back again by popular demand. We're going to look at very large square footage homes that are under $200,000. These homes represent some creative uses for property, so if you're looking for a lot of space, we'll talk about what are the advantages of all that space. Maybe it's a home business, maybe it's a bed and breakfast, maybe it's other income potential, maybe you just want some elbow room—and we'll talk about some examples of how you can use these homes.

Again, the idea is not for you to say, "I want to buy this exact house," but just to show you that if you did want a home for under $200,000 and a payment of about a thousand bucks, if you want to get a really big house with ridiculous square footage, you can do that. All of these houses are 5,000 square feet or bigger—some of them are 7,000. This first one you can see is almost 10,000 square feet. It's huge, and there are many ways you can use these properties. So let's take a look at this one.

This one is in Merrell, Wisconsin. This is an interesting property. It's fitted out for residential, looks like the interior is perfectly fine—there's nothing wrong with it. Here's the kitchen, right? It's got a usable kitchen, it's got usable living space. It's not one that needs a lot of even cosmetic improvement. Some of the houses that we look at today will need cosmetic. Hardwood floors—this is a house. This is not just a piece of junk.

Next one we'll look at is in Illinois. 7,800 square feet—almost 8,000 square feet. Large Victorian-type home. Again, it's usable. It's got a kitchen, it's got living space. It's not torn up. Is it old-style? Absolutely. Is it modern? Nope. But that’s part of the reason. Now, if you notice, these homes are not beachfront. They're not in warmer parts of the country. In order to get larger square footage, that might be part of your trade-off, but there might be some really good reasons for doing that.

This one—we made an exception. There's four or five more houses after this for under $300,000. This is $3,600. This house is in Kentucky, but it's an interesting house with a large yard along with the square footage. Also, we did a little investigating on this house. The living space is 3,600, but there’s also another 700 or 800 square feet of usable space, which might put it closer to that 5,000 square foot mark. But it is another interesting house. This one is in a little warmer part of the country in Kentucky.

Again, you may not think you want to live in Kentucky, but depending on what kind of lifestyle you put together with that much square footage, it might be advantageous.

How about this one? 7,000 square feet. $195,000. This house is in Pennsylvania, and it was previously a bed and breakfast, so you may be able to get some income out of this. Actually—my mistake—it’s 5,600 square feet. 7,000 is the lot size. 5,600. It’s set up as a 4/1. But again, you may be able to use some of this as income-producing. Large brick building. On the inside—yeah, it’s a house. It’s got a kitchen, it’s got bedrooms, got a lot of space. So it’s something that is doable. Leechburg, Pennsylvania—middle of the state.

Here’s the last one before we get into some really good income-producing properties. This one is $200,000. It’s almost 7,000 square feet. It’s in North Dakota. And you might think, "I don’t want to live in North Dakota—it’s too cold." Well, it is cold. But look at this house. This is like a monster. It’s huge. What could you do with this house? Again, bed and breakfast, just a large house for entertaining, maybe a home base for a large home business, remote business—$200,000 for 7,000 feet.

Okay, here’s upstate New York—for those of you that say you can’t live in New York cheap—here’s a New York house for $152,000 with—it says 51,000 square feet. It’s a typo—it’s 5,100 square feet. It’s got six bedrooms, three baths, and it kind of looks like the house from the show Newhart in the ’80s. Looks like you could also use this for a bed and breakfast or, you know, I’m sure you could rent out rooms on Airbnb or VRBO, that kind of thing.

All right, here we go into some property that has some great potential. This is also in upstate New York. $100,000 for 7,000 square feet. This is a property that has a lot of potential use. Big garages, a lot of shop-type space, a lot of clutter. Looks like it was used for some type of woodworking shop. But it’s got living space on the inside—kitchen, open area. So what can you do with a property like this?

I’ll put the front picture on the screen and tell you a little story. In the early 2000s, there was a news article in The Wall Street Journal about an individual who was in California. He had a furniture company—woodworking company. He built custom furniture—chairs, desks. A lot of it was for business use, like he built custom desks for clients. But it was very artistic. It wasn’t utilitarian. He had a shop behind his house where he built it. He rented a small storefront in California where he kept his inventory and offered it for sale. Many of his clients purchased it for shipping—like he would build it and ship it to other parts of the country. But he had a showroom where people could look at it, and some locals would buy things.

It got to be too much money. He was renting his house where he lived plus rent on the commercial space, and it was just a huge monthly expense. What happened is, he came across a building that was in Ohio that was formerly a car dealership building—a new car dealership. It was a Ford franchise dealer, and this building was for sale for $125,000. Now, granted, this was 15+ years ago, so the market has changed. But here’s the house we’re looking at on the screen right now for $100,000. So it’s possible.

And what he did was he purchased this old car dealership, and there were three areas of a dealership. We’ve all been in car dealerships—we know what it looks like. There’s a front showroom with all-glass windows, and it’s all open. And it’s a wide open space. There’s also a repair area—service department, they call it—which is garages and roll-up doors and open bays where they fix cars. There’s also an office section. In this building, it happened to be upstairs. The entire building wasn’t two stories—only the center part above the showroom was a second story where they had their office, where they did accounting and bookkeeping and titles and all of the office administrative things.

He bought this building, and the offices upstairs he made into his residence where he lived. It was about 3,000 square feet of space for him to live. The showroom downstairs was a little bit bigger—it was about 3,500 square feet—and that’s where he put all his finished furniture that he had completed. It was a nice display area. He was able to stage it, make it look nice. And in the service department—the garage—that’s where he made his shop. That shop was 8,000 square feet. He had all his machines and mills and lathes and woodworking equipment, and he used that to build his furniture.

So he had more space. His old shop was maybe 2,000 square feet—he quadrupled it. The house he was renting was 1,500 square feet—so he doubled that. And his showroom area was 3,500 square feet, which was more than double what he had in California. So he doubled or quadrupled all his space. And instead of paying close to $4,000 a month in rent for his commercial space and for his residence, he now had a mortgage payment. Now at the time, in the mid-2000s, rates were higher. So on $125,000, he was probably paying $1,600 a month for his mortgage. But it was still less than his rent, and he had more space. He had more manufacturing capacity.

And what he found out was, with the extra space and the savings on money, he was able to hire additional staff because the workforce in that area was also more capable and less expensive. Not only did he save money by moving, but he was also able to expand his business. And I remember that news story. When I saw it, I was intrigued by it. We put it on one of our blogs at the time—Aware Brain—and a few years later we had a check-up on it. Turns out this guy had dramatically increased his business. It was a multi-million dollar business because of that one move.

Now, he didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to live in Ohio. It wasn’t his first choice to live in Ohio. But at the same time, it was an opportunity for him to do something, build up a business, and then maybe move somewhere else later. It wasn’t the worst place in the world to live. But it matched the pursuit of his lifestyle. And this property here has that same advantage. 7,000 square feet. You use the living space for part of it, and you maybe have a little business in the other part. Maybe manufacture. This actually looks like a woodworking shop. But you could do anything here. You could use it as a photo studio, a video studio, any type of self-production. Maybe you build a product, manufacture a product. Plenty of space for whatever you can imagine.

Now again, you’re living in upstate New York. Not everybody wants to live in upstate New York. But I guarantee you, a $400 mortgage might make it a little more appealing.

Last one we’ll look at—and we’ll tell another story afterwards—is a property that is six bedroom, six bath, 5,300 feet, and it’s $130,000. What does it look like? Not too bad, does it? Probably needs a little work—it might. Looks like some of this upper deck here might need some paint. Inside’s usable. You could live in this the next day. It’s got a kitchen—pretty big kitchen for that matter. Does it probably need some paint, some updating? Yep. Hardwood floors. These walls are painted. Does it look like it might need some detail up here for some crown molding maybe?

Is it a train wreck? No. That’s the key—it’s livable from day one. And at $130,000, your mortgage payment is cheap. It’s also got a pretty big lot—1.2 acres. Acre and a quarter, roughly. And this wouldn’t be the worst place in the world to spend some time while you’re saving up money for the dream house.

Again, do you necessarily want to live here? Maybe not. But if space is important for some purpose—because of extended family, a business opportunity, elbow room—the point of this video, like all others, is to show you what is possible. Not necessarily that you're going to go buy 57 Delta Street, but to show you that looking for these things does give results. Almost anything that you’d want to find for under $200K is available—beachfront, acreage, square footage—every city, every state. And if you watch the video channel, you’ll be notified as we do new versions and give you some creative ideas of what to do with these large square footage houses.