Bull's-eye
Posted on 05/06/2008 8:15:58 AM PDT by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast
An army of volunteers built a magnificent mansion in six days for an impoverished family on the outskirts of Camden...
*snip*
This morning the Associated Press and Courier Post reported the slate-blue 5-bedroom home was up for sale.
Asking price: $499,900...
*snip*
A big house is expensive to keep up.
Marrero, who has suffered numerous heart attacks, lives on a small pension. He has had to shut off power to parts of the house to pay the bills, the friend said.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
The mind reels.
This was foreseeable.
I’ve always thought that the premise of this program is wrong headed.
I know, it makes everyone who takes part in building these superb for poor or unfortunate people feel good about themselves.
But that does not erase the value of the house, nor its upkeep, taxes,etc.
Kind of like a supercharged version of Habitat for Humanity.
I have no interest in any sort of muck-raking expose, but I am interested in how this is all carried out.
Surprised it hasn’t happened more often.
(Or maybe it has.)
I don’t remember Earl and Randy mentioning an Extreme Makeover house in their town!
Sorry, couldn’t resist with town named Camdon.
It has happened (a lot). They should build the families smaller (without so much fluff) and more affordable houses if they want them to be able to keep them.
Is there any copper pipe or wire left in the house? How about the appliances? Any furniture left? Was there a Ford truck or car that provided with the house?
Well, there's the problem right there! The inconsiderate volunteers should have made the house 100% solar. The beasts!
My girlfriend and I watched one episode and I said the same thing. If the beneficiaries of this beautiful mansion (the one we watched), couldn't afford an 1100 sq ft house for their family of six, how in the hell can they afford the taxes, heating & cooling, water & electricity, upkeep, etc., of a house four times tyhe size?
You could kinda see this happening to some of the families...
You can’t say anything bad about Ty though, his heart is always in the right place and he’s using his celebrity to help people, just some times the help creates a whole new issue.
That’s because the house is really a temple to celebrate the compassionate donors’ generosity. It’s not a home for a poor guy, it it was, they’d have built a more modest structure.
i've seen this show 2-3 times... there was one show where the family not only received the extreme home makeover, but they were given three brand new Ford vehicles... a truck for the father, an SUV for the mother and a Mustang for the oldest daughter... how much was that going to cost the family? it seemed like too much...
Sounds like part of the televised service should be breaking into the county assessor’s office late at night to do an “extreme makeover” on the property tax records. ;)
I read somewhere that they fix the gift tax issue by technically leasing the house from the family. Apparently this gets the families out of paying gift taxes on the receipt of the new house because they are making improvements under a lease.
Of course, that doesn’t cover insurance, property tax etc.
When this came up on this site earlier about Homes for Habitat and this show I said most of these houses end up in foreclosure etc because the people can’t keep up with payments-repairs-utilities etc. They have not had the responsibility of all that many being on welfare etc so in the end if you are “given” something it is not the same as earning it-then you will take care of it. But to give someone a house and they are given the responsibility of upkeep forget it. Remember the people on Oprah getting free cars and then bitching they had to pay the taxes on it?! Give me a break!
and the home is always so out of place in the neighborhood... i think they need to move the family to a new neighborhood where the house fits, or build a very nice, more modest home in the current neighborhood... but people would not be interested in watching such a show...
Actually, if he managed to sell the house for $500,000, he could buy something smaller and use the balance to help pay his fuel bill and other costs.
Of course the IRS and the state of NJ would want some major taxes, no doubt, but as my elders would have said when I was a boy, a free mansion is better than a hole in the head, even if he can’t afford to keep it.
Well, the house is near Camden NJ so...I'd guess the answer is no!
Our first house was a little (830 s.f.) passive solar contemporary that cost basically nothing to heat and very little to cool. We started having babies and had to find larger quarters - we moved to a conventional 4 bedroom 3000 s.f. that costs a fortune in utilities. Our last one is a junior in high school now, and we can't wait to sell this old barrack and built another tiny passive solar - although it may be Southern vernacular architecture instead of contemporary.
The show would do better to take its cue from something like The Not So Big House which is the seminal work on houses that make efficient use of space and resources. It's just good sense. Build what works for you.
I usually watch this show, but sometimes I have to wonder about the folks who are being helped. One family was living in a converted chicken coop, and Ty & Co. showed us where there was still chicken $hit in the walls, behind the drywall!
Since we at one time owned chickens, and offered their coop to my mother-in-law as an "old age home"(!), I feel qualified to say: "WTF? why couldn't the folks who lived there clean the darn place up?" A lot of the homes that are wreckovated don't look like there's been a lot of owner upkeep.
Don't get me wrong, most of the families that are helped really deserve the help. And I've noticed this year that most of the time, EHMakeovers either gets the mortgage paid off, or establishes a "house fund" to help with upkeep. That's good. But sometimes, the people being helped give me an impression of extreme laziness!
(said she who sits in her own home, watching her own tv, on her own Mac...that she and her family paid for!)
I was reading about this awhile back. They usually can’t afford the taxes. Around here he’s probably looking at over 10k a year. Almost a 1000 a month.
That is what I think every time I watch this show — it is blowing a trumpet to show everybody how generous YOU are, instead of asking them what THEY need and quietly providing that.
Think how many families they could have helped with the cost and work that went into this one property, by simply asking the people involved what they needed.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/199546_makeover13.html
Yep...perfect analogy.
Bull's-eye
I read somewhere that after some problems with people losing their houses from the first season, they figured out with tax lawyers a way to somehow 'lease' the house from the family while it is being rebuilt, for an amount greater than the taxes, then the family only has to declare that as income tax instead of property tax, and it would wash. Of course, that only works for the first year.
Eliza Dolittle wants to go back to her neighborhood.
I am with you. I have often wondered how many of these families would be able to sustain a life-style that they are not prepared to live. This is sad, but it is reality.
I enjoy this show. Alot of times they will pay off their existing mortgage, give them extra money for bills, scholarships or a large donation is made from a fundraiser. But, I’m sure some families can’t afford the taxes, insurance and electric.....I’d sure like to be given the chance to try though!
Tells me that the construction is likely shoddy.
You and I could foresee it but apparently not the people who engaged in the paroxysms of generosity that resulted in this dilemma.
How was he supposed to handle the upkeep? Just cutting the grass to keep the code officer at bay...
As for those copper pipes, if any, what happens to them when he can’t afford to heat the whole house?
How does he explain this to welfare? If you come into a windfall, they demand to know. And then...?
You make a very good point. In real estate economics, you build a house that conforms to the surroundings. There is a proper land to building ratio that should be followed for a particular area. Otherwise, the property is over-improved to a point of decreasing returns.
You can’t maintain a large home even if its given to you on a small income. I have no issues giving the needy a home by private people if they desire to do it.. but to build the stuff they build and even with no mortgage to expect them to be able to maintain and keep it long term is generally impossible.
Doesn’t make good TV, but just build them a reasonably sized ranch with good mechanics.
All you people thinking Ty doesn’t know this is likely to happen with many of these homes need to wake up. The network is in this make good ratings, get ad dollars,... MAKE MONEY. Ty doesn’t do it for free, either.
If there was no money in this for anyone, the show wouldn’t be on the air. Personally, I don’t watch the show. Seems like a form of tear-jerker exploitation to me.
The town cut his bill, because he was right.
Hubby and I live in a 2000 sq ft home in California where our electric bills in the summer ran $600 a mnth. I shut off power in the rooms we don’t use long ago.
When our bills were still real high we cut our electric bills in half by installing 2 Master Cool coolers a couple of yrs ago.
That's going to make it extra hard for these kids when they have to be reunited with their previously abusive or neglectful parents, wouldn't you think? There's much wisdom in the old adage about not spoiling kids- especially foster kids who are going to have to come way down to some rather unpleasant scenarios in the future.
I also don't want to demean Ty Pennington. He's a good guy. I just think it would be good to tweak the program to take into consideration the long range future.
***The project lifted Victor Marrero and his five sons from poverty....***
Just exactly how did that happen, unless they can somehow get the value out of the property in cash and THEN not blow it in another 6 months?!?! Looking good on paper only makes you look impressive to the uninformed and worse, the vultures and tax men.
Wow. Where was the passive solar house? What were the features that made it work so well? We’re not going to stay in NJ or our colonial split for too many more years - I’d love to incorporate passive solar features in our next house.
I read ‘The Not So Big House’ and liked much of it. With four children who need not to be on top of each other all the time, we can’t go too small but there’s no way I want to be cleaning 4000 sq. ft.
The real problem is affording the house. All passive solar are pretty much custom built or hard to find as existing houses in the regions I know. When I read about local passive solar, it’s 800K, 1.5M to build - way more than we’ll be able to spend.
That's the dufficulty of this kind of thing...it's "no fun" watching someone build or receive a modest home without any "toys"
Why don’t they just buy them a used Ford 350 and a Fifth Wheel RV. Then they can go live in a Walmart parking lot for free. Maybe even get a job as a greeter.
In college I was in the finals of a radio contest to win a red Porsche Carrera. All I could think was that it if my key actually started the car, I’d have to call in a flatbed and haul it away to sell...because I sure as heck couldn’t afford the taxes at that time.
Remember “Queen For A Day?”
They could have built modest dwellings for three families instead, but that would not be “must see” TV.
We gutted it out last summer as much as we could. Finally last winter our bill dropped from 243 to about 163. We tightened up some more and our latest PG&E bill is 113 a month. With the approaching summer months though, and looking like it’s going to be warm early, I expect our bill to climb again. It was nice while it lasted. One thing that has definitely helped us is the whole house fan. It makes a difference in summer. Even though it doesn’t necessarily cool, it helps to blow the hot air into the attic, and then out through the vents.
Why should every American own a dream house? Why couldn't these folks rent a small house or trailer until things improved? It doesn't help that we have the perverse mortgage deduction, with no tax writeoff for rentals.
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