My friends' band A Message From Martyrs is buying a house off of 270 in Florissant (sp?) from one of the band member's parents. Its five bedroom and a garage. I was asked to move in there and help with the bills. I would get a spot in the garage and my own bedroom for $250-300/month. Currently I live in a single wide mobile home in O'fallon, which I own straight up. It was a cash sale a little over a year ago due to being a fixer-upper. I've been in the process of renovating it while I live there and I'm about half done.
Due to my career (over the road truck driver) I am only home an average of 4-6 days out of the month, on the road the rest of the time. My total bills for the trailer inc. pad rent, utilities, internet/tv add up to about $600/month average. As it sits, I will not sell for less then $2k, because I have about double that invested between purchase and renovation materials. I think I can probably get more then $2k for it, so if I put it up for sale it will be for $3k or best offer, and let interested buyers talk me down. When I bought it the place was very close to being condemmed for being in such poor shape. All the windows were broken out, most of the subfloor was rotten (some had caved in), leaky pipes, bad wiring, etc. The place was trashed. I've since repaired all the subflooring, replaced all but four of the windows (the front bay is the only windows I haven't gotten around to replacing yet), redone much of the wiring and plumbing, and started working on updating the kitchen. Its not a dump anymore, its just not finished.
For reference, this is the trailer. Since this picture was taken I've torn down that POS "deck" and replaced four additional windows (not the front bay, those still need replaced) but other then that this is pretty much as it sits:
The band already got an offer from a record label owned by Universal. I won't go into details, but where there is one record label contract offer there will be more then one. They WILL get big, of this I am certain. When they do, they want to eventually move out of MO. The offer they made me was this...move in now and help pay the bills, and when they get signed and eventually move away they will help me to buy this house from the band member's parents, financed privately directly from the owners, and help me make the payments in exchange for letting them crash there when they are in the STL area. This could be anywhere from a year from now to a few years. I'm not worried about getting screwed over, I've known Dave (the drummer) for many years and trust him with my life.
So...sell the trailer and have some cash to play with (savings, vehicles, investments, whatever...), a place to stay for the few days out of the month I'm in town for half the monthly cost of my current bills, and a garage to park my car in when I'm out of town instead of just a driveway. My credit is absolutely shot (bankruptcy) so I cannot get a mortgage, this is an opportunity to eventually own a house instead of just live in apartments and mobile homes as I've done ever since I've been on my own. The other option being simply...don't. Keep working on the trailer, keep having a place that's my own instead of living with someone else. Eventually I could sell the trailer for profit over what I've invested when I finish renovations, if I chose to live somewhere else.
Opinions/comments/insults...go!
