Let's tear down this house

My unofficial buyer's agent (I haven't actually hired a real estate agent yet) emailed me today with a listing he thought I might be interested in. It was a palace for $3.6 million. A bit out of my price range, but it was on 5 acres, just like I asked for!

Ok, I don't really think he thought of me personally when he sent the email, but rather, I was the recipient of an email blast. I thought it was funny and showed it to DH. He asked me to figure how many overtime shifts he'd have to work for us to buy that house. That's math I don't like to do.

At our budget, it's likely that we'll have to buy a fixer. We looked at a couple more last weekend, just for fun. All the homes we've looked at so far coincidentally happen to be foreclosures. I guess there are a ton of them around here. So, maybe we could get a newer fixer. One of the items on our wish list is to NOT live in a 100-year-old house. I know that's high priority for a lot of people, but not me. I don't find hundred year old houses charming. I've seen and stayed in enough of them to know that their floor plans are weird, ceilings are too low, and just are not clean and never will be again. It's that last part that bugs the heck out of me. Some people look at old buildings and think museum; I think demolition time! That's the L.A. girl in me. It's the total L.A. philosophy; they save no buildings for historical sake only. Take pictures and then tear it down.

DH happens to work in a historical building. It is very, very cool, and it also is falling apart and is terribly outdated and unsafe and obviously expensive to restore and modernize. As with any such building anywhere, when it was decided that the building had to go, the local historical society protested and I guess they won since part of the original building will be retained and restored and operated as a museum. This was after the owners had taken the photos, a video diary, and offered public tours, but in the end that wasn't good enough.

Since I am frequently lamenting the plethora of shacks in this state, DH has often suggested to me that I open my own demolition business. Obviously I've presented a lot of evidence indicating that I would love that job.