Buying Arts & Crafts Kit Homes As Investment Properties

If you are looking to buy investment properties in the United States you might want to consider narrowing your focus to a niche segment of the U.S. real estate market. The 'kit home' was an outgrowth of the Arts & Crafts aesthetic movement of the late 1800s and early part of the 20th century.

Companies like Sears and Alladin homes published catalogs in the late teens from which customers could order an actual kit for building a home. The lumber, plans, and all other supplies would then be delivered to the homesite, and the homeowner would either construct the house on his own or hire contractors to help. Most of these homes were bungalows, although some two-story models were built, and all are red-hot desirable even in a down market.

With so many foreclosure sales on the west coast and mid western U.S., now is a good time to read up on the period and see if you can locate any of these. Finding an Arts & Crafts kit house at a low price is the real estate equivalent of finding a rare penny in a dish of pocket change. Lots of books are available that describe the distinguishing features of kit homes and give instructions for how to identify a genuine kit home. (Many times you can find unique markings on various lumber items used in the home that will verify your initial suspicions).

You can also purchase reproductions of original kit home catalogs to help guide you in your selections. Sears built its first kit home on 1909 and continued to market these do-it-yourself houses until 1940. All Sears kit homes have a resale value that is off the charts, especially if they are lovingly restored to their original Arts & Crafts character.

This home was the first 'kit home' offered by Sears in 1909.

it may seem like a lot of unnecessary extra work to read up on these homes and target kit homes specifically, the whole point of buying property in the U.S. and then selling property in the U.S. is to make money. Finding kit homes, if you are able to develop a knack for it, can net you a lot of money.

Often kit homes have been badly redecorated over the years and may be covered over with ugly layers of white aluminum siding, fake interior wood paneling, shag carpet over original hardwood floors, or ill-advised drop ceilings. They are often located in older neighborhoods that may be very inexpensively priced. Learning to recognize them and their potential involves learning the basic Craftsman shapes and lines, and familiarizing yourself with the most popular plans, then using your imagination and asking yourself if an Arts & Crafts kit house might be hiding underneath 70 years of bad decorating decisions.

Once you think you might have located one of these neglected gems, your next task will be to comb the guts of the house looking for identifying marks on the beams or foundation elements that confirm the house did start its life as a pile of do-it-yourself lumber. Should you find such marks, buy the house.  And do it quietly and quickly. Don't make a lot of noise about what you think you've found, or someone else will snatch it out from under you.

Restoring Arts & Crafts kit houses is mostly a matter of stripping off surface garbage and refinishing a lot of woodwork. Arts & Crafts period homes are characterized by clean straight lines, lots of heavy (but simple) oak woodwork, stained  glass with natural themes, oak built-ins, and an attempt to bring nature in to the house through the use of sun rooms, porches, and pergolas.

Many retailers cater to Arts & Crafts rehabbers, so you will have no trouble finding original materials or, if that is out of your price range, authentic reproductions of original materials.Make sure you do a good job on the rehab, and get professional advice if you need it. Making a wrong call on a fixture or finish will eat into your profit badly.

Putting a rehabbed kit house up for sale will go especially well for you in large coastal areas that have a politically liberal population (like Seattle or San Francisco) and a strong local arts community. These homes are much sought after, and there has never been a better time to go hunting for them. Prices are low. Buyers are few. Real profit awaits the foreign investor who goes in prepared.