S2 E43: Ugly Yet Sound: How a $110K VA Loan Home Built Real Equity

Can an outdated, dirty, unloved house still be the smartest first purchase you ever make?

In this episode, Brittney closes out a wild 2020 with the story of her second (and final) transaction of the year: a fellow military client buying their first home with a VA loan for just $110,000.

The house had a lot going against it on the surface.
An old drop in stove, mismatched appliances, no fridge, and it clearly hadn't been cleaned or cared for in a while. But structurally, it was solid enough to sail through a VA appraisal, and that distinction, ugly versus unsound, is the whole episode. Brittney walks through how she helps buyers separate what they truly need from what they simply want, why sweat equity can outperform a move in ready home, and the exact question she asks every client before they make an offer: could you live in this house right now as it stands?

This episode is for first time homebuyers using a VA loan, military families navigating a PCS or transition, and anyone weighing a fixer upper against a turnkey home on a tight budget. You'll walk away with a practical framework for prioritizing must haves versus nice to haves, a real example of a client who added over $100,000 in value with one renovation project a year, and a candid look at what it's like buying and renting during a military move, including a personal story about a landlord who made a hard season even harder.


Key Takeaways

• A home can be cosmetically rough and still be a financially sound purchase, as long as nothing structural or safety related stands in the way of a VA appraisal.
• Sweat equity plus time in the market often builds more wealth than waiting for a perfect, move in ready home.
• Doing one renovation project a year, timed with a tax refund, can add significant resale value without feeling overwhelming.
• The best test for a home: could you comfortably move in and live there right now, cleaning aside?
• Live in a house for a while before making permanent changes. What feels wrong on day one sometimes turns out to be exactly right.
• Location trade offs, like being on a main road, can be worth it if there's a practical upside, such as easy carport access.
• If you're a landlord renting to military tenants, flexibility and compassion during PCS or stop movement orders go a long way.
  
  
  🎧 If this episode helped you rethink what your first home could look like, subscribe to Closing Chapters so you never miss an episode. Leave a review, it helps other buyers and agents find the show. And if you know someone weighing a fixer upper against a move in ready home, share this episode with them.

Closing Chapters Podcast: Where Every Mission Has A Story

Thanks for listening. We talk all things military real estate, my transactions, the mistakes, the wins, and simple plays you can use right now.

Work With Me:

• Buying or selling near Fort Bragg & Moore County
• Agents, partner with me 

Connect With Brittney:

🌐 Website

📚 Training Platform

📺 YouTube

📸 Instagram

📘 Facebook

💼 LinkedIn

📧 Email: brittney@homeswithbrittney.com

If this episode helped, follow the show, leave a quick review, and share it with a friend in PCS season.

Disclaimer: This podcast education only & is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Talk with your own pros about your situation. Opinions are my own.

© 2025 Brittney Frye. All rights reserved. Realtor, license # 352197 in NC. Brokerage: REAL Broker l Military Division

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey there friend, welcome back to the closing chapters podcast where every mission has a story. My client got a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch house on almost an acre of land for $110,000. Okay. That's as much as I spent on my first home in 2015. This is now 2020. Prices are going up, but they have still maintained to find a house, found a way to find a house at $110,000. Now it was ugly. It was not updated. It had a drop-in old stove, like one of the more metal y ones, not stained steel or black or white. Hodgepodge appliances did not have a fridge, and it was just it had sat. It was dirty and it was ugly. Hello, hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of closing chapters. Speaking of closing chapters, we are about to close out 2020. I told you 2020 and 2021 were pretty short years for me. So this is my second and final transaction for 2020. And if you say, why, Britney, why would you do two transactions in a year? Just a reminder, this is when straight chaos ensued in our world. What I mean by this is we had just made a cross-country trip from South Dakota back to South Carolina in December. And my husband was away at basic training to transfer over into the Army after 13 years in the Air Force, mind you. And that was a whole whirlwind in itself. I have now had my first little munchkin on Valentine's Day. And we will soon be starting the process of more moves with our Army transition. So this final transaction for 2020 was another CE folk. And what a blessing it is. So this is someone we had actually been stationed at Shaw with for a while. So we knew him. It wasn't somebody coming in. It was like, hey, up in here when it's time for me to buy a house. So we went looking. And in true form, this was his first home, and he did not have a lot to work with budget-wise. So this is another fantastic example how we can have ugly as long as it is a sound home. And what do you mean, Britney? If you listen to episode 42, we talked about how you can invest appropriately with your VA loan. This is a perfect example. My client got a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch house on almost an acre of land for $110,000. Okay. That's as much as I spent on my first home in 2015. This is now 2020. Prices are going up, but they have still maintained to find a house, found a way to find a house at $110,000. Now it was ugly. It was not updated. It had a drop-in old stove, like one of the more metal y ones, not stainless steel or black or white. Hodgepodge appliances did not have a fridge. And it was just it had sat. It was dirty and it was ugly. But it was solid. It was totally fine. There was nothing that was going to make it not pass a VA appraisal. So part of our thing when we were there was like, hey, let's go through the house and talk about what you could do in the life of your ownership, like the lifetime of your ownership, to just be able to fix this up a little bit at a time and build, build, build equity. Now, if this guy did nothing to that house and just maintained it bare bones and kept it clean, he still would have had a lot of equity right now, just because of like the influx of prices over the past handful of years. And the fact that he would have been paying down that mortgage pretty darn fast. So he would naturally have good equity. But couple that up with doing some projects here or there, he could put himself in a very, very nice financial position in the future. So I just want to use this as a reminder that no matter what your goal is, sometimes it's possible, sometimes it's not. And I'm going to be realistic with you. But in this case, as long as he was willing to accept an outdated home, then we could find it. It existed, and that was okay. So I just want to remind you that you don't have to have it all the first time around. And that's something we had to talk about a lot, right? Like this guy was overzealous. He was like, hey, I want my first house. I want it to be moving ready. I want to have an acre of land. I want it to be fenced in. And and and and which is fantastic to have all those goals. However, that does not necessarily couple together well with your price point, right? So then we go looking and we say, okay, this is what's in your price point, or this is what you actually want. So are you willing to accept what's in your price point? And can we make this work? And once we are able to see things and then also compare the sizes of houses, okay. So it's we can get you a nicer house that's only gonna be right at a thousand square feet, right? Which is okay. A lot of people love that for their first home. They don't want a home that they have to maintain all the time. They probably are still living there by themselves or just with a spouse, and they're not filling up that other space. They just need space for them and their stuff and to go live life. So that can be totally fine. But sometimes people are like, no, I'm gonna have family here or we're gonna grow here or whatever the case might be. I need space, space, space, space. And most people, that's where they're at. They would prefer more space. So then that equates finding something with more space that is not as buttoned up, nice, ready to go. And that's okay because sweat equity can go very, very far. So that is exactly what happened here. And the only other caveat, which we actually were looking at, two houses on either side of the street, which is funny, is that it was on a main road. It wasn't tucked away in a neighborhood, which is okay. This was in an area where there's not predominantly nice cookie-cutter neighborhoods. It's an older area of town, so it's just on the road. But the bonus is that it was a side-load carport, didn't have a garage, but it had a really nice carport. So you turned off of the road onto the side to get to the carport. So it still made it easy getting in and out. So there's some things like that where it's okay, yes, I am on a predominant road, but I have ease of access to get in and out, and I can make do with that. So this is a great reminder all the way around that if we are willing to pick our priorities wisely and know what is an absolute necessity, I gotta have it, or this is what I really truly desire, versus, all right, I can be creative, I can put on some paint, I can put in new appliances in a year, I can make some adjustments here or there, but there's nothing that keeps me from living in the house right now. Then that is where we can make magic happen. And that is my key phrase that I ask people all the time. When we're looking at a house, that is my gauge is could you move in here and live in it right now as it stands? Now I don't mean it needs to be cleaned, right? That's fine. Everybody's gonna come in and clean a house. Even if we were renting a house, even if we went into an apartment, you're gonna come in and you're gonna clean it before you move in, right? That's that's very normal. But outside of that, is there anything that's going to keep you from comfortably living in this home? Something that's not working right, like your AC. But even at that, okay, can we put in a window unit and be okay? Might depend on your loan type, right? Because if it's a VA, then that H V A C needs to be operating. So different things like that. But do we have an operating stove? Do we have huge holes in the wall? Do we have huge plumbing issues? Is there something that's gonna keep us from being able to move in and live in this house right now? And if the answer is no, then it should be an option. That's my purview. Because once we get in it and live in it, then we can make decisions. I just had this discussion on Sunday. I, our first house, when we moved into it, we it's two long rooms. The front room is one long rectangle, and it was our living room and could be like the formal dining room. We ended up turning into a pool table area. And then behind was like the fireplace room, where it was like the pine paneling, like tree pine paneling, and then the kitchen. So it's like two long rectangles, and there's a wall, and there was pocket doors on either side. And we said we were gonna bust that open, make it one big space, and have this big open floor plan. And then there was a door to the hallway to where the bedrooms and bathrooms were at. Once we lived in it for a minute, we realized how amazing it was that we could actually cut off those spaces because we also had two puppers. And it was really nice to be able to know that we could leave the pups in a certain area and limit what they could access, which was phenomenal. So for instance, dog hair floats everywhere, so we didn't necessarily want them in the room with the kitchen all day long or jumping on the counters, they're getting into our trash. So we could keep them in that front room where the pool table in the living room is at, and that wasn't gonna happen. So I always have learned from that and said, hey, live in it for a minute and then start making decisions. If you don't like a door being there after you've lived in it for a month, take the door off. But once you start modifying things and then realize that you don't like it after you modified it, it feels daunting. I just went and ripped something out, and now I wish I hadn't of and now it's gonna cost all this money, and you get into this spiral unnecessarily. So if it's good, just live with it for a little while and figure out what you want to do. My other rule of thumb is that you can do a project a year. I'm the best return that I've had from one of my clients, that's exactly what they did. Every year at tax time, they said, Hey Brittany, I'm gonna do a project. We're thinking about this or this, which one is gonna give me more value? And that's what they did every year for four years. And they made over a hundred thousand dollars on their house when they sold it. Now, once again, this was an awesome house, a great floor plan. It was ugly. It had green carpet, it was dark, it smelled like urine, but they could fix that, right? They had cash set aside. So when they purchased it, they immediately had the carpet replaced and then they painted the rooms that were so dark and lightened it up. So walking in the door, it was livable for them. And then every year for four years, they did one project at a time, a little bit of updating in the kitchen, overhauling the primary bathroom, things like that, a little bit at a time. And it paid off for them big. So there is a way to do this without it having to be daunting and overwhelming. It just means you have to be patient and you have to plan appropriately. And if you haven't heard me say this enough, you've got to trust your trusted advisor. Lean into us. We know what creates value in a home, what people are looking for, what an appraiser might actually value more or less. So lean into us, use us as a guide. Tell us, hey, I want to do this, but I want to make sure that it's actually gonna put money back in my pocket. Because sometimes the things that we think we want to do are not value add. So if it is to you and you want to do it anyways, so be it. That is fantastic. But you have to understand that you're doing it because that's your desire, not because you're trying to create more value or money in your property. So lots of different conversations to be had there. But ultimately, the full story is that one, we've officially wrapped up 2020. This was the end of March, which was perfect because then I had two months with my baby girl before we went on our next grand adventure. We left at the end of May to drive to Alabama to pick up daddy. So that was quite the craze. Also, just a kind reminder that if you have a property and you are a property manager, like or you are owning, you are maintaining your own property as a rental, I should do a whole nother episode on this. Especially when things are wonky with the government or military. I'm just gonna ride that Laurel because that was my experience, okay? We have got to make sure that we are kind and considerate. I was living in a townhome at the time because our house was rented. So I did not have anywhere else to go. I was not gonna kick out a tenant just to be there for six months when it was a money-producing property. So, anyhow, I was living in a townhome at the time, and me and several other folks there were military and we were about to transition. During COVID, everything was halted and nobody knew whether they were moving or not or when. And my husband was impacted by that as well. He got held at training and then missed his first training in Alabama, finally was able to get put into another round. And so, either way, I'm a sitting duck just waiting until I know what's next. And there was another family that was in the same boat. They were supposed to move, and all of a sudden they were told their orders were held, and then they ended up moving later. The townhome company that we were renting from had a policy of 60-day notice. Okay. In this scenario, there is no 60-day notice. And they were trying to require us to pay for 60 days, regardless of the notice. It didn't matter how many emails I said, this is the update, this is what I know, this is what we're being told. I communicated every step of the way. And they're like, okay, great, reach back out to us when you want to give us 60 days notice. And I'm like, I'm telling you everything I know as I know. I'm gonna get told pick up and leave one day. That's that's the notice I'm gonna have. So finally, we just had to make the decision to abandon the town room to go ahead and move out. And so I had to put all of our belongings in storage. And by I, I mean I had a wonderful crew at my office that came with their trailers and helped us load everything up and put everything in storage. And then I loaded as much as I could in my husband's car and towed his car with my baby and the two dogs to Alabama to go stay in a hotel until. We were very thankful that that wasn't long. We were only there for a couple days before we were allowed to get to my husband, and then we were there for the like the remainder of the week before he was released to go on to his next location. So it all ended up being okay. However, that is such an awful position to be in when you have no control over what's going on. And it is well known that this is a government-wide situation and that a landlord is being so unwilling to be helpful or to hold things over your head. So please, for a moment, I teach, preach, love building portfolios. But if you are gonna have military folks or government folks or anything like that in your properties, if anything wonky like that ever happens again and you know there's stopped movement or crazy things going on where people are having a hard time with their orders, be kind and compassionate. I can tell you from personal experience, being there with a newborn in the midst of all of that, trying to figure it out by myself was a hot mess expressed. And I just needed someone to care and to help me, and there was none of that. And so, anyhow, that will forever be impressed upon me and help me to be passionate and considerate with my tenants. Most of them that are long-term, we don't manage. We have a property manager, but same deal. They she runs everything by us. But we do have a furnished property right now that we have a military couple in there and they're going through the medical board process where they're gonna be getting out of the military. And it's the same thing. You get strung along. You think you're gonna be out by this time. So we have done little three-month stints, and now we're gonna move to a month-to-month stint just to get them to where they need to be before they can head to their next destination. So it's okay to be reasonable, it's not anybody necessarily taking advantage of you. But once again, talk to a trusted advisor and say, hey, is this reasonable or what should I do in the scenario? Don't just dig your heels in and make things hard for everybody else. There's a time and a place for sure to hold the bar, to hold the standard 100%. But sometimes when we're in this limbo land with the military, somebody else just needs a little bit of empathy, consideration, and someone to be on their side. And you can be that person. So, all in all, remember you can get a great deal in a VA home. It can be ugly as long as it is sound, and you, my friends, can be building fantastic equity in your next home with your VA loan. So, this is 2020, my friends. I can't wait to tell you about 2021 because it's not in South Carolina. Hang tight, and I can't wait to tell you more. I'll talk to you soon, my friends. Hey! I just wanted to say thank you for being here and listening in on this episode of Closing Chapters with me. I truly enjoy putting this content together, and I hope that you enjoy it too. If so, could you like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you know that will enjoy it just as much as you did? Thank you so much.