“All I wanted to do was make a house a home for our family,” Courtney Babbs tells PEOPLE
NEED TO KNOW
- In 2021, Courtney Babbs and her husband bought a smoke-damaged fixer-upper in their dream neighborhood of Overland Park, Kan., after being outbid on other homes
- They lived in the home while renovating it room by room, doing much of the work themselves and saving “hundreds of thousands” of dollars
- In five years, they fully transformed the space, with their growing family in mind
In the summer of 2021, after repeatedly being outbid in a competitive housing market, one young Kansas couple found themselves running out of time. Their apartment lease was nearing its end, interest rates were historically low and move-in-ready homes were attracting fierce competition.
So when they came across a run-down home listed for $320,000 in their “dream neighborhood,” Courtney Babbs and her husband saw something most buyers didn’t. Although the home needed far more than cosmetic updates, beneath the filth and years of neglect was a rare opportunity to put down roots in a place they never thought they could afford.
“There weren’t many homes on the market in this neighborhood, but we knew that we bought the ugliest house in the best neighborhood at a great price,” Babbs, 30, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Because of that, we knew that there was a huge opportunity for building long-term equity.”…