The worst mistake of his life: he went to an auction, got the wrong place, and spent a fortune he didn’t have on a destroyed house

Cal Hunter had gone to a real estate auction in search of an apartment he had seen with his girlfriend, Claire Segeren. I had planned to spend until u $ s 40,000, and I thought it was going to be very tight. However, to his surprise, Cal managed to acquire a property for only u $ s 10,000, the problem was what i bought.

When I heard the offer of u $ s 10,000 for a house, his first instinct was to raise his hand, thinking that many would do the same, but Cal found himself in a quiet room, not wanting to fight for the property..

Silent until whoever sat next to her told her “But have you seen what you just bought?”. Automatically, Cal rushed into worry, but when the hammer is and the sale closed, there was no turning back. A last minute change in the numbers that identified the properties meant that everything went wrong. Without really understanding what had happened, Cal looked at the brochure that detailed all the auctions and realized: he had bought an abandoned mansion in the middle of Scotland..

In dialogue with The Guardian, Cal said, “The number I had on the paper and the one they showed on the screen certainly didn’t match” and added that it was all getting more muddled because he didn’t understand the accent of the auctioneer, “I had a hard time following him,” he confessed. The sum of these factors produced the fatal error of thousands of dollars.

The apartment he had gone to find, for which he expected to spend $ 40,000, was eventually sold for u $ s 87,000Cal couldn’t have afforded it, and at least that way he had gotten a cheap property. Corn The problem was, where is the property and what condition is it in?. With a low battery on the phone, he texted Claire asking him to investigate Villa Jameswood, the mansion I bought.

The property was in Dunoon, near Glasgow, where Cal and Claire had decided to move. The situation was suddenly not so bad, they were going to be close to where they had imagined themselves living. Location was no longer an issue, now the issue was the condition of the house: it was a 120 year old mansion, completely in ruins, with a sign that said “danger, stay away”.

Cal said: “There was moldy furniture, spray markings on the walls; and the roofs, abandoned for over 20 years, were falling. The water and electricity had been cut off, and even a chair had fallen through the parquet floor“He was clearly in terrible shape.

As if that wasn’t enough, at the auction Cal had only purchased half the mansion, which meant the couple spent another six months trying to acquire the other half in order to decide what. make it. They had no money to buy other goods and they knew that Jameswood it was not going to be sold: decided to look on the bright side and start renovations.

They used the little savings they had to buy a motorhome to spend their days renovating the mansion. Now, two years and a lot of work later, they have managed to completely renovate the mansion and turn it into a home.

“It’s hard work, but we’ve both learned a lot; taking on so much has helped us grow as people. We’ve learned everything from masonry to computer-aided design software to plumbing and electrical, ”Cal explained. On his instagram, @whathavewedunoon, you can see all the renovations day by day.

“The neighbors greeted us with open arms, stopping with soup and lending us tools. It is a special place; if you accidentally buy a house, you can’t get it in a better place.