Donate an old house....?

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BinaryLimited

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#162002 26-Jan-2015 16:54

Hi All

I'm going to purchase a piece of land which has an old house on it. The house is barely liveable.
I've decided to donate the building to the local fire department to run drills for training.
We have also contacted our local police station to see if they would like to do training prior to the building being burnt to the ground.

As with removing any building or house on my own land, I have to ask and pay council which is amazing...@sarcasm@

My question :
- Does anyone have any better ideas for donating?
- Anyone know of any charities who will collect basins, sinks etc.
- Is there any other organisation that could benefit from this? (As well as the police and fire department)

Bighammer, was thinking of you and your team but wasn't sure as you are not local...

Look forward to the responses.

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#1222555 26-Jan-2015 16:56

You will need to have it checked for asbestos and lead paint etc before you do anything

BinaryLimited

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#1222564 26-Jan-2015 16:59

KiwiNZ: You will need to have it checked for asbestos and lead paint etc before you do anything

whys that? Surely the asbestos and lead paint make it for fun? :)

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mattwnz

20173 posts

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#1222588 26-Jan-2015 17:18

I would contact a house removal company for quotes to take it away, far less hassle in terms of potential issues. They can then donate it if they wish. It maybe able to be reused as there are a lot of young families who would love a house to do up.

PhantomNVD

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#1222590 26-Jan-2015 17:20

Where is the house local to?

We have had great success on postings in "freecycle"
https://www.freecycle.org/search

mattwnz

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#1222601 26-Jan-2015 17:48

Maybe you could post a pic of the house, so we can get an idea of it's condition. You may not be able to burn for some time anyway, due to fire restrictions, so if you want to remove it quickly via buring, you could be waiting several months at least. I would also be wary of asbestos and lead paint from it, and if you have neighbours nearby, they may not thank you, and you don't want to get offside with neighbours.

JimmyH

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#1222662 26-Jan-2015 19:05

I would be tempted to tell the fire brigade that they are welcome to burn it for training, providing they sort the permits and remove the debris afterwards.

They may be interested. And I assume that the pettifogging council bureaucrats would look more favorably on a training exercise request from the brigade than a request to torch it from you - plus there's a good chance that fire restrictions don't apply to authorised burns supervised by the brigade?

toyonut

1508 posts

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#1222679 26-Jan-2015 19:36

Contact Habitat for Humanity as well. They may well look at it either for fittings and building materials for new houses or as a donation to their ReStores which sell second hand building materials and interiors as well as second hand furniture etc.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

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coffeebaron

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#1222695 26-Jan-2015 19:51

$1 reserve on TradeMe

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wellygary

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#1222697 26-Jan-2015 19:55

coffeebaron: $1 reserve on TradeMe

Buyer Must Pickup :)

SumnerBoy

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#1222735 26-Jan-2015 21:13

I did this in 2010. I decided I was going to build a new house on my existing section. The old house was old but ok - had had a few renovations to some parts so wasn't the most stylish - but I chucked it on TradeMe for $1 no reserve. Ended up selling to a removal company who gave me $1500 and relisted it as a relocatable home - they would obviously do the moving. They sold it to a couple down south just out of Dunedin and off it went on the back of a truck.

Couldn't believe how easy the process was. Not likely to be so simple these days in ChCh however, there are literally hundreds of homes on red-zoned land that are being relocated. Definitely a buyers market!

Niel

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#1222925 27-Jan-2015 07:24

We did the same as SumnerBoy, 3-4 years ago. Two bedroom house in Auckland so no-one was interested. Demolition was going to be $10k and we can't keep any of the valuable timber etc. In the end found someone through friends of friends, who had a section he wanted to subdivide. Game me $75 as there must be money exchanged to make it a legal transaction. Cost him around $15k to get it moved, and his section is about 4km away from us. Was really easy, we lived in the old house until the new one was finished so no rent either.

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BinaryLimited

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#1222995 27-Jan-2015 09:19

cool will have a look at all the options mentioned above.

Niel & Summerboy : did you guys put a relocatable house on your land or built from new?

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SumnerBoy

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#1223001 27-Jan-2015 09:28

Built from new once the old house was gone. Loved the experience, don't love the mortgage...

Niel

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#1223396 27-Jan-2015 16:53

Built new and then removed old, so we lived in the old house until the new one was done. 675 sqm narrow section with 2 bedroom house right in the middle, managed to fit 200 sqm house behind it without first moving the old house. But that is also an option, you can move the old house and maintain connections, then build new, then remove the old house. Probably still cheaper than renting (and moving) during the construction period, just classify the old house as a temporary building.

But it was fun and games with the council, as they just could not understand what we were doing. Then in the end needed a resource consent due to the "impact on the neighbours" having 2 houses for 9 months, extra traffic, and don't know what else. Paid a few thousand dollars for the consent and we had to plant a tree which the council "may periodically inspect and charge us for the inspection" (Auckland council). The consent would have cost around $6k, but we did it ourselves so it cost less than half that. My wife is really good with such things. Best advice is talk to the council first and get it in writing. We initially phones Manukau Council before we started the project and just before the councils were merged and the lady said no consent required, so we started the project and then after earthworks was done it got put on hold awaiting consent but we did not have the lady's name so had no fallback and had to go ahead with the consent application.

You can never have enough Volvos!

mcraenz

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#1224104 28-Jan-2015 14:49

How old is the house? Full of native timber? Please don't burn timber that takes 400-500 years to grow to maturity. :)

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