1,509 words

 

 

 

 

RECYCLING VICTORIAN HOMES 

 

Written by June Grayson  

Photographed by Richard Grayson  

 

Wanda Bengoechea buys doomed houses for a dollar and restores them to their former Victorian glory  

on the way to her first million.  

 

 

 

Some people are content to recycle newspapers and aluminum  

cans. Not Wanda Bengoechea. She recyles Victorian homes. When she ran out of empty lots in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, she  

bought two adjoining acreages four miles out of town to start  

her own subdivision. She has already moved four houses  

otherwise destined for the wrecker's ball to their new and  

permanent foundations. She will add six more houses within  

the next one to two years to complete the subdivision. These wondrous old homes squat on the barren, treeless,  

flat prairie of east-central Illinois like monopoly blocks  

on a lunar landscape. Drivers on highway 65, two hours south of  

Chicago and just south of the intersection of Rt. 74, turn off  

to investigate the sight. Arrivals at the municipal airport  

take the long way back into town to see what's happening.  

Hundreds throng a Sunday Open House at the subdivision.  

People old enough to remember Grandpa and Grandma's  

farm and home before the technological revolution can  

understand the irresistible attraction.  

Both massive and exuberant, these houses evoke memories of  

America's own adolescent age when opportunity seemed infinite.  

The so-called Queen Anne style of Victorian houses that  

dominated American architecture in the late 1800s had wraparound  

porches, substantial size, and sometimes a front tower or  

turret. Gingerbread detailing adorned the exteriors. Steeply  

pitched, hipped, or pyramidal roofs towered over the trees. Queen Anne houses introduced a new technology, balloon- 

framing, still the basis of current residential wall  

construction. A close network of light lumber or studs,  

held together by wire nails, replaces heavy interior beams.  

Bengoechea seeks this type of house for her subdivision.  

Bengoechea did not plan to go into real estate development. Born in Idaho, she studied home economics in college and worked there for nine years as an extension home economist.  

Yet she can't remember when she did not like old things. She furnished her first apartment with junk. "I like to make  

something from nothing, it's my maternal instinct," Bengoechea  

explains.  

When the Bengoecheas moved to Champaign, Illinois, in 1973,  

they bought a monstrous old house at a bargain price because it was a "pigpen."  

Bengoechea cleaned up and redecorated the house in three  

months while caring for her family. They still own that first  

house but rent it out as apartments. "We can't afford to sell-  

it is such a good investment," Bengoechea says.  

Her first successful rehabilitation gave her confidence to  

try again. Four miles out of town, they found 12 acres of  

land with a private lake, many trees, and another "Wanda"  

house - one that looks hopeless to a casual observer and needs  

her special vision for restoration. Vacant and vandalized for  

eight years, the decrepit farmhouse had 45 windows with not one  

pane of glass.  

They moved into the farmhouse in 1976 and lived in it  

during her typical three-month restoration period. The family  

relaxed for three years - the last time off Bengoechea was to take.  

As customary in country building, the house fronted on the gravel country road. They could not look out their windows and enjoy the lake view. Bengoechea decided to build a modern,  

permanent family home on the lakefront. She would act as her  

own general contractor. To finance the new home, she sold off the Victorian house  

with two acres of land in 1979 retaining the lake and ten acres.  

She bought a trailer for her family to live in until they could  

occupy the new home. "At that time, it did not occur to me  

that I could move another house to our building site," she says.  

Inexplicably, in 1981 Bengoechea developed an acute case  

of SRB - sudden rehabilitation burnout. "I was sick of living  

in a mess and raising toddlers," she says. "To go back into  

home economics, I would have had to return to school. I am  

not a student or a philosopher; I have to be active every  

minute."  

She stopped work abruptly on their home. Even now two  

rooms have only the plywood subfloors.  

With $5,000 they had saved from household funds and interest rates at 18 percent, Bengoechea gambled on outside  

real estate. She bought a run-down cooperative apartment  

building on contract, cleaned it up herself with her usual  

sweat labor, sold it, and came out with a net profit of $10,000.  

Then a realtor steered her to a small bungalow she bought for $11,000. The cockroaches in it were so thick that even the exterminator wouldn't go in. She renovated it in three months and sold it for $27,000.  

She had found her financial niche.  

With a new partner, she formed a corporation to renovate an old apartment building and turn it into condos. She did everything herself but the plumbing. By now, townspeople knew Bengoechea as a one woman rehab  

resource. Bankers told her of available bankruptcy properties.  

Developers asked her to haul old buildings away before they  

built new ones.  

She cannot remember - or chooses not to say - how many  

properties she has renovated since she started in 1981. Only  

her accountant knows for sure. "I keep all my little scraps of paper and he makes sense of it at the end of the year," Bengoechea smiles.  

She also does not know how many rental properties she  

retains. She does not always remember her buying and selling  

price. What she does remember is the net profit she makes on  

every deal - and she always makes a profit. "I look for  

something I can buy for $20,000 and rent for $375.00."  

She prefers to rent her properties rather than sell, since  

she can always sell later. She maintains the properties,  

collects the rents, and pays the bills.  

Fortunately for Bengoechea, Champaign-Urbana has a  

continuing need for rental housing for the more than 30,000  

students and support staff of the University of Illinois.  

Starting in the 1850s, sturdy immigrants built the substantial  

houses which can be recycled today.  

Why did Bengoechea start her own subdivision in 1986,  

her biggest speculative project so far?  

Any woman will understand: she found a bargain she could not resist. She bought her first old house for the subdivision for one dollar.  

The University of Illinois had inherited a farm but did  

not need the old farmhouse. On a sudden whim, Bengoechea put  

in her sealed bid of $1.00 (and other considerations) at 11.30 a.m. of the day the bidding closed at noon. That afternoon they  

called her. She owned the house. Would she please take it  

away?  

Bengoechea had no suitable lot and could find none, either.  

In continual panic for several months, she finally purchased the  

ten acres for a new subdivision. 

She may have bought the house for one dollar but other  

financial considerations add up. She paid to fill in the hole  

it left on the original property. It took two days and  

$20,000 to move the house seventeen miles.  

Bengoechea still had her problems. Her cement contractor  

was busy. It was summer. He delayed coming out to put in the  

concrete foundation to which the house would be raised. You  

can not insure a house until it is up on its foundation.  

Someone torched the house one night in two places. The police proven arson. Fortunately, a neighbor noticed the smoke and  

called the fire department.  

"I prayed the whole time," Bengoechea remembers. "Please,  

God, just leave the shell and I can make it."  

Before Bengoechea even finished the restoration, a banker's family who loved antiques bought the house at their first  

inspection. Catching the enthusiasm, they also bought the adjoining lot. With Bengoechea's advice, they relocated another old house to that site to put their six sons to work and share  

in the creativity.  

These finished homes are not cheap. Bengoechea listed the third house for $187,000 in the fall of 1988. "That includes my  

labor at ten cents an hour," she laughs.  

How does she know what is a good buy?  

"I consider salability and whether I have the  

skills to redo the house. If it requires major construction, I  

will turn it down. I don't have those skills and I won't make  

money. The house plan has to flow. I can tell by walking  

through a house for only five minutes if it is type,"  

Bengoechea explains. "If I like it, I know someone else will  

like it too. It does not take great skills to turn a good house around." 

She now works with a full-time handyman. She knows the  

good contractors she can call for special jobs. No Ponzi  

schemer, she finances internally so that she can ride out any  

storm.  

She still has dreams, but this is one entrepreneur who  

knows how to put the right foundations under them. #####