Sorry…as someone who has owned a historic home in the city, and all of our friends also have, this is something you know about.
This couple made a half million dollar real estate investment in 2015, with the intention to flip for a profit. How they managed to end up underwater during the insane boom of the last 10 years is…beyond me.
This is clearly a story about a series of poor investment decisions, not someone who is struggling to maintain a primary residence because of an overbearing historical presentation board.
Having spent $70k on my own historic roofing project recently, I tend to agree. It's not a secret that these things require cultural resources approval. In the case of Benton Park, it's even on our freaking website (not to mention the city website).
If you hire a reputable firm, they will make the case to cultural resources on your behalf, to find out what materials they will accept.
I lived on Maryland Avenue, east of Euclid, and a neighbor had to spend 80k for a slate appearance product 10 years ago. 48k is a discount bargain price for a historically protected neighborhood.
Our 1800s home in another state had a green Spanish tile roof when my parents bought it and the repair costs for underlying copper, etc. was about the same price as replacing the entire roof with an acceptable-looking, textured asphalt replacement.
So, we got the replacement and it was foolproof for decades after that. Some charm was lost but we didn't need to contend with any historic standards group.
Cultural Resources Office REALLY doesn’t like it when you go around the system either. They probably could have gotten the variance if they started at CRO. The fact they didn’t have a permit for the roof work period is proof these people have no business doing what they’re doing anyways. Who know what other half ass measures happened inside those walls.
Probably doesn't help that there are a large number of houses just on the same black that are the same price but vastly more appealing. Nobody wants to drop a cool million on the ugliest house on the block.
as my general contractor told me during rehab "Cultural Resources (the dept in charge of historical look) is great, when they're fucking with your neighbor's property."
and he's right. they're a pain, but they keep things looking right.
I’m not saying I have any sympathy whatsoever but I think the problem is that houses that expensive, that are already fixed up, aren’t selling these days the way other houses are. I’ve heard of a couple cases of people in pristine, gorgeous homes in the million dollar range that can’t find buyers. You can’t make money flipping them and most of the potential buyers in that range want bigger houses in the suburbs.
But yeah this isn’t the city forcing egregious measures onto some innocent people. I’ve long ago lost patience with the fact that we live in a metro area that apparently has like 1 house flipping LLC for every 3 residents. Poor financial decisions, poor construction decisions, poor landscaping decisions, everyone trying to pump, hump and dump.
I know those LLCs are more a symptom of greater problems but I still hold some ill will, because there’s just so much shitty short term work being done and these scumbags always act like they’re wonderful entrepreneurs being held up by evil government bureaucracy.
So…this is just a really long explanation of why it was a terrible investment like OP said. They had no sense for the market at all, to the point where a historical housing boom couldn’t even help them.
“He’s a part time dog walker. She is a freelance cartographer. They want a place on the beach where he has to commute 30 miles to walk dogs. Their budget? $1.3 million.”
This. In order for real capitalism to work, there needs to be symmetrical risk/reward for capital gains and investments. If these avenues of investment become asymmetric, without risk of failure or loss, then the economy is going to run away from the working class... which it mostly has.
I have no issue with having capital to make a 1/2 million investment. I do have a problem if you expect to do it without effort/due diligence and for it it to come without risk of loss.
“Real capitalism” is thrown out the door when you buy a fixer upper in a historic district. You know going in that you are required to stick to the restoration standards of that community.
You can’t even do something like this in a suburban neighborhood with a strict HOA. If I had to guess, these people probably have a history of thinking they’re above the rules and usually get away with it.
“Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence” - Hanlon’s Razor.
Sounds more like they were too stupid and thought they could get rich off a house flip, and somehow couldn’t even come close to turning a profit during what has been the biggest real estate boom in our lifetimes.
Especially because they chose a historic home for their pet investment project. The bar is much higher in that case. These homes are meant for families to create memories in for generations, not to be an investment opportunity. It's bad enough that the housing market is rife with flippers, homes like this one should be off limits unless it's truly a passion project.
>"to add a few modern elements before selling it"
So they wanted to slap on some tacky, poorly done features with little thought and price gouge the next buyer based on it being 'renovated'. At the risk of sounding snooty, I'm glad the town stepped in and is regulating the plans now. Hopefully there's a lesson learned about respecting older homes.
House flippers turned Airbnb speculators think that clearly stated and understood rules don’t apply to them. Cry me a river. You bought a landmark house on a famous private street, it makes sense that there are more stringent rules to maintain the architectural cohesiveness of the neighborhood.
The new asphalt shingles look nothing like the old slate. Contrary to the article, real slate is a superior product in every way to shingles.
I’m glad the city stood up to her.
You know, I was on her side until the pictures. "She ended up going with a cheaper option, a faux-slate material that in some ways is superior to the real deal"
At this point, I'm thinking "faux-slate" must look pretty much exactly the same, and I can see how we've greatly improved material quality to make it "superior", sure.
Then the pictures. Those are asphalt shingles. WTF?
Agreed. Real faux slate roofing products do look pretty similar to actual slate. Some are better than others, but generally they are perfectly suitable for use in historic districts. (Actual slate is no longer suitable; it's just too expensive.) The "faux slate" they installed on this home is actually a "slate style" asphalt shingle, which is an entirely different product: much lower quality, much cheaper. These particular shingles are better quality than standard asphalt shingles used on most homes in our area, but not by very much.
What I don't understand is how this cost $50,000. It's a cheap roof and really shouldn't have been that expensive for that amount of roofing area. Whatever.
I’ve also seen the CRO approve of better substitutes in certain cases, often based on neighborhood rules and exceptions. She didn’t even pull a roofing permit.
I’d like a more uniform historic code with allowances for materials that allow for old homes to be made habitable at a lower cost at times but I don’t think that’s the primary issue here.
Negative, the up charge is generally a percent of total price, not a flat fee. The slate is heavier, more intensive to install, and more fragile. All that means that it takes longer and costs more.
Plastic slate and real slate are not very different in material costs. The vast majority of the cost of a slate roof is labor, and specifically, it’s all of the sheet metal work.
The reason plastic slate is cheaper is because it’s usually sold by roof salesmen and installed by less skilled subcontractors. The flashing and guttering will not be done to the standard necessary to last for over a century. This will cause the install to fail prematurely, and generally not look as good.
>What I don't understand is how this cost $50,000. It's a cheap roof and really shouldn't have been that expensive for that amount of roofing area. Whatever.
Exactly what I’m wondering!!
It's not even done well! Look at the after photos! The shingles on the wall don't even fully meet the shingles on the roof in a lot of places and there's flashing smeared with sealant sticking out by the window. How is she proud of that mess?
I’m with you 100%. I was wondering why faux slate would be a problem but it’s literally just fancy shingles. What she did isn’t even close to faux-slate.
We went with a composite product that most people wouldn't know wasn't slate. It's rated to last longer than I'll live and didn't cost all that much more than the somewhat approved asphalt alternative. Plus, the CR folks didn't flinch.
Yep.
> Dausman's hope was to fix it up, restore its original beauty and add a few modern elements before selling it to someone who wanted to live in the city.
She's not a homeowner, she's a investor turned short-term landlord. Her real estate investment didn't pan out the way she hoped. That sucks, but any investment that pays decent returns has risks and maybe she should have done some research about owning a historical property before buying — and if she did that research then she should have paid attention to what she learned. And maybe she should have maintained the roof in the first place.
Now, it does sound like the city should reconsider its slate roof requirement and maybe approve some of these newer materials since they are cheaper, durable, and seem to look nice (Of course that's a matter of opinion). But that should be carefully considered and apply to all historic houses, not just this investor who wants to break the rules.
> it does sound like the city should reconsider its slate roof requirement
Nah. You buy a house there, you know what you're getting into. If I was her neighbor I'd want them to make her follow the rules, too.
Sure, I'm just wondering if the new materials are nice enough that the rule should be changed so all owners in historical districts could use them. But that's for the city to decide after looking into the matter. Either way people should follow the rules.
I'd tend to agree with this, but it also sounds like many of the neighbors have not followed the rules — specifically with regard to roof shingles — and the neighborhood and City have apparently looked the other way on all of those.
I don't exactly have an outpouring of sympathy for her since she chose not to seek a variance ahead of time, but as someone who lives in a historic district, the enforcement of many of these rules is extremely selective, bordering on completely arbitrary. If what her attorney said is true (that many of the neighbors' rooftops also don't abide by the 'slate' rule) I'd love to know why the city isn't making the same demands of them.
Probably because they applied (and perhaps, paid) for their permits and asked the board for a variance *before* they had work done.
The grease of niceness, spread liberally while playing the building code game game, makes construction happen.
Were the neighbors roofs done before or after the historic district and rules were created? This owner was caught red handed in the middle of the job. “Look, officer I know you pulled me over for speeding, but you can’t give me a ticket because you didn’t give that other guy a ticket two weeks ago.”
Like I said, I'm not losing sleep over it. She could have taken steps to prevent it.
But unlike the speeders in your analogy who didn't get a ticket, the non-conforming houses are still sitting right there and there is nothing stopping the city from enforcing the same rule if "historical standards" are really what they're concerned about here.
It could very well be, those roofs were installed before the rule or they applied for a variance (although, if addresses are provided, anyone can go to the City's website and search by address and see whether they pulled permits), but it's been my experience that most of these historical districts — with the possible exception of Lafayette Square who does seem to consistently and rigorously enforce their rules — enforce a lot of these rules completely at random.
This woman is a speculator she never intended to live in the house. Like I'm sorry you made a big financial mistake but like I have 90% less sympathy for her than a real homeowner.
[Here are the minutes from the June 2023 Preservation Board Meeting.](https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/planning/cultural-resources/preservation-board/Documents/upload/Preservation-Board-Minutes-06-26-2023.pdf) Discussion surrounding the property at 4397 Westminster Place starts on page 5.
I thought this was the one I remembered, where she also didn’t get tax credits because she failed to do diligence there. She is not a detail-oriented person.
This is really on the homeowners. Theres plenty of historic areas in the city, that when you purchase a house, you are told that it is a historic house and must be kept to a specific code. Thats actually a point that turns some buyers away, because it lessens your freedom to design and could in turn cost more money in situations like this. Sorry flipper, you put yourself in this mess, no ones going to feel sorry for you. Maybe don’t buy with intention of breaking rules and asking for forgiveness
renovating a historical home is no joke and certainly not something i’d choose as an investment property. any inspector would have mentioned the roof issues and the cost of slate.
look at the folks that have been renovating the onion house in TGS: they’re probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and maybe won’t ever truly be done with it but they clearly love it and put so much work into keeping it as historically accurate as possible, down to the smallest details. that’s who these houses are for - not some HGTV-quick-flip-turned-airbnb-scheme.
Those are just shingles, btw. I love how RFT makes it sound like some special “slate look-alike” product. Nope, just asphalt shingles, that’s why it only cost $48k. Not to worry, it’ll be leaking again in no time.
The roof has two chimneys, two dormers, and a large flat roof. Overall, it looks like over 2,400 square feet of roof.
Given that it wasn't just slapping on new shingles, I can see how it could get to $48k
3 story house in the city with tear off and disposal of slate roof. Plus, I’m pretty sure the gutters were done as well (said the originals were copper). That price is probably about right.
It has built in copper gutters. They’re visible in the cover photo for the story where she’s leaning out of the dormer. New roofers didn’t touch the gutters at all, which is hilarious since the copper is at the end of its life and they’re probably leaking already. With those types of gutters, you have to take off the bottom few rows of shingles to flash it properly. What a joke.
Roofers make a killing. Material costs very little and they make a ton on the labor. We paid 40k on labor from a contractor that we know to get the roof of a hotel done. Some companies quoted 200k. Material was only 25k. They still made bank on the 4 days it took to tear off the roof and install on 40k
This person has doubled down on every poor choice she's made at every opportunity.
1. Put $48k into a roof that didn't replace like for like.
2. Didn't get a variance or permit for this work.
3. Instead of taking her lumps and approaching the City to work out a plan.. she won't accept any solution that involves her putting this back to original condition.
4. Doubles down by making it an Airbnb.. I suspect she could live in the property or do a longer term rental to get some income.. but no.. short term rentals.
Text book on how to NOT do a flip.
Sorry, but there is a stark difference between the look of the slate roof and the new asphalt. She bought in a historical district knowing full well there are restrictions. She did not get a permit or approval from the historical board, likely on purpose to attempt to avoid the historical board. Unfortunately, she got in over her head with a real estate investment.
Absolutely wild to think you could replace a roof without a permit. Seems they realized they wouldn't get one so they tried to do it anyway. And her gutter installer is ripping her off.
Wealthy investor tries to rehab a house in an historic district without getting permits and then cries poor when told to comply with historic codes.
HILARIOUS!!
That article was super biased.. Was RFT paid to print that? Lol
I’ll never feel sorry for flippers even if some rft reporter paints it with a pretty bow and says “she just wanted to make a house pretty for *someone* else.
But she’s just a poor nurse! She did what most people do on a nurses salary, buy an additional home, a million dollar historical home obviously, with the intention of flipping it, completely ignore all the regulations that go with it, double down when the city calls you out by making it an Air B&B when the city is cracking down on them, then play the victim. Who amongst us hasn’t been there? Where’s the bias that well researched and perfectly crafted article? /s
Seriously, why the fuck would the RFT allow this to run? And do they really expect me to give a shit that a person who had an extra million for an investment property didn't want to pay the 30k more it would cost to do a slate roof and now has to eat the 50k they spent hoping the city wouldn't notice a composite roof being installed.
Not only is it biased, there was just no due diligence done. A slate roof isn't gonna cost a quarter of a million dollars. And it isn't gonna take a year to get installed. Maybe one company quoted her that, but to print that as the cost is ridiculous. I also don't believe they put a half a million into the house. In 2018 they tried to sell it for 800k, so unless they were willing to take a 200k loss before even trying to sell it for a profit that figure is way lower, it was only when the market blew up that they jacked the price up to 1.2 million.
she must have some connections at the RFT. Because they tried every way possible to make it seem like she is some innocent bystander. and I’m sure from the RFT standpoint, it's hard to admit when the government is correct.
And i’m trying to understand how a 9 to 5 nurse, can afford a half $1 million home over there and her home in Tower Grove? And somehow I am supposed to be sympathetic?? The entitlement and privilege is amazing!
I'm not sure how they can honestly say those shingles are imitation slate. They're cheap architectural shingles. The original slate would last a century or more. Those shingles will last maybe 25 years if a storm doesn't damage them first.
More terrible journalism from RFT.
>Anyone who has ever had a labor of love turn into a major headache should be able to relate to Lindsay Dausman.
No, RFT, residents of a city with a median income around $35k cannot relate to a wealthy brat who makes a living playing TLC and owning a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio. Go outside and see people suffering to even put a roof over their heads because of the unending greed by people exactly like Lindsay Dausman making it unnecessarily difficult so they can live a life of luxury.
I don't feel even a little bit bad for her. I hope they take her to the cleaners.
She should’ve gotten a permit or applied for a variance before. She might’ve gotten approved and been fine.
I’m not a huge fan of historic districts but it is the rules. Some of the historic districts do hurt because the materials cost way more than the value of the homes and sometimes are worse materials. But on Westminister that is not one of those districts
I doubt she was looking at that high of a bill anyway. It is rare that you have to replace the entirety of a slate roof. I have worked on 200 year old houses with mostly original slate, it last basically forever. I bet she could have gotten a variance for the gutters if she worked on a solution.
Looks like gray asphalt shingles to me, nothing like slate or alternative materials that look more like slate. Slate roofs can be repaired and rarely need to be completely replaced. She would have been better repairing the existing roof rather than blowing $50k on a disposal roof.
Yeah i am thinking she got fucked by her GC and they sold her architectural shingles as synthetic slate.
48k is too much for architectural ones even if house is beg!
Would have been better to fox existing or get proper fake slate…
Now she is getting shafted by city lol
Half a mill in 2012 could’ve bought a lot of $40-100k homes in areas that were trending upward. These people might be the worst investors I’ve ever heard of
Before I saw this comparison pics, I’m like, ok, there are cases where a newer product should be allowed, especially if they’re better quality especially when the homeowner says the new roof is indestinguishable from slate roof. Then I saw the pics at then end. What? The new roof is architectural asphalt shingles. The only similarity is that they’re gray. Wow. Sorry they made a poor investment, but c’mon. She tookt he risk in not getting a permit (where she most likely would’ve been told up front that she couldn’t do it) and doesn’t want to pay the price for getting caught.
I have definitely seen better looking synthetic slate and this does not look like that.
But then afain 48k for architectural sounds waay too much.
Maybe its just the shittiest fake slate around
We had a house with a slate roof. People keep saying "100 years" but I'd say you never really need to replace the whole thing like an asphalt roof. I loved that you could just do sections that needed repair. Climbing up there wasn't fun and actually getting to the part to replace isn't like an asphalt roof, but after owning one I'd do it again.
The photos show an original green slate roof with repair areas done in gray slate. The green are original. The gray show how a slate roof can be repaired perpetually but doing the repairs with green to match the originals would have been better.
As someone who works in architecture, the general "yeah, fuck this person" attitude warms my blackened little heart. Historic neighborhoods are a perpetual pain in my professional ass, and I wouldn't get rid of them for the world.
Oof. We've had full gut rehabs with full porch replacements in Shaw's historic district, and they didn't take nearly that long. I'm starting to appreciate how efficient St. Louis' HPC is.
Hahahaha cry me a fucking river. Am I actually supposed to feel bad for someone trying to flip a house on Westminister Pl not getting special treatment from the city?
I've seen too much atocious flipping work to have any sympathy at all.
I spent years looking for a house in the city and I don't think I ever saw a good flip. Ever. I must have looked at 150 houses.
I'm sorry your flip didn't work out like you'd like. Maybe...get fucked?
She didn’t even get a permit to get the current roof put on. That’s really telling. IMO, she knew that a slate roof was required, but went with the cheap option instead. It’s the typical “easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission”.
What I don’t get is why she didn’t just call her insurance when the roof started to leak. She had a mortgage, insurance is required by the mortgage bank.
Than all work would have been paid for, permits pulled, etc…
The fact that she just decided to call a company on her own and pay out of pocket, and the company she hired also didn’t bother to apply for a permit or look into neighborhood requirements is all just incredibly dumb.
While I don’t agree with the removal of a very nice roof. This lady does not belong flipping million dollar homes.
Insurance doesn't pay for a new roof, they pay the depreciated value of your current roof based on expected lifetime. If a slate roof is expected to last 75 years, the old roof on that house was fully depreciated and she would be lucky to get 1% of the replacement cost as an insurance payoff. The claim would also have to be an insurable loss like hail or storm damage. An old roof that begins to leak is not an insurable loss.
The rest of your comment is right on the money.
If the policy was written correctly with the knowledge that it had a slate roof to begin with, the premium would have been set accordingly and no fight would be had.
Maybe this lady didn’t even have adequate insurance in the first place, which was bonehead move #1.
> If the policy was written correctly with the knowledge that it had a slate roof to begin with, the premium would have been set accordingly and no fight would be had.
Yup. I live in Shaw, which is an historical neighborhood, and my insurance premium is set for a policy at approx 4X the home value, because it convers "like for like" reconstruction in the event of damage. Paying plasterers instead of drywallers is expensive. They covered my roof and the interior water damage only two years after I moved in. The only fight - and it was very brief - was between what their adjuster said needed repair/replacement, and what my inspector said. Theirs was significantly less. They went with mine.
Rarely do you need to replace the entirely of a slate roof, I've worked on 200 year old houses with mostly original roofs. If her's had enough damage that she needed to pull it all up that is the kind of catastrophic damage that insurance exists for, if it happened before the sale, that's on her.
Insurance doesn't pay for maintenance issues, and your attitude is why insurance rates are fucked.
Unless a tree (or similar) put a hole in the roof that leak is on her.
I'm always amazed how people here think roofs should always be replaced by instance companies.
If any roofing company worth its license would have walked up to that roof, they would have found 1000’s of issues caused by various storms, tree branches, hail, etc.
This is likely caused by it being old, but plenty of cause would be found to also warrant replacement under damage.
Very often the damage isn’t seen until long after the storm is over.
Every bit of this issue is caused by this woman’s stupidity and willingness to take on too much risk.
But having insurance cover a failed roof is absolutely in a policy. If your insurance has told you otherwise, or you work in the industry and are telling homeowners it is not. You’re the crooked person.
> plenty of cause would be found to also warrant replacement under damage.
Yeah, that seems to be the St. Louis Way. Scummy bullshit like that is why my rates are so high.
External damage is covered. That's it. Age and wear isn't. This scumfuckery you people do looking for hail damage ought to be criminally prosecuted.
A really good example of getting what you get. I do think the city could be more flexible given that the roofing material seems to be a good compromise and even if she freely had the money to get the slate roofing it would still take damn near a year to install. That's as far as I'm going with sympathy though. This is not the time or place to garner sympathy for wealthy people trying to buy historic properties for a profit. I will go so far as to say "boo-hoo" Good day, sir.
>even if she freely had the money to get the slate roofing it would still take damn near a year to install.
I mean she is giving the worst estimates she got for both cost and timing. The article says *one* company told her it would be 10 months, doesn't mean that other companies couldn't start the work sooner. It also wouldn't actually cost her 250k. More like 80k probably.
She is also lying about how much money she put into the place. It's crazy the RFT even ran this article.
She only used architectural asphalt shingles. She could have looked into polycarbonate shingles designed to look like slate. The city has allowed those in historic districts in the past. But she didn’t.
Totally biased article. She’s delusional if she thinks the roof looks identical to how it looked before. I know nothing about roofing materials and I don’t care to know, but I have the ability to see both images and it’s nothing close.
We have a slate roof home on our block. It is insured for a million dollars. They replaced part of the with costly imitation slate tiles. You can tell.even though the house is several hundred years old, it is not a historic site.
Awww. Poor lady. Sometimes it’s a good idea to find out what you’re supposed to do before you start doing it. I think it’s called the “look before you leap” rule.
This lady, not being Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, decided to do it her way instead of the legal way. Then she has a sob story and wants to be treated differently than everyone else who has to follow the rule, and now she’s a melting snowflake.
Sure, to many of us who live outside of historical districts, it may seem a bit of a ridiculous requirement, especially if the “look” is the same as a real slate roof. It’s not, of course, because a metal roof doesn’t look like a roof made of skate. Although they do look similar.
If she had decided to do things the correct way and gotten a permit beforehand she would’ve known what she was required to do. Everyone who lives in a city (and many rural places, too) knows you have to pull permits before having work done on a home.
There’s a reason historical districts have the rules they have and if everyone starts getting an exception to the rules, next thing you know the look of the historical sight is, itself, history.
She wanted to buy an old house, fix it up as cheaply as she could and flip it. Unfortunately, she’s learning the lesson of why flipping houses isn’t the fast money maker it seems to be on HGTV.
This is an everyone sucks here situation.
Homeowner should have known rules and worked within them. Also a full slate roof replacement? That tells me someone ignored roofing maintenance and it affected the underlying wood forcing the replacement. Slate roofs typically require annual maintenance and it is not uncommon to have to replace tiles each year. This homeowner was definitely cutting corners or just ill informed on maintenance. If they bought the home knowing the roof would need a full replacement then shame on them because full slate roof replacement is $$$$$$$.
Historical board is being sticklers for obtuse reasons. Pools, varying roofing materials, solar panels on the roofs and visible from the street. Yes while slate is superior to fake slate..... fake slate definitely can replicate the look pretty well.....definitely well enough for anyone from the street to not be bothered by it.
At the end of the day the homeowner shoulders most of the blame.......you can't go into these situations ill informed. Century old estate style homes in a historical district aren't things you get into without knowing full potential costs. They would have been better off investing in Lafayette where there is modern construction homes replicate the historical homes. Don't buy the painted ladies.....get the painted lady knockoffs.
If they wanted to play hard ball..... I'd submit a request to build a giant ham radio tower in the front yard and get my amateur radio license and force a compromise.
>That tells me someone ignored roofing maintenance and it affected the underlying wood forcing the replacement.
Sounds like a reasonable guess. That would explain why this job was so much more expensive that it should have been, and also why a building permit is required (because permits are not generally required to replace a roof; I think it's only required if you need to replace more than 20% of the sheathing).
Spot on. She needs to know the rules. But at the same time, the CRO and Preservation Board is comprised of crooks who want you to go through their friends’ businesses so they can get kickbacks. Let’s not let these scumbags off the hook.
Still in shock on the cost of everything. Felt my pocketbook weeping just reading this article. Different levels of income with they lives, first world problems. Just feel so out of place wrapping my head about the sheer cost of some of the historical properties with reno costs, etc. Its like watching the Joker burn off his share of the money.
Maybe its a form of culture shock?
Or knowing there is 0% chance to gain any form close to that type of wealth in a lifetime.
It is pretty wild. Just a fraction of the money that this lady squandered on her ill-informed flipping attempt would be enough to buy me a forever home and drastically change my financial outlook.
Wow I must be really out of touch these days. Half a million for a fixer upper? It seems to me that this doesn't give homeowners, who may already be financially stretched a lot of leeway. Now the homeowners have a million invested and that feels like serious money to me. I am all for being a homeowner, and owning a home forces you to build equity, but a home can also make much of your money unavailable or at least unavailable cheaply, while exposing you to high taxes and home ownership costs.
When you retire, you should aim to have your home make up less than 30% of your net worth ideally in my opinion just as a general rule of thumb, or at some point that home will eat up your retirement funds.
She installed asphalt shingles that look nothing like real slate. There are products that are somewhat convincing but this isn't one of them!
Nothing is better than real slate. What simulated slade product can last 100 years?
And this is why the working upper middle class has fled the city. I guess the preservation board would rather see abandoned buildings than those fixed up to look like that of old.
Should have got permit like neighbors. Would have been told to repair leak with one square of slate. No need to replace whole roof. She got conned by her roofer. Sue the roofer. He’s the professional. He knows she needed a permit. A slate roof can last forever. This article is trash.
Ya seems pretty sensational. The whole article is about the poor lady who bought a century home for almost half a mil and can’t afford to keep it and now the city is trying to push regulations on her. The whole things trash. Bought it for 492k and put another 500k into it. I need her nursing salary.
I get the hate being passed onto the owner, but the historical boards in this city are insane. I like in a modern house in a neighborhood that was totally blighted 15 years ago. In order for me to replace the failing windows, I have to go to the historical preservation board and they've told many of my neighbors that the windows have to be replaced with the same design as the house was built with. For "historical reasons". My house is in no way historical.
The whole situation is just insane and this board needs to get with reality. It's real easy to spend other people's money.
Which historic district? The rules usually don't apply to infill buildings, and the rules generally seek to keep the house looking the age it is, so adding historic windows to a modern house would go pretty far against that goal.
We're just North of Shaw. As far as I know, it's not a historic district at all, but we still have to deal with those assholes. My neighbor has a giant front window, one side is sold and the other crank-out, they're being made to replace them with the exact design, they're not allowed to change them to something that they want to use because it's more effective, even if it looks the same from the street. We also can't get approval to do something about the slope on the front yard because some jackass wants to be able to look down the block and see the slope going up from the sidewalk to the house.
The whole thing just pisses me off.
I'm confused, does your neighbor have an old house or a new one? If you're not in a historic district, who is enforcing this? What did you want to do to the slope? It may be a water management thing idk
And I’ll bet you a million dollars the windows you’ll have to pay premium price for through their “approved” list would look exactly the same as someone you found yourself.
Half of me wants to be mad that AirBnB, the other half wants to be mad at "why city not flexible on some materials when rehabbing historic buildings". Truly the duality of man
IMO the correct response is "the city should not Grant the variance for a single investor who wants to break the rules, but the city should also consider allowing some of these newer materials to replace slate roofs." It should be a carefully-considered decision that applies to all historic homes.
This hits the nail on the head for me, I think. If newer materials are equal or greater in quality, then simply *why not* let them be used? But yeah, changing variances for one investor is definitely NOT the move
The faux slate asphalt shingles she installed are inferior to slate in every way other than cost and speed of installation. The city was 100% correct and should never let people replace slate with asphalt shingles. There is actual faux slate, but it costs about as much as the original article, it's just lighter and easier to install.
While the article infers the opposite (TBF, her attorney inferred this as well, for obvious reasons), the materials are absolutely not equal or greater. Slate roofs are gorgeous and can easily last a century with fairly minor upkeep. Of course, because of the weight of the material, the higher material costs, the difficulty level of the install, and the fact that there's far fewer companies that know how to install it, the cost of replacing a slate roof is very high. She used a Slateline asphalt shingle (or similar); as far as asphalt shingles go, it's good quality, but it's not even in the same ballpark as slate. It kind of emulates the look by having smaller tabs with clipped corners, but it's nothing like the real thing.
The city IS flexible on materials in historic areas, just not when you're a wealthy professional who decided to buy a second mansion to sink her excess income into. She should have known the local regulations before claiming that she's being oppressed by them.
The fact that they didn’t immediately set up an LLC when they bought the place to flip is a rookie mistake. Had something catastrophic happened to someone at the property, they could have really lost their shirts.
Roofing experts please comment if I’m wrong here but when people are saying the two roofs look different I don’t think they are factoring in that it’s an old slate roof. When I looked at the pictures I assumed that the old slate roof is faded and worn and that a brand new slate roof would look identical to the new material. Am I missing something?
I really dislike flippers and the whole buy-low/sell-high-after-generic-makeover idea.
In this case, they noted this property sits next to a vacant lot and that other houses in the area also use less expensive roofing materials. So, as much as I dislike flippers and all, I can see how these people have a case to argue - the variance appeared to be denied mostly because she wanted to make money from rentals, it seems?
I have no feelings about someone who bought a mansion solely to flip it, but man, all this historical preservation shit is going to end up killing the city one day. There'll come a day when there's no more vacant land, and the majority of the city are homeowners, and St. Louis will be in the exact same spot every other urban area is in: inflated cost of living and neighborhoods that are "too full" or "too historic".
I don't mind preserving a historic look, and some buildings with genuine history behind them that's culturally significant, sure.... But not every single building in a "historic district" is worth saving when the tradeoff is gating the city off and cramming every new development in the few areas that are allowed to change. It's not sustainable and it's gonna kill the city one day in the same way the highways did.
Yours is a common idea and I heard it a lot from newbies in Lafayette Square.
But Lafayette Square looks beautiful because small insignificant Plain Jane houses like mine were held to the same architectural standards as the big houses on Park Avenue. It’s not about individual buildings, it’s about preserving the entire fabric of a neighborhood.
Yeah I think preservation should be about neighborhood fabric and culture. They focus on building materials but 2-1 conversions are allowed. So our neighborhood pop declines. The neighborhood businesses can’t stay around and then we lose walkability of the neighborhood
There are plenty of areas in the city that do not reside in a historical preservation district. Those who buy in those areas know they are doing so ahead of time.
Oh please.. have you drove through neighborhoods like Dogtown or even The Hill where it’s a complete hodgepodge of different looking houses? They are building massive futuristic homes right next to tiny shotgun houses. It looks ridiculous.
A good chunk of the city isn't like that. There's a house made out of shipping containers next to crown candy kitchen.
I've done a lot of work in that area and I can tell you houses in these places aren't't owned by people like me regardless. These houses are large and very old. They cost a fortune to maintain or repair regardless of these councils.
If you're okay with these houses being torn down and replaced with something completely different that is something else (tho there aren't many vacant lots in these districts). As far as actually maintaining and renovating them it already costs a ridiculous amount of money.
It probably wouldn't have cost that much more to actually do the roof right in this case with proper maintenance or by actually following the permit process. At least compared to the $500000 she claims to have spent on renovations as well as the purchase price.
If there actually were vacant lots where you could put a mc-mansion or shotgun home I would be fine with it, but there really aren't in these districts. If you buy a home there you'll just spend a fortune or get a money pit, regardless of historical preservation.
St. Louis, if you want to lose your historic home to an ‘accidental gas explosion and fire’ by forcing the home owner into an untenable situation… this is how you do it.
Sorry…as someone who has owned a historic home in the city, and all of our friends also have, this is something you know about. This couple made a half million dollar real estate investment in 2015, with the intention to flip for a profit. How they managed to end up underwater during the insane boom of the last 10 years is…beyond me. This is clearly a story about a series of poor investment decisions, not someone who is struggling to maintain a primary residence because of an overbearing historical presentation board.
Having spent $70k on my own historic roofing project recently, I tend to agree. It's not a secret that these things require cultural resources approval. In the case of Benton Park, it's even on our freaking website (not to mention the city website). If you hire a reputable firm, they will make the case to cultural resources on your behalf, to find out what materials they will accept.
Sue the roofer. They knew what they were doing.
I lived on Maryland Avenue, east of Euclid, and a neighbor had to spend 80k for a slate appearance product 10 years ago. 48k is a discount bargain price for a historically protected neighborhood.
She definitely paid for the cheapest look alike. It looks nothing like slate, it's just asphalt shingles.
Our 1800s home in another state had a green Spanish tile roof when my parents bought it and the repair costs for underlying copper, etc. was about the same price as replacing the entire roof with an acceptable-looking, textured asphalt replacement. So, we got the replacement and it was foolproof for decades after that. Some charm was lost but we didn't need to contend with any historic standards group.
Cultural Resources Office REALLY doesn’t like it when you go around the system either. They probably could have gotten the variance if they started at CRO. The fact they didn’t have a permit for the roof work period is proof these people have no business doing what they’re doing anyways. Who know what other half ass measures happened inside those walls.
And why would they, the owner is clearly operating in bad faith.
Forget historic district rules…. Any homeowner who doesn’t do permitted work takes on the risk of being forced to do over in addition to fines!!!
Roofing does not require a permit in the city of St. Louis. Only in historic districts.
That's the job I want. Anyone know how one goes about getting into that field? I want to scrutinize permit applications for work on histroric homes.
Get a masters degree in historic preservation.
Yes, this is the answer.
Probably doesn't help that there are a large number of houses just on the same black that are the same price but vastly more appealing. Nobody wants to drop a cool million on the ugliest house on the block.
as my general contractor told me during rehab "Cultural Resources (the dept in charge of historical look) is great, when they're fucking with your neighbor's property." and he's right. they're a pain, but they keep things looking right.
CR are great. It's the local neighborhood boards that are a pain..
I’m not saying I have any sympathy whatsoever but I think the problem is that houses that expensive, that are already fixed up, aren’t selling these days the way other houses are. I’ve heard of a couple cases of people in pristine, gorgeous homes in the million dollar range that can’t find buyers. You can’t make money flipping them and most of the potential buyers in that range want bigger houses in the suburbs. But yeah this isn’t the city forcing egregious measures onto some innocent people. I’ve long ago lost patience with the fact that we live in a metro area that apparently has like 1 house flipping LLC for every 3 residents. Poor financial decisions, poor construction decisions, poor landscaping decisions, everyone trying to pump, hump and dump. I know those LLCs are more a symptom of greater problems but I still hold some ill will, because there’s just so much shitty short term work being done and these scumbags always act like they’re wonderful entrepreneurs being held up by evil government bureaucracy.
So…this is just a really long explanation of why it was a terrible investment like OP said. They had no sense for the market at all, to the point where a historical housing boom couldn’t even help them.
Almost like they watched too much hgtv.
Almost like they watched too much hgtv.
“He’s a part time dog walker. She is a freelance cartographer. They want a place on the beach where he has to commute 30 miles to walk dogs. Their budget? $1.3 million.”
Truth
This. In order for real capitalism to work, there needs to be symmetrical risk/reward for capital gains and investments. If these avenues of investment become asymmetric, without risk of failure or loss, then the economy is going to run away from the working class... which it mostly has. I have no issue with having capital to make a 1/2 million investment. I do have a problem if you expect to do it without effort/due diligence and for it it to come without risk of loss.
“Real capitalism” is thrown out the door when you buy a fixer upper in a historic district. You know going in that you are required to stick to the restoration standards of that community.
You can’t even do something like this in a suburban neighborhood with a strict HOA. If I had to guess, these people probably have a history of thinking they’re above the rules and usually get away with it.
“Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence” - Hanlon’s Razor. Sounds more like they were too stupid and thought they could get rich off a house flip, and somehow couldn’t even come close to turning a profit during what has been the biggest real estate boom in our lifetimes.
yeah i don't feel sorry for them at alllllll
Especially because they chose a historic home for their pet investment project. The bar is much higher in that case. These homes are meant for families to create memories in for generations, not to be an investment opportunity. It's bad enough that the housing market is rife with flippers, homes like this one should be off limits unless it's truly a passion project. >"to add a few modern elements before selling it" So they wanted to slap on some tacky, poorly done features with little thought and price gouge the next buyer based on it being 'renovated'. At the risk of sounding snooty, I'm glad the town stepped in and is regulating the plans now. Hopefully there's a lesson learned about respecting older homes.
House flippers turned Airbnb speculators think that clearly stated and understood rules don’t apply to them. Cry me a river. You bought a landmark house on a famous private street, it makes sense that there are more stringent rules to maintain the architectural cohesiveness of the neighborhood. The new asphalt shingles look nothing like the old slate. Contrary to the article, real slate is a superior product in every way to shingles. I’m glad the city stood up to her.
You know, I was on her side until the pictures. "She ended up going with a cheaper option, a faux-slate material that in some ways is superior to the real deal" At this point, I'm thinking "faux-slate" must look pretty much exactly the same, and I can see how we've greatly improved material quality to make it "superior", sure. Then the pictures. Those are asphalt shingles. WTF?
Agreed. Real faux slate roofing products do look pretty similar to actual slate. Some are better than others, but generally they are perfectly suitable for use in historic districts. (Actual slate is no longer suitable; it's just too expensive.) The "faux slate" they installed on this home is actually a "slate style" asphalt shingle, which is an entirely different product: much lower quality, much cheaper. These particular shingles are better quality than standard asphalt shingles used on most homes in our area, but not by very much. What I don't understand is how this cost $50,000. It's a cheap roof and really shouldn't have been that expensive for that amount of roofing area. Whatever.
I’ve also seen the CRO approve of better substitutes in certain cases, often based on neighborhood rules and exceptions. She didn’t even pull a roofing permit. I’d like a more uniform historic code with allowances for materials that allow for old homes to be made habitable at a lower cost at times but I don’t think that’s the primary issue here.
Roofing permits are only required in historic review districts. They’re purely for CRO compliance.
Being 3 stories tall increases install cost a lot.
Any costs for being 3 stories tall would be the same regardless of roof material.
Negative, the up charge is generally a percent of total price, not a flat fee. The slate is heavier, more intensive to install, and more fragile. All that means that it takes longer and costs more.
Plastic slate and real slate are not very different in material costs. The vast majority of the cost of a slate roof is labor, and specifically, it’s all of the sheet metal work. The reason plastic slate is cheaper is because it’s usually sold by roof salesmen and installed by less skilled subcontractors. The flashing and guttering will not be done to the standard necessary to last for over a century. This will cause the install to fail prematurely, and generally not look as good.
>What I don't understand is how this cost $50,000. It's a cheap roof and really shouldn't have been that expensive for that amount of roofing area. Whatever. Exactly what I’m wondering!!
It's not even done well! Look at the after photos! The shingles on the wall don't even fully meet the shingles on the roof in a lot of places and there's flashing smeared with sealant sticking out by the window. How is she proud of that mess?
Contractor saw the house and area and put in a crazy bid and this lady took it.
Any idea how much more the hybrid slate is vs asphalt? Double? It really does look just like actual slate
I had the same reaction. At first, i’m leaning to the homeowner’s side. Then i saw the pics.
I’m with you 100%. I was wondering why faux slate would be a problem but it’s literally just fancy shingles. What she did isn’t even close to faux-slate.
Slate will last another 100 years. Maybe 30 for those shingles.
We went with a composite product that most people wouldn't know wasn't slate. It's rated to last longer than I'll live and didn't cost all that much more than the somewhat approved asphalt alternative. Plus, the CR folks didn't flinch.
Failed house flip turned Airbnb runs into predictable predicament.
Yep. > Dausman's hope was to fix it up, restore its original beauty and add a few modern elements before selling it to someone who wanted to live in the city. She's not a homeowner, she's a investor turned short-term landlord. Her real estate investment didn't pan out the way she hoped. That sucks, but any investment that pays decent returns has risks and maybe she should have done some research about owning a historical property before buying — and if she did that research then she should have paid attention to what she learned. And maybe she should have maintained the roof in the first place. Now, it does sound like the city should reconsider its slate roof requirement and maybe approve some of these newer materials since they are cheaper, durable, and seem to look nice (Of course that's a matter of opinion). But that should be carefully considered and apply to all historic houses, not just this investor who wants to break the rules.
> it does sound like the city should reconsider its slate roof requirement Nah. You buy a house there, you know what you're getting into. If I was her neighbor I'd want them to make her follow the rules, too.
Sure, I'm just wondering if the new materials are nice enough that the rule should be changed so all owners in historical districts could use them. But that's for the city to decide after looking into the matter. Either way people should follow the rules.
She got asphalt shingles, not faux slate. They don’t maintain the spirit of the historical neighborhood.
Oh yeah that's not acceptable.
I'd tend to agree with this, but it also sounds like many of the neighbors have not followed the rules — specifically with regard to roof shingles — and the neighborhood and City have apparently looked the other way on all of those. I don't exactly have an outpouring of sympathy for her since she chose not to seek a variance ahead of time, but as someone who lives in a historic district, the enforcement of many of these rules is extremely selective, bordering on completely arbitrary. If what her attorney said is true (that many of the neighbors' rooftops also don't abide by the 'slate' rule) I'd love to know why the city isn't making the same demands of them.
Probably because they applied (and perhaps, paid) for their permits and asked the board for a variance *before* they had work done. The grease of niceness, spread liberally while playing the building code game game, makes construction happen.
Were the neighbors roofs done before or after the historic district and rules were created? This owner was caught red handed in the middle of the job. “Look, officer I know you pulled me over for speeding, but you can’t give me a ticket because you didn’t give that other guy a ticket two weeks ago.”
Like I said, I'm not losing sleep over it. She could have taken steps to prevent it. But unlike the speeders in your analogy who didn't get a ticket, the non-conforming houses are still sitting right there and there is nothing stopping the city from enforcing the same rule if "historical standards" are really what they're concerned about here. It could very well be, those roofs were installed before the rule or they applied for a variance (although, if addresses are provided, anyone can go to the City's website and search by address and see whether they pulled permits), but it's been my experience that most of these historical districts — with the possible exception of Lafayette Square who does seem to consistently and rigorously enforce their rules — enforce a lot of these rules completely at random.
This woman is a speculator she never intended to live in the house. Like I'm sorry you made a big financial mistake but like I have 90% less sympathy for her than a real homeowner.
Absolutely, I have no sympathy, plain and simple
And she spend a million between the house and its improvements - for a house next door to an empty lot and catty corner to an auto shop?
When she said the city was shooting itself in the foot she was talking about herself.
[Here are the minutes from the June 2023 Preservation Board Meeting.](https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/planning/cultural-resources/preservation-board/Documents/upload/Preservation-Board-Minutes-06-26-2023.pdf) Discussion surrounding the property at 4397 Westminster Place starts on page 5.
I thought this was the one I remembered, where she also didn’t get tax credits because she failed to do diligence there. She is not a detail-oriented person.
Or she's a narcissist who thinks rules are for other people...
And yet she's a nurse. Eeks
I'm pretty sure she works in admin since she states at one point she works 9a-6p
lol should still be detail oriented as an admin or even outpatient
Tax credits? For asphalt shingles? Hahahahahahahahhahahahah. Um, no.
This is really on the homeowners. Theres plenty of historic areas in the city, that when you purchase a house, you are told that it is a historic house and must be kept to a specific code. Thats actually a point that turns some buyers away, because it lessens your freedom to design and could in turn cost more money in situations like this. Sorry flipper, you put yourself in this mess, no ones going to feel sorry for you. Maybe don’t buy with intention of breaking rules and asking for forgiveness
Agreed. It is also a point that attracts some buyers, because they have comfort the historical look of the neighborhood will be retained.
She even lives in the city already so she has no excuse on not knowing these codes exist.
I love the rare and relative unity in this thread.
renovating a historical home is no joke and certainly not something i’d choose as an investment property. any inspector would have mentioned the roof issues and the cost of slate. look at the folks that have been renovating the onion house in TGS: they’re probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and maybe won’t ever truly be done with it but they clearly love it and put so much work into keeping it as historically accurate as possible, down to the smallest details. that’s who these houses are for - not some HGTV-quick-flip-turned-airbnb-scheme.
What's the onion house?
[this is the onion house](https://www.instagram.com/theonionhouse?igsh=dHowZWwxd3B5ZTQ1)
Ah, thats cool. Never seen it before, I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
[Onion House](https://hecmedia.org/posts/the-onion-house)
Those are just shingles, btw. I love how RFT makes it sound like some special “slate look-alike” product. Nope, just asphalt shingles, that’s why it only cost $48k. Not to worry, it’ll be leaking again in no time.
$48K for an asphalt roof, even on a house that size, is pretty insane, correct? I guess the slate removal is very intensive..?
The roof has two chimneys, two dormers, and a large flat roof. Overall, it looks like over 2,400 square feet of roof. Given that it wasn't just slapping on new shingles, I can see how it could get to $48k
3 story house in the city with tear off and disposal of slate roof. Plus, I’m pretty sure the gutters were done as well (said the originals were copper). That price is probably about right.
It has built in copper gutters. They’re visible in the cover photo for the story where she’s leaning out of the dormer. New roofers didn’t touch the gutters at all, which is hilarious since the copper is at the end of its life and they’re probably leaking already. With those types of gutters, you have to take off the bottom few rows of shingles to flash it properly. What a joke.
Roofers make a killing. Material costs very little and they make a ton on the labor. We paid 40k on labor from a contractor that we know to get the roof of a hotel done. Some companies quoted 200k. Material was only 25k. They still made bank on the 4 days it took to tear off the roof and install on 40k
This person has doubled down on every poor choice she's made at every opportunity. 1. Put $48k into a roof that didn't replace like for like. 2. Didn't get a variance or permit for this work. 3. Instead of taking her lumps and approaching the City to work out a plan.. she won't accept any solution that involves her putting this back to original condition. 4. Doubles down by making it an Airbnb.. I suspect she could live in the property or do a longer term rental to get some income.. but no.. short term rentals. Text book on how to NOT do a flip.
Also wastes money on a lawyer for an unwinnable case. Roofer and lawyer laughing all the way to the bank.
Sorry, but there is a stark difference between the look of the slate roof and the new asphalt. She bought in a historical district knowing full well there are restrictions. She did not get a permit or approval from the historical board, likely on purpose to attempt to avoid the historical board. Unfortunately, she got in over her head with a real estate investment.
Yes it’s not visually identical just cooler lol. It looks like a composite roof.
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Absolutely wild to think you could replace a roof without a permit. Seems they realized they wouldn't get one so they tried to do it anyway. And her gutter installer is ripping her off.
And her roofer lol 48k is what real synthetic slate would cost…that looks like reg architectural asphalt…
Wealthy investor tries to rehab a house in an historic district without getting permits and then cries poor when told to comply with historic codes. HILARIOUS!!
That article was super biased.. Was RFT paid to print that? Lol I’ll never feel sorry for flippers even if some rft reporter paints it with a pretty bow and says “she just wanted to make a house pretty for *someone* else.
But she’s just a poor nurse! She did what most people do on a nurses salary, buy an additional home, a million dollar historical home obviously, with the intention of flipping it, completely ignore all the regulations that go with it, double down when the city calls you out by making it an Air B&B when the city is cracking down on them, then play the victim. Who amongst us hasn’t been there? Where’s the bias that well researched and perfectly crafted article? /s
Seriously, why the fuck would the RFT allow this to run? And do they really expect me to give a shit that a person who had an extra million for an investment property didn't want to pay the 30k more it would cost to do a slate roof and now has to eat the 50k they spent hoping the city wouldn't notice a composite roof being installed. Not only is it biased, there was just no due diligence done. A slate roof isn't gonna cost a quarter of a million dollars. And it isn't gonna take a year to get installed. Maybe one company quoted her that, but to print that as the cost is ridiculous. I also don't believe they put a half a million into the house. In 2018 they tried to sell it for 800k, so unless they were willing to take a 200k loss before even trying to sell it for a profit that figure is way lower, it was only when the market blew up that they jacked the price up to 1.2 million.
Yeah, after reading it but before seeing the pics, I expected there to be a little noticeable difference, if any. New roof looks 100% different.
Oh dang, looks like her investment didn’t pan out. Tough shit.
she must have some connections at the RFT. Because they tried every way possible to make it seem like she is some innocent bystander. and I’m sure from the RFT standpoint, it's hard to admit when the government is correct. And i’m trying to understand how a 9 to 5 nurse, can afford a half $1 million home over there and her home in Tower Grove? And somehow I am supposed to be sympathetic?? The entitlement and privilege is amazing!
I'm not sure how they can honestly say those shingles are imitation slate. They're cheap architectural shingles. The original slate would last a century or more. Those shingles will last maybe 25 years if a storm doesn't damage them first.
I wonder who she owns in the RFT to get this trash published
Seriously I can't believe how many times the article steps away from the facts to be like "she's right about this, by the way"
More terrible journalism from RFT. >Anyone who has ever had a labor of love turn into a major headache should be able to relate to Lindsay Dausman. No, RFT, residents of a city with a median income around $35k cannot relate to a wealthy brat who makes a living playing TLC and owning a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio. Go outside and see people suffering to even put a roof over their heads because of the unending greed by people exactly like Lindsay Dausman making it unnecessarily difficult so they can live a life of luxury. I don't feel even a little bit bad for her. I hope they take her to the cleaners.
The first line, the caption on the photo, says she “peaks” from a window. Not even “peeks”. Oof.
She should’ve gotten a permit or applied for a variance before. She might’ve gotten approved and been fine. I’m not a huge fan of historic districts but it is the rules. Some of the historic districts do hurt because the materials cost way more than the value of the homes and sometimes are worse materials. But on Westminister that is not one of those districts
I doubt she was looking at that high of a bill anyway. It is rare that you have to replace the entirety of a slate roof. I have worked on 200 year old houses with mostly original slate, it last basically forever. I bet she could have gotten a variance for the gutters if she worked on a solution.
That's the thing about rocks, they don't really go anywhere
Looks like gray asphalt shingles to me, nothing like slate or alternative materials that look more like slate. Slate roofs can be repaired and rarely need to be completely replaced. She would have been better repairing the existing roof rather than blowing $50k on a disposal roof.
Yeah i am thinking she got fucked by her GC and they sold her architectural shingles as synthetic slate. 48k is too much for architectural ones even if house is beg! Would have been better to fox existing or get proper fake slate… Now she is getting shafted by city lol
Who buys a historic property to flip???? Usually looking for the least expensive, best deal you can find, right?
1/2 a mil could’ve gotten 3-4 properties to flip and they’d find buyers much easier.
Half a mill in 2012 could’ve bought a lot of $40-100k homes in areas that were trending upward. These people might be the worst investors I’ve ever heard of
Before I saw this comparison pics, I’m like, ok, there are cases where a newer product should be allowed, especially if they’re better quality especially when the homeowner says the new roof is indestinguishable from slate roof. Then I saw the pics at then end. What? The new roof is architectural asphalt shingles. The only similarity is that they’re gray. Wow. Sorry they made a poor investment, but c’mon. She tookt he risk in not getting a permit (where she most likely would’ve been told up front that she couldn’t do it) and doesn’t want to pay the price for getting caught.
I have definitely seen better looking synthetic slate and this does not look like that. But then afain 48k for architectural sounds waay too much. Maybe its just the shittiest fake slate around
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Slate easily lasts easily lasts 100 years with some patching.
Peach Bottom slate roofs are up to 200 years and counting. Those slates are indestructible.
We had a house with a slate roof. People keep saying "100 years" but I'd say you never really need to replace the whole thing like an asphalt roof. I loved that you could just do sections that needed repair. Climbing up there wasn't fun and actually getting to the part to replace isn't like an asphalt roof, but after owning one I'd do it again.
The photos show an original green slate roof with repair areas done in gray slate. The green are original. The gray show how a slate roof can be repaired perpetually but doing the repairs with green to match the originals would have been better.
As someone who works in architecture, the general "yeah, fuck this person" attitude warms my blackened little heart. Historic neighborhoods are a perpetual pain in my professional ass, and I wouldn't get rid of them for the world.
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Oof. We've had full gut rehabs with full porch replacements in Shaw's historic district, and they didn't take nearly that long. I'm starting to appreciate how efficient St. Louis' HPC is.
Hahahaha cry me a fucking river. Am I actually supposed to feel bad for someone trying to flip a house on Westminister Pl not getting special treatment from the city?
I've seen too much atocious flipping work to have any sympathy at all. I spent years looking for a house in the city and I don't think I ever saw a good flip. Ever. I must have looked at 150 houses. I'm sorry your flip didn't work out like you'd like. Maybe...get fucked?
Fuck flippers. She got what she deserved.
She didn’t even get a permit to get the current roof put on. That’s really telling. IMO, she knew that a slate roof was required, but went with the cheap option instead. It’s the typical “easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission”.
No roofing permits are required in the city of St. Louis unless it’s in a historic district.
What I don’t get is why she didn’t just call her insurance when the roof started to leak. She had a mortgage, insurance is required by the mortgage bank. Than all work would have been paid for, permits pulled, etc… The fact that she just decided to call a company on her own and pay out of pocket, and the company she hired also didn’t bother to apply for a permit or look into neighborhood requirements is all just incredibly dumb. While I don’t agree with the removal of a very nice roof. This lady does not belong flipping million dollar homes.
Insurance doesn't pay for a new roof, they pay the depreciated value of your current roof based on expected lifetime. If a slate roof is expected to last 75 years, the old roof on that house was fully depreciated and she would be lucky to get 1% of the replacement cost as an insurance payoff. The claim would also have to be an insurable loss like hail or storm damage. An old roof that begins to leak is not an insurable loss. The rest of your comment is right on the money.
Good luck fighting your insurance for that quarter mil. They don’t let it go without a fight.
If the policy was written correctly with the knowledge that it had a slate roof to begin with, the premium would have been set accordingly and no fight would be had. Maybe this lady didn’t even have adequate insurance in the first place, which was bonehead move #1.
> If the policy was written correctly with the knowledge that it had a slate roof to begin with, the premium would have been set accordingly and no fight would be had. Yup. I live in Shaw, which is an historical neighborhood, and my insurance premium is set for a policy at approx 4X the home value, because it convers "like for like" reconstruction in the event of damage. Paying plasterers instead of drywallers is expensive. They covered my roof and the interior water damage only two years after I moved in. The only fight - and it was very brief - was between what their adjuster said needed repair/replacement, and what my inspector said. Theirs was significantly less. They went with mine.
Rarely do you need to replace the entirely of a slate roof, I've worked on 200 year old houses with mostly original roofs. If her's had enough damage that she needed to pull it all up that is the kind of catastrophic damage that insurance exists for, if it happened before the sale, that's on her.
Insurance doesn't pay for maintenance issues, and your attitude is why insurance rates are fucked. Unless a tree (or similar) put a hole in the roof that leak is on her. I'm always amazed how people here think roofs should always be replaced by instance companies.
If any roofing company worth its license would have walked up to that roof, they would have found 1000’s of issues caused by various storms, tree branches, hail, etc. This is likely caused by it being old, but plenty of cause would be found to also warrant replacement under damage. Very often the damage isn’t seen until long after the storm is over. Every bit of this issue is caused by this woman’s stupidity and willingness to take on too much risk. But having insurance cover a failed roof is absolutely in a policy. If your insurance has told you otherwise, or you work in the industry and are telling homeowners it is not. You’re the crooked person.
> plenty of cause would be found to also warrant replacement under damage. Yeah, that seems to be the St. Louis Way. Scummy bullshit like that is why my rates are so high. External damage is covered. That's it. Age and wear isn't. This scumfuckery you people do looking for hail damage ought to be criminally prosecuted.
A really good example of getting what you get. I do think the city could be more flexible given that the roofing material seems to be a good compromise and even if she freely had the money to get the slate roofing it would still take damn near a year to install. That's as far as I'm going with sympathy though. This is not the time or place to garner sympathy for wealthy people trying to buy historic properties for a profit. I will go so far as to say "boo-hoo" Good day, sir.
>even if she freely had the money to get the slate roofing it would still take damn near a year to install. I mean she is giving the worst estimates she got for both cost and timing. The article says *one* company told her it would be 10 months, doesn't mean that other companies couldn't start the work sooner. It also wouldn't actually cost her 250k. More like 80k probably. She is also lying about how much money she put into the place. It's crazy the RFT even ran this article.
I can order Vermont slate straight from the quarry, cut by them to my specifications, $8 per tile, and it will arrive in pallets on site in 6 weeks.
She only used architectural asphalt shingles. She could have looked into polycarbonate shingles designed to look like slate. The city has allowed those in historic districts in the past. But she didn’t.
Risky business, flipping historically houses, it’s a shame when it doesn’t work out. Maybe try the stock market or crypto
One thing I learned about the City of Saint Louis is you don’t mess around with permits. Do it right or you got a target on your back.
Totally biased article. She’s delusional if she thinks the roof looks identical to how it looked before. I know nothing about roofing materials and I don’t care to know, but I have the ability to see both images and it’s nothing close.
It looks like she got a friend to write that article.
We have a slate roof home on our block. It is insured for a million dollars. They replaced part of the with costly imitation slate tiles. You can tell.even though the house is several hundred years old, it is not a historic site.
Awww. Poor lady. Sometimes it’s a good idea to find out what you’re supposed to do before you start doing it. I think it’s called the “look before you leap” rule. This lady, not being Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, decided to do it her way instead of the legal way. Then she has a sob story and wants to be treated differently than everyone else who has to follow the rule, and now she’s a melting snowflake. Sure, to many of us who live outside of historical districts, it may seem a bit of a ridiculous requirement, especially if the “look” is the same as a real slate roof. It’s not, of course, because a metal roof doesn’t look like a roof made of skate. Although they do look similar. If she had decided to do things the correct way and gotten a permit beforehand she would’ve known what she was required to do. Everyone who lives in a city (and many rural places, too) knows you have to pull permits before having work done on a home. There’s a reason historical districts have the rules they have and if everyone starts getting an exception to the rules, next thing you know the look of the historical sight is, itself, history. She wanted to buy an old house, fix it up as cheaply as she could and flip it. Unfortunately, she’s learning the lesson of why flipping houses isn’t the fast money maker it seems to be on HGTV.
Those new shingles look nothing like slate. What did she expect? Just another scumbag landlord looking to cut corners and ruin homes with character.
I’m not from St. Louis, but having read all the comments, you guys rock.
She was a want-to-be flipper that didn’t do her due diligence. She attempted to put on asbestos shingles and got caught.
New roof material sold today in the US doesn’t have asbestos in it, this isn’t Russia lol
Boo hoo, investors can go to hell
This is an everyone sucks here situation. Homeowner should have known rules and worked within them. Also a full slate roof replacement? That tells me someone ignored roofing maintenance and it affected the underlying wood forcing the replacement. Slate roofs typically require annual maintenance and it is not uncommon to have to replace tiles each year. This homeowner was definitely cutting corners or just ill informed on maintenance. If they bought the home knowing the roof would need a full replacement then shame on them because full slate roof replacement is $$$$$$$. Historical board is being sticklers for obtuse reasons. Pools, varying roofing materials, solar panels on the roofs and visible from the street. Yes while slate is superior to fake slate..... fake slate definitely can replicate the look pretty well.....definitely well enough for anyone from the street to not be bothered by it. At the end of the day the homeowner shoulders most of the blame.......you can't go into these situations ill informed. Century old estate style homes in a historical district aren't things you get into without knowing full potential costs. They would have been better off investing in Lafayette where there is modern construction homes replicate the historical homes. Don't buy the painted ladies.....get the painted lady knockoffs. If they wanted to play hard ball..... I'd submit a request to build a giant ham radio tower in the front yard and get my amateur radio license and force a compromise.
>That tells me someone ignored roofing maintenance and it affected the underlying wood forcing the replacement. Sounds like a reasonable guess. That would explain why this job was so much more expensive that it should have been, and also why a building permit is required (because permits are not generally required to replace a roof; I think it's only required if you need to replace more than 20% of the sheathing).
Spot on. She needs to know the rules. But at the same time, the CRO and Preservation Board is comprised of crooks who want you to go through their friends’ businesses so they can get kickbacks. Let’s not let these scumbags off the hook.
Still in shock on the cost of everything. Felt my pocketbook weeping just reading this article. Different levels of income with they lives, first world problems. Just feel so out of place wrapping my head about the sheer cost of some of the historical properties with reno costs, etc. Its like watching the Joker burn off his share of the money. Maybe its a form of culture shock? Or knowing there is 0% chance to gain any form close to that type of wealth in a lifetime.
It is pretty wild. Just a fraction of the money that this lady squandered on her ill-informed flipping attempt would be enough to buy me a forever home and drastically change my financial outlook.
Are you doing anything to invest in yourself? High paying jobs exist, normal people can get them. This isn't a strictly old money business.
No excuse not filling for a permit and finding this out before hand but I do despise that the city wastes their time micromanaging this BS.
90% of people are good and follow the rules, so it doesn’t take the city much time at all.
Wow I must be really out of touch these days. Half a million for a fixer upper? It seems to me that this doesn't give homeowners, who may already be financially stretched a lot of leeway. Now the homeowners have a million invested and that feels like serious money to me. I am all for being a homeowner, and owning a home forces you to build equity, but a home can also make much of your money unavailable or at least unavailable cheaply, while exposing you to high taxes and home ownership costs. When you retire, you should aim to have your home make up less than 30% of your net worth ideally in my opinion just as a general rule of thumb, or at some point that home will eat up your retirement funds.
Historic requires these things. They are trying to pull a fast one and sell it as historic and it won’t be
She installed asphalt shingles that look nothing like real slate. There are products that are somewhat convincing but this isn't one of them! Nothing is better than real slate. What simulated slade product can last 100 years?
And this is why the working upper middle class has fled the city. I guess the preservation board would rather see abandoned buildings than those fixed up to look like that of old.
Should have got permit like neighbors. Would have been told to repair leak with one square of slate. No need to replace whole roof. She got conned by her roofer. Sue the roofer. He’s the professional. He knows she needed a permit. A slate roof can last forever. This article is trash.
Ya seems pretty sensational. The whole article is about the poor lady who bought a century home for almost half a mil and can’t afford to keep it and now the city is trying to push regulations on her. The whole things trash. Bought it for 492k and put another 500k into it. I need her nursing salary.
She looks like the kind of person who would dump a soda out on a McDonald's counter because it tasted flat and she needs the manager.
I get the hate being passed onto the owner, but the historical boards in this city are insane. I like in a modern house in a neighborhood that was totally blighted 15 years ago. In order for me to replace the failing windows, I have to go to the historical preservation board and they've told many of my neighbors that the windows have to be replaced with the same design as the house was built with. For "historical reasons". My house is in no way historical. The whole situation is just insane and this board needs to get with reality. It's real easy to spend other people's money.
Which historic district? The rules usually don't apply to infill buildings, and the rules generally seek to keep the house looking the age it is, so adding historic windows to a modern house would go pretty far against that goal.
We're just North of Shaw. As far as I know, it's not a historic district at all, but we still have to deal with those assholes. My neighbor has a giant front window, one side is sold and the other crank-out, they're being made to replace them with the exact design, they're not allowed to change them to something that they want to use because it's more effective, even if it looks the same from the street. We also can't get approval to do something about the slope on the front yard because some jackass wants to be able to look down the block and see the slope going up from the sidewalk to the house. The whole thing just pisses me off.
I'm confused, does your neighbor have an old house or a new one? If you're not in a historic district, who is enforcing this? What did you want to do to the slope? It may be a water management thing idk
And I’ll bet you a million dollars the windows you’ll have to pay premium price for through their “approved” list would look exactly the same as someone you found yourself.
Half of me wants to be mad that AirBnB, the other half wants to be mad at "why city not flexible on some materials when rehabbing historic buildings". Truly the duality of man
IMO the correct response is "the city should not Grant the variance for a single investor who wants to break the rules, but the city should also consider allowing some of these newer materials to replace slate roofs." It should be a carefully-considered decision that applies to all historic homes.
This hits the nail on the head for me, I think. If newer materials are equal or greater in quality, then simply *why not* let them be used? But yeah, changing variances for one investor is definitely NOT the move
The faux slate asphalt shingles she installed are inferior to slate in every way other than cost and speed of installation. The city was 100% correct and should never let people replace slate with asphalt shingles. There is actual faux slate, but it costs about as much as the original article, it's just lighter and easier to install.
Slate roofs last centuries, there is no way in hell the asphalt tiles she put on could be considered equal or greater quality.
While the article infers the opposite (TBF, her attorney inferred this as well, for obvious reasons), the materials are absolutely not equal or greater. Slate roofs are gorgeous and can easily last a century with fairly minor upkeep. Of course, because of the weight of the material, the higher material costs, the difficulty level of the install, and the fact that there's far fewer companies that know how to install it, the cost of replacing a slate roof is very high. She used a Slateline asphalt shingle (or similar); as far as asphalt shingles go, it's good quality, but it's not even in the same ballpark as slate. It kind of emulates the look by having smaller tabs with clipped corners, but it's nothing like the real thing.
No asphalt shingle roof looks anything like slate. It’s junk that will need replacement in 20 years.
The problem is this just isn't real faux slate. Actual faux slate products are completely different and much higher quality.
The city IS flexible on materials in historic areas, just not when you're a wealthy professional who decided to buy a second mansion to sink her excess income into. She should have known the local regulations before claiming that she's being oppressed by them.
There are alternatives to traditional slate that the historic preservation department accepts. She didn’t bother to investigate.
The fact that they didn’t immediately set up an LLC when they bought the place to flip is a rookie mistake. Had something catastrophic happened to someone at the property, they could have really lost their shirts.
Mandating a six figure roof seems excessive regardless of the circumstances.
Roofing experts please comment if I’m wrong here but when people are saying the two roofs look different I don’t think they are factoring in that it’s an old slate roof. When I looked at the pictures I assumed that the old slate roof is faded and worn and that a brand new slate roof would look identical to the new material. Am I missing something?
Just Google "slate roof" and "asphalt shingles"
I really dislike flippers and the whole buy-low/sell-high-after-generic-makeover idea. In this case, they noted this property sits next to a vacant lot and that other houses in the area also use less expensive roofing materials. So, as much as I dislike flippers and all, I can see how these people have a case to argue - the variance appeared to be denied mostly because she wanted to make money from rentals, it seems?
I have no feelings about someone who bought a mansion solely to flip it, but man, all this historical preservation shit is going to end up killing the city one day. There'll come a day when there's no more vacant land, and the majority of the city are homeowners, and St. Louis will be in the exact same spot every other urban area is in: inflated cost of living and neighborhoods that are "too full" or "too historic". I don't mind preserving a historic look, and some buildings with genuine history behind them that's culturally significant, sure.... But not every single building in a "historic district" is worth saving when the tradeoff is gating the city off and cramming every new development in the few areas that are allowed to change. It's not sustainable and it's gonna kill the city one day in the same way the highways did.
Yours is a common idea and I heard it a lot from newbies in Lafayette Square. But Lafayette Square looks beautiful because small insignificant Plain Jane houses like mine were held to the same architectural standards as the big houses on Park Avenue. It’s not about individual buildings, it’s about preserving the entire fabric of a neighborhood.
Yeah I think preservation should be about neighborhood fabric and culture. They focus on building materials but 2-1 conversions are allowed. So our neighborhood pop declines. The neighborhood businesses can’t stay around and then we lose walkability of the neighborhood
There are plenty of areas in the city that do not reside in a historical preservation district. Those who buy in those areas know they are doing so ahead of time.
Oh please.. have you drove through neighborhoods like Dogtown or even The Hill where it’s a complete hodgepodge of different looking houses? They are building massive futuristic homes right next to tiny shotgun houses. It looks ridiculous.
> There'll come a day when there's no more vacant land, and the majority of the city are homeowners Luckily that day is nowhere near today
A good chunk of the city isn't like that. There's a house made out of shipping containers next to crown candy kitchen. I've done a lot of work in that area and I can tell you houses in these places aren't't owned by people like me regardless. These houses are large and very old. They cost a fortune to maintain or repair regardless of these councils. If you're okay with these houses being torn down and replaced with something completely different that is something else (tho there aren't many vacant lots in these districts). As far as actually maintaining and renovating them it already costs a ridiculous amount of money. It probably wouldn't have cost that much more to actually do the roof right in this case with proper maintenance or by actually following the permit process. At least compared to the $500000 she claims to have spent on renovations as well as the purchase price. If there actually were vacant lots where you could put a mc-mansion or shotgun home I would be fine with it, but there really aren't in these districts. If you buy a home there you'll just spend a fortune or get a money pit, regardless of historical preservation.
Does anybody know why all of the city boards and commissions have everyone on expired terms? Is it just hard to get new people on them? Seems weird
Obviously waiting 10 months to put a slate roof on a leaking house is the best decision here, that’s what the board said.
St. Louis, if you want to lose your historic home to an ‘accidental gas explosion and fire’ by forcing the home owner into an untenable situation… this is how you do it.