Houses are influencers now, and this one burned to the ground

Louise is their sixth “baby,” as Laine calls the homes, and their most recent restoration project. “It almost felt like, cosmically, she was not going to let it go.”Imagination can’t save Louise now, although a community of old home appreciators who’ve been following the house’s restoration on Instagram wishes it could. Most listings cost less than $100,000 on Cheap Old Houses, and for Finkelstein, the more preserved it is, the better.“I almost find [the homes] more alluring if they’re not in great condition but they’re original,” she says. “People love time warp, time capsule, houses that you open up and it looks like it hasn’t been touched.”A post shared by Cheap Old Houses ™ (@cheapoldhouses) on Aug 17, 2020 at 9:12am PDTDuring the pandemic, she says the account has, at times, grown by 25,000 people a week, demonstrating everyone’s collective desire to get outside their homes, find a project, or at least imagine themselves somewhere other than wherever they’re hunkered down.Once a home sells, Finkelstein posts another image, but this time with the words “I’VE BEEN SAVED” across it. Louise was one of those homes, and Finkelstein says after she posted about the “fairytale” house, the Berrys gained around 30,000 Instagram followers.“They’re Insta stars because I think people love to kind of follow along,” she says. Louise was supposed to become a bed and breakfast.A post shared by Scott Reed - Serial Restorer (@savingoldhouses) on Aug 9, 2020 at 7:00pm PDTWhatever they turn into, the goal is to maintain these homes and keep them as historically accurate as possible.“We’re losing these properties at incredible rates, so our objective has been to come into areas and restore properties that, for whatever purpose, have been neglected for several years,” says Laine, who’s working on getting a certification in historic preservation from the Boston College of Architecture.Another popular restoration journey, @whathavewedunoon from Cal Hunter and Claire Segeren, is supposed to end up as both a permanent home and an Airbnb.