Growing up in Iowa, Steven and Ashley Evans knew all about the local fire station in Cedar Rapids because it was right by the high school they both attended. “We always dreamed we’d live here one day. It went up for sale and we thought we’d come check it out,” Steven, 40, told CNBC Make It in an interview. In 2016, when the Evans first saw it was for sale, listed for $125,000, it had been abandoned for years and was covered in black mold. According to a report by CNBC, the couple had no intentions of purchasing it because they didn’t have the finances at the time. But after taking a look, Steven secretly put in an offer of $90,000 and it was accepted. He came clean the next day; he says he wanted it to be a surprise to Ashley that he bought the fire station they used to always see by their high school.
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A bold purchase
The station was first built in 1960 and converted into a home by its previous owners in the 1980s. When the Evans first saw it, it had been abandoned for years and was covered in black mold. “We had no intentions of purchasing it because we didn’t have the finances at the time,” Ashley, 33, sai, as per CNBC. In 2016, she was working as a dermatology nurse, and Steven had a job working with adults with special needs and owned six rental properties. They owned a house they paid $65,000 for, Ashley says, but “my parents actually had to cosign on the house because we just couldn’t afford it. ... It was $550 a month, and we were just struggling.”
Still, they decided to take a look at the firehouse. Even when they had to sign waivers to enter because it was deemed a safety hazard due to the mold, they weren’t deterred. “The thing that attracted me the most to the fire station would be the fact that it’s all concrete and steel. The bones were solid, the house was level; any other house would have fallen over easily by now,” Steven says.
Getting the fire station up to code
The property was listed as a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with 3,100 square feet of space. However, Steven says it was almost twice that size because the listing counted only the finished area and excluded the unfinished space. To finance the purchase, Steven took a $170,000 construction loan through his rental property business, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The couple says they chose this route because they initially planned to renovate the former fire station and sell it.
