Couple buys 140-year-old New Jersey home for $550,000

When Amanda Delise’s father sent her a listing for a 140-year-old six-bedroom, two-bathroom home in New Jersey’s Atlantic Highlands in 2024, her first thought was that it would take a lot of work. Her real estate agent even called it a “golden hole.”

But Amanda, 32, and her husband Vincent, 34, saw potential in their family.

Amanda and Vincent decided to start saving for their future home in 2021, but they quickly realized that a new build or newly renovated property would be beyond their budget, Vincent says. That’s why the property Amanda’s father sent her was perfect for them, she says.

This location also allows Amanda to take the local ferry to New York City for work.

The couple’s real estate agent said the house was for sale by an older man who had raised his family there and did not want to sell it to an investor.

“I wrote a lovely letter to the older man saying I wanted to take care of the house and restore it to its former glory,” says Amanda.

The three settled on a selling price of $550,000 to $90,000, below the asking price. The Delises put the house under contract on Halloween night 2024 with a 15% down payment of $82,500. They obtained a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with an interest rate of 7.125% and monthly payments of just under $3,900, including taxes and insurance, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

The next step is to renovate the property piece by piece.

Amanda and Vincent moved into the home in November 2024 and began renovations just a few weeks later. That included tearing down the second floor and installing studs, adding air to the center and modernizing the home while preserving its charm.

They say when they first bought the house, it was in pretty bad shape. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls, the windows needed redoing, and the siding needed updating.

During the renovation, the couple wanted to make sure to restore some of the home’s original features. They replicated the original window trim, kept what appeared to be original light fixtures in the dining room, and used much of the furniture left behind by the previous owner.

However, they made changes to the layout, including combining two of the bedrooms to create a larger master bedroom.

Amanda and Vincent estimate they spent about $172,000 on renovations, funded through personal savings, a 401(k) loan, and the sale of stock from a former employer. So far, the most expensive parts of the renovation have been the siding and windows, which totaled about $70,000.

In addition to income from their 9-to-5 jobs, Amanda as an administrative assistant at a fintech company and Vincent as a director of revenue operations at a SaaS company, the couple also earns money from TikTok’s Creator Fund. They started sharing their renovation process on TikTok in November 2024 and currently have 41,000 followers and some videos have been viewed more than 600,000 times.

Amanda said that by sharing their journey on TikTok, she was able to land a brand deal that allowed her to paint part of her home for free.

According to Amanda, the hardest part of fixing up the house was living in it while it was being renovated. The couple slept in the living room while the second floor was being renovated.

“There were moments when I lived here where the windows would blow out. There was a pretty big project going on, so the house was always a construction site,” Vincent says.

Vincent says he could have rented an apartment during this period, but he didn’t want to spend the extra money.

In order to stretch their budget as far as possible, the couple not only lived at home, but also downgraded their car and canceled subscriptions such as YouTube TV.

The couple is preparing to welcome their first child, but said renovations are not yet complete and will take several years. In fact, Amanda says the joke is that they’ll probably never be completed. “There’s always work to be done,” she says.

The couple has yet to renovate the third floor of the house, which includes Vincent’s office and attic. The kitchen still needs work, which Vincent and Amanda hope to have completed within the next few years.

“We didn’t want it to feel like a modern kitchen,” Amanda says. “We definitely want to preserve the charm of old folk houses.”

But the couple say they’re enjoying the process, especially the items they find around the house. Their finds include Stan Musial’s 1948 rookie baseball card, a handwritten letter from the 1930s, a wallet containing old shopping receipts from 1925, and a vintage breast pump.

With this discovery, the couple started thinking about what they could embed in the walls for future owners to find.

“We’re just collecting some random items, some of our own, and we’ll probably put them on the floorboards in the attic or put them on the walls while we renovate more rooms,” says Amanda.

Vincent said he was initially against buying the house because of the work needed, but thought it was a good investment given the town and its location.

In 2025, Netflix signed a deal to purchase Fort Monmouth, a former Army base located less than 10 miles from the Atlantic Plateau. NBC reports that the company plans to build a $900 million campus that will include 12 sound stages, a backlot area and production facilities.

“One thing about this house is that we always knew it would be a good investment. It’s a very exciting location,” Vincent says. “There is a lot of renovation work going on across the county and town, so we always thought this house was a good investment because we believe we will be here for a long time.”

“We want to continue to make this house our home,” says Amanda.

“Maybe someone 100 years from now will see some of the work we’ve done around the house and see our touch,” Vincent added.

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