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

When Amanda DeRise’s father sent her a listing for a 140-year-old six-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, in 2024, her first thought was that it needed a lot of work. Her realtor even called it a “money pit.”

But Amanda, 32, and her husband, Vincent, 34, saw potential in the home.

Amanda and Vincent decided to start saving for their future home in 2021, but quickly realized a new build or freshly renovated property would be out of their budget, Vincent says. It’s why the listing Amanda’s father sent her seemed to be perfect for them, she says.

The location would also allow Amanda to take the local ferry into New York City for work.

The couple’s realtor told them 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 nice letter to the older man stating that we want to take care of this house and bring it back to its former glory,” Amanda says.

The three decided on a sale price of $550,000 — $90,000 under the asking price. The DeRises closed on the house on Halloween night in 2024 with a 15% down payment of $82,500. They obtained a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 7.125% rate and a monthly payment of just under $3,900, including taxes and insurance, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

The next step: Renovating the property piece by piece.

Amanda and Vincent moved into the house in November 2024 and started renovations just a few weeks later, which included taking down the second floor to the studs, adding central air and modernizing the house while preserving its charm.

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

During the renovation, the couple wanted to make sure some of the original features of the house were restored. They had the original window trim replicated, kept what they think is an original light fixture in the dining room and used a lot of furniture left by the previous owners.

They have made changes to the layout, though, such as combining two of the bedrooms to create a larger primary bedroom.

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

In addition to income from their 9-to-5 jobs — Amanda is an administrative assistant at a fintech company and Vincent is a director of revenue operations at a SaaS company — the couple earn money from TikTok’s Creator Fund. They started sharing their renovation journey on TikTok in November 2024 and currently have 41,000 followers, with several of their videos getting over 600,000 views.

Amanda says sharing their journey on TikTok helped them get a brand deal to get free paint for parts of the house.

Living in the house while renovating it was the hardest part of fixing it up, Amanda says. The couple slept in the living room while they renovated the second floor.

“We had moments where windows were being blown out as we’re living in here. The home was always a construction zone because it was pretty major projects going on,” Vincent says.

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

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

Although they are getting ready to welcome a their first child, the couple says the renovations are still not done and won’t be for several years. In fact, Amanda says the joke is that they probably will never be done. “There will always be something to do,” she says.

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

“I don’t want to make it feel like a modern kitchen,” Amanda says. “I definitely want to keep the charm of an older home.”

However, the couple say they are enjoying the process, especially the items they’ve found inside the house. Their findings include a Stan Musial 1948 rookie baseball card, handwritten letters from the 1930s, a purse with old shopping receipts from 1925 and a vintage breast pump.

The discoveries have the couple thinking about what they could put into the walls for future owners to find.

“We have just been collecting some random items, some of our own that we plan to put maybe in the floorboards in the attic or, while we’re renovating more rooms, put them in the walls,” Amanda says.

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

In 2025, Netflix closed on a deal to buy Fort Monmouth, a former Army base less than 10 miles from Atlantic Highlands. The company plans to build a $900 million campus that will include 12 soundstages, backlot areas and production facilities, NBC reports.

“One thing about the home is that we always knew it was going to be a good investment. It’s an exciting place to be,” Vincent says. “There’s a lot of renovations happening across the county and the town, so we always just thought that this home would be the right type of investment, especially because we believe we’ll be here for a very long time.”

Going forward, “We’re excited to continue to make this home our own,” Amanda says.

“Maybe someone in 100 years looks at some of the work that we’ve done around the home and sees our touch to it,” Vincent adds.

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