A couple bought a $7,500 abandoned New York home and is restoring it to its former Victorian glory. See inside

Radiation oncologist Dr. Lindsay Noah-Vermillion, 55, and her husband Jim Vermillion, a retired pilot, are both from Seattle, Washington, but moved from Alaska to Syracuse, New York, in 2020 for a residency position.

Through the Greater Syracuse Land Bank, the couple bought a 3,200-square-foot Victorian home for only $7,500 in December 2021.

The land bank aims to revitalize rundown buildings and neighborhoods in Syracuse, New York — about a 4-hour drive northwest from New York City — by selling abandoned properties for a low price.

The land bank program has certain standards that buyers have to commit to meeting when refurbishing properties, according to Noah-Vermillion.

"Their goal is not to have them turn into rentals — not to have them be flophouses," Noah-Vermillion told Insider. "Because that's what had been happening to these old buildings and they want to prevent that."

Noah-Vermillion took out a construction loan for the 120-year-old house, and has used about $40,000 of it for renovations so far. According to the Greater Syracuse Land Bank, the estimated renovation cost would be at least $107,807 to meet its standards.

"When they tell you what the cost is, they also give you an estimate of what the loan will have to be for how much it will cost you to actually update it to the standards," she said.

She plans to eventually live in the home, so she and her husband are going beyond the basic requirements

"We looked at that number and went, 'Well we want to do more than just remodel it to be livable,'" she said. "We wanted to restore it as much as we could. We knew we were going to put a little bit more money into it. Our standards were different, and higher, than the standards that they were requiring."

The two have experience with renovations.

When Noah-Vermillion was doing a year of residency in Baltimore, she and her husband bought a home that was landmarked by the Baltimore City Historical Society.

"We had to do a few repairs and then we realized we wanted to do them in the manner of a historical house, so we sort of learned a little bit about architectural salvage and how to find vintage things for our home," Noah-Vermillion said.

That purchase and renovation set the tone for the Syracuse project.

When the Noah-Vermillions moved to Syracuse in 2020, housing prices were through the roof and they didn't want to pay an above-market price for a fixer-upper, she said.

In 2020, the median home price in Syracuse peaked at $135,000, according to Redfin.

"When we started looking around for houses, we started noticing all of these beautiful abandoned homes and saw the land bank sign on them," she said. "We felt pretty comfortable with that process, so we thought we would take this on."

The Victorian-style home has three floors, not including a basement, with seven bedrooms and two bathrooms. Their plans for the house call for four bedrooms and three bathrooms.

They're leaving the top floor as-is and using it for storage, so they're remodeling about 2,500 square feet in total, according to Noah-Vermillion.

The project got off to a slow start.

In August 2021, the couple wanted to put a new roof on the house. Roofers removed the old shingles and put a membrane down. Before they could reshingle, they were met with days of torrential downpour that gushed into the home.

"We were going to keep the plaster and refinish the wood floors, but we eventually had to remove all the plaster and we lost the floors," Noah-Vermillion said.

The extra-wet conditions led to mold, which took about a year to clean up, pushed back their timeline, and added to their budget.

Since the mold and flooring was not a part of the original loan budget, Noah-Vermillion had to pay out of pocket for that project, which she estimates cost about $20,000.

Mold remediation wrapped up in the spring, allowing the renovation to move forward at full speed.

"We found a lovely new contractor who has been really making the project move forward. Just in the last couple months, we've gotten a lot of things done," Noah-Vermillion said.

Noah-Vermillion intends to keep a similar feel to the original house by reusing old trim for the doorways and picking up pieces from the period it was built to furnish the home.

"We're trying our best to use the actual period pieces when we can," she said.

Noah-Vermillion took a trip through Upstate New York finding period pieces like doors and door knobs, light fixtures, and a fireplace to furnish the house.

"Because there are so many houses here that have been torn down, there's a plethora of architectural salvage up here," she said.

Noah-Vermillion doesn't necessarily think of the renovations as a financial investment because she plans to live in Syracuse for the long term. If she didn't, a project of this magnitude would not have made financial sense.

"If it was a flip then it would not have been a good investment," she told Insider.

Noah-Vermillion admitted that the house is in a less desirable, but still up-and-coming neighborhood. Since she and Jim intend to stay put for a while, they don't really feel the pressures of renovating it beyond its value.

"We want to make it so we are comfortable," she said. "So we probably are overspending a little bit for the neighborhood."

While the initial costs to start the renovation — as well as the unforeseen costs of a new floor — were expensive, Noah-Vermillion estimates that her monthly cost of living in the home once finished will be about $700.

It's about a third of what they are currently paying to rent an apartment in downtown Syracuse.

Noah-Vermillion's residency program will last for five years, but she plans on being a long-term resident of Syracuse — especially after all of the work put into the house.

When the opportunity presented itself, Noah-Vermillion couldn't pass up the chance to refurbish a house with so much history.

"We just love the idea of saving a house that had good bones instead of building something new that wouldn't have the same sort of feel to it," she said.