52 Ash Street

Eight and a half thousand square feet is a lot of house. 52 Ash Street was built as a private mansion and has the bones to prove it: high ceilings, wide stairs, room after room off a central hall. Configured for recovery housing it holds 36 beds, four of them private. That is roughly triple what a converted single-family delivers, and scale is the whole argument here, because taxes, insurance and a house manager do not triple when the bed count does.

New Bedford is a working coastal city in southeastern Massachusetts with a hospital, a bus system, and a treatment and recovery network that has been in place for decades. Residents can get to a job and to a meeting without a car. The house sits in the middle of that rather than out on the edge of town.

Most of the capital work is already behind it. What is left is a finish line, not a project: fire sprinkler completion, alarm installation and integration, fire escape work, and the finish carpentry that follows. Budget about $120,000. Renovation draw financing can be arranged against completed work, so that scope does not come out of pocket on top of the purchase. Vanderburgh places a first position mortgage at closing and finances a second position seller note behind it, which is what keeps cash to close low against a seven-figure price. The first position carries its own requirements, including verified liquidity and a 680 minimum credit score for the best terms.

This suits a buyer who can run a construction schedule and a certification process at the same time, or a passive owner paired with an operator who can. It is not a starter property. Thirty-six beds is a real program with real staffing, and the remaining scope is life safety work a building inspector signs off on, not cosmetics you can defer. Diligence should focus on the construction budget, open permits, egress, and what the fire department will require before occupancy.