Lucey and Cook provided their own financing. Not all banks are comfortable lending money to move and rehab an old house. That may change as word spreads about Viking Bank's house-move program, begun in 2006 and likely one of the first such programs in the country.

From the Seattle bank's perspective, the risks aren't extraordinary, since a good mover insures each house until it is attached to the foundation and the homeowner's insurance takes over.

Viking treats house moves like construction projects -- a bank specialty, says Brad Baumann, assistant vice president at the suburban Bellevue branch. House-move loans are composed of two parts. The first part is a short-term construction loan from which homeowners pay bank-approved bills for moving and renovation. Then Viking converts the loan to a traditional mortgage when the house receives an occupancy permit.

Baumann estimates that Viking funded six house moves in 2007. The bankers scrutinize every detail of a proposal for financial soundness. Even with land costs -- typically included in loans -- such projects usually produce instant equity, Baumann says.

"Personally, I think that this home-recycling trend has a lot of value both economically and environmentally," says Baumann. McCord says each Nickel Bros. project recycles 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of potential construction and demolition debris that would have gone to landfills.

Reclaiming homes in Hawaii
Even in the Hawaiian Islands, moving and refurbishing an old home can occasionally make economic sense, says general contractor Mike Fayé (pronounced fay-a), of Structure Movers Hawaii, based in Waimea, Kauai.

Fayé moves buildings on all of the islands except Oahu. Since land costs are high, much of his work is for wealthy homeowners and commercial clients. On Kauai, for instance, where the cheapest lots start at $200,000, land costs make an otherwise free house unaffordable for many. But island planning commissions are trying to encourage historic preservation. Fayé enjoys helping lower-income customers by moving discarded sugar plantation cottages onto cheap $50,000 lots near the Kilauea volcano.

"I believe we can hit $100 a square foot on a turnkey basis," he says of these projects. That's a good price for the islands. Homeowners who achieve it usually do so by doing some cleaning and refurbishing work themselves.

Fayé's grandfather, Hans Peter Fayé, was a sugar pioneer on Kauai. Like many structural movers, Mike learned his trade in childhood, watching his dad, who managed the plantation, move buildings around. "These are mostly mom-and-pop operations," says N. Eugene Brymer, staff executive for the 385-member International Association of Structural Movers. "Many of the professionals have grown up in the business. There are no schools you can go to."
The exacting business of moving homes

When Fayé was 10, his dad gave him a small shack, saying, "That's yours. You can drag it around." He's been recycling old plantation homes ever since.

Between 1983 and 1992, he and other family members moved dozens of old cane workers' cottages to a scenic slice of the old plantation and refurbished and decorated them. The charming Waimea Plantation Cottages became a sought-after resort, named Sunset magazine's No. 1 romantic cottage destination in 2007.

A new job: landlord
With their moving project finished, Lucey and Cook are transitioning into yet another  new job: landlord. "We will not get rich and retire off of this," Lucey says, "but hopefully it will be a better investment than the stock market."

Lucey and Cook plan to charge $1,000 to $1,100 a month in rent and estimate about 40% of that will be profit after taxes, upkeep and insurance.

Her advice for others who want to move and rehab a bargain home: "If you are going to do this, unless you are going to pay someone to do all the work, it is tiring and time-consuming. But it felt good."