Buy at Your Own Risk...

"A young San Francisco couple's dream of buying a fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood at a low price and polishing it into a sweetheart of a home literally collapsed on Sunday afternoon."

"The light blue home on a hill in the Sunnyside neighborhood, full of charm and rotting wood, sold late last year in a court auction for an almost unheard of price in San Francisco: $525,000."

"Bill Zhou and his wife snapped it up and, according to neighbors, began fixing it up with little outside help."

"But the house was in such need of repairs that the real estate agent who had listed it had warned potential buyers to "enter at your own risk."'

"The one-bedroom, 870-square-foot cottage -- built in 1910 -- was featured last year on a Bay Area real estate blog and in a story in the San Francisco Examiner as the cheapest house in the city's pricey market, offered at $400,000."

'"Major Fixer Upper needs everything," read the listing about the home, according to the report. "Buyers and agents beware of unstable building, floors, dry-rot and foundations. Enter at your own risk."'

"At 2:47 p.m. Sunday, as Zhou tried to put in a new foundation, the house at 149 Mangels Ave. buckled with a great crash."

"So thunderous was the sound that one neighbor mistook it for a jet breaking the sound barrier and another likened it to lumber falling out of a lumber truck.

"A front corner of the Zhou house slammed into a neighboring house, breaking a window and leaving cracks in interior walls. A back corner twisted and ended up moving about 20 feet in the other direction, into one of those miniparks that San Francisco has built into urban hillsides.

Zhou was unhurt, and firefighters saved his dog."

'"Unbelievable," said Charles Sterling, 46, one of several neighbors who stood gaping at the wreckage of the house late Sunday behind a police barricade."

'"They're just a wonderful young couple trying to do the American Dream thing and may have gotten in over their heads."'