Here are the plans for the custom house we’re building for ourselves in South Park. It’s a Clean Modern Craftsman 2-story design, 3 bedroom, 2.5 baths with a detached 2 car garage at around 1900 s.f. For the bungalow feel we did nice 2×8 barge rafters at the gable ends with an a-typical edge detail and bold yet simple 4×4 brackets over 6″ corner trim. Porch columns front and rear will be 8×8 in smooth Cedar, just sealed. You can see the first floor is wide open and expansive with 10′ ceilings, the entry leads you into the dining area that opens right across to the kitchen. In the island kitchen we have a walk in pantry and a peninsula for casual eating. There is a powder room under the stairs and then the whole back of the house is the great room also off the kitchen for entertaining with direct access to the back yard complete with covered porch and decking on the canyon. Indoor utility room is also just inside the rear door.
All the bedrooms are upstairs, gracious closet spaces, full master suite with sit down spa tub as well as stand up shower. Dual vanities in both upstairs bathrooms. Normally we try and put the master suite downstairs but we dont mind stairs so it worked better putting all bedrooms up. I’m doing exposed galvanized metal roofing on the open porch framing and aluminum Milgard casement windows as well to give the urban mod feel. The back porch also provides a perfect breezeway to the detached 2 car garage. Check out the balloon framing in action on the side elevation/staircase windows, this is definitely some out of the box home design that’s going to make a huge impact in South Park. Estimated completion December 2012. Thanks Morgan for the help!
Great news this week, we are going New Construction in South Park and building a killer brand new Craftsman Bungalow for ourselves on a canyon lot. I dug this deal up straight ninja style, no MLS listing, no For Sale sign in the yard, just some driving for dollars, looking up the owner on the tax rolls, a cash offer and we closed 5 days later. A build-able vacant lot, with utilities, in popular South Park is virtually unheard of. You’ve seen us do some Major bungalow transformations such as The Hat Trick House, The Neighbors House and The Target House but stay tuned and see what we’ll build given the opportunity to start from scratch and build one for ourselves! Plans are in the works, I’ll show you guys soon our design ideas. Stay tuned, 2012 is off to a great start!
Here’s a great 1920’s bungalow project. It’s a bank owned REO in a highly sought after neighborhood. I missed this deal yesterday literally by hours. By the time we went to submit an offer they had just accepted another one. There’s another great investing tip back story with this house, I’ll share it after I know it’s gone for sure.
Happy Halloween and let’s celebrate! The sale on the Craftsman Bungalow closed today! Yea! This was a really fun project for us; we were able to explore some different avenues through the use of materials and colors that were outside of our normal selections.
It was quite enjoyable working with an older historic house for a change, but there was a real balance to be achieved with trying to preserve the original character but still use our creativity on the design elements. We were really pleased with the end product and already looking forward to the next house with more cool ideas.
We already bought our next project as well. I decided to call it the “Hat Trick House” since it’s the third one in a row in this same neighborhood for us. It’s another cool 1925 Craftsman Bungalow in Mahncke Park and only one block over from the 2 we sold this Summer.
We have a really good feel for the area now and actually just set our own comp. After hearing all the feedback we feel we know what the market is looking for and have some ideas on how to capitalize from this knowledge.
The rehab will start November 15 so stay tuned for more flipping fun this Winter! San Diego homeowners looking for someone to purchase their property just as it is should contact us.
After a slow couple of weeks from the credit meltdown and stock market crash things really picked up. The 7th Annual Mahncke Park Home Tour was a huge success, click here to read the full story.
Within 3 days last week we had 4 showings on our house and 2 offers resulting in a sale. The buyers are looking for a quick close on Halloween, which is great news for us.
The offer that we accepted included financing via a FHA loan. There is an anti-flipping rule that FHA has where they recommend title seasoning for 6 months. Furthermore – for investors who are selling their property to a retail buyer within 12 months of purchasing it, and the selling price is greater than your purchase price, the FHA might ask you to substantiate the improvements you did to the property with receipts, before and after photos etc.
Under some circumstances only a 90-day seasoning might suffice. Make sure and talk to the buyers’ lender to find out exactly what their requirements are before getting tied up in a contract which could result in an extra 30 days before you can close escrow.
There are many buyers in Texas using FHA loans these days because they can get good interest rates and only put 3-5% down. We purchased this house in late April, did a 3-month rehab and it’s been on the market for 70 days so we just luckily will have the closing date 3 days after a 6 month seasoning period.
This rule was put into place to protect home buyers from mortgage fraud and predatory actions. With the current housing market situation though you would think our Government and the Lenders would make it easier on private investors who in turn are getting families into some of these vacant foreclosures, getting loans off the books and simultaneously bringing back property tax revenue. Selling a house can be as easy or hard as you make it. Lenders sometimes have a lot of control over who your buyer will be.
We got our second offer on the The Craftsman Bungalow. It was $10k higher than the first offer. This is not bad but additionally they asked for over $6000.00 in closing costs so the deal didn’t fly after we countered.
Also this week we were chosen to take part in the Mahncke Park Home Tour by MPNA that takes place yearly, and is coming up on October 19, 2008. Tickets are 10 bucks and it’s open to the public.
The local newspaper also covers the event and showcases some of the homes in their Sunday Edition so we hope to make the cut. Hundreds of people will come through on that Sunday and the neighborhood as a whole will get tons of media exposure so we’re excited. My wife and I went ahead and staged the house this week.
We pulled extra furniture and accessories from our home and bought a few new items as well. It’s now been on the market 44 days so we thought we would step it up a bit, stage it for the Mahncke Park Home Tour and with the furniture it looks really good. Bungalow#2 closes tomorrow, yeah!
