It’s a Family Tradition ~ Green Button Homes

It’s a Family Tradition ~ Green Button Homes

The Tarrant boys like to build. 77 years later and Tom Tarrant in San Diego is and following in his grandfathers footsteps, developing real estate and building spec houses. Here’s a fun picture of Tom’s Grandfather R.W. “Poppy” Tarrant’s custom home that he built for his family in the late 1930’s.  The house was on Overbrook Lane in the upscale area of Houston, Texas known today as River Oaks. This house was torn down in the early 2000’s.

After selling the first house to a local attorney, he then drew up his own plans and specs and built this home in the 3600 block of Wickersham Lane in River Oaks. In 1943 this house only cost $15,000 to build. In today’s inflation adjusted dollars that equals $202, 460.00.

Here is Poppy, Tom’s dad Tom Tarrant Sr. and his uncle Bobby Tarrant in Houston outside the Wickersham house. Bobby Tarrant became a successful criminal attorney in Houston, Texas.

Carlsbad Plans

Carlsbad Plans

Here’s a glimpse at the front elevation of the modern Carlsbad new construction house we have in the works. It’s a 4/3 at roughly 4000 total square feet. I’m real happy with the design.. its got clean lines, big horizontal planes and heavy overhangs. More design detail to come as well as some 3D modeling so you can get a feel for the floorplan. The Carlsbad permitting process wont be a quick process, we are now only working towards Coastal Development Approval and then we get to submit the detailed house plans. Completion date in 2014.

Sell My Home Fast San Diego California

Sell My Home Fast San Diego California

We are still busy Buying Houses here in San Diego California and helping homeowners find solutions to their Real Estate problems. It’s been a busy Summer but we are still looking to buy more houses! Do you need to Sell you House in San Diego?

sell my house san diego california

Last month we bought this Paradise Hills house directly from the sellers who were retired veterans and had got a couple months behind on their mortgage payments. They didn’t want to work with realtors because most of their equity would have been spent on the realtor commissions. Their lender Green Tree, wouldn’t cooperate with a loan modification and refinancing of their VA loan was out of the question because there were major repairs that needed to be made to the property, namely an empty swimming pool in the backyard which needed to be filled in.

After visiting the house we made them a cash offer and immediately contacted their lender for a payoff amount so the harassing phone calls stopped. To help the elderly sellers we even advanced some funds before the sale closed so they could rent a suitable house. They will walk away with over $25,000 cash in their pocket and be saved of having a foreclosure on their credit. We love helping people and make sure its a win-win for both parties.

sell house fast san diego california

I bought this house in the San Diego Clairemont neighborhood this month after the seller, who is the executor of a family trust, contacted me and wanted to liquidate the asset so the beneficiaries could cash out. The challenging issue with this deal was that the home needed extensive repairs so a lender would likely not lend on it.

We made the sellers a cash offer and agreed to take the house in its As-Is condition, we never request anyone to make repairs. We closed escrow 12 days later and the heirs to the estate received their portion of the proceeds.  Another win-win situation for both parties, no other homebuyer in town would let the seller stay in the house for a year after receiving their funds!

Another purchase this month was this house on Dictionary Hill in Spring Valley. It’s a huge 3200 sf custom but needs an extensive remodel. The house had great bones, but years of deferred maintenance. The sellers had been busy with their careers and didn’t have the time to make repairs or keep up with this huge house. They didn’t want to list it with a realtor and have to clean, pay to fix everything, and then hassle with all the showings so they called us.

Out of their equity they would have also paid $15,000 in Realtor fees which was a big portion of their proceeds they needed to put down on their new house. Here is how fast we work; after getting the call on a Friday, I visited the home Saturday morning and made an offer. By Monday we agreed on a sale price and opened escrow.  5 days later the deal closed and they got their check! The sellers had accumulated a lot of little stuff in the house that would have been time consuming and costly to haul out, so they were happy that we didn’t require them to haul it off or clean anything on the way out.

If you want to Sell a San Diego California House Fast, give us a call and we will work around your specific situation to try and structure a deal that works for both parties. More information about the homebuying process and how we arrive at an offer price can be found at the following link: https://tomtarrant.com/we-buy-houses-san-diego/

Contact me by clicking here or simply call (619) 438-0234 for a hassle free, no-obligation offer for your unwanted real estate. Your privacy is our main concern and we don’t share your information with anyone.

Flipping San Diego

Flipping San Diego

sell home fast san diego

It looks like A&E finally green lighted the announcement of a new Flip This House team for 2013. It’s our friend Chief Denney here in San Diego with a new show called Flipping San Diego. Chief does really nice work, has a lot of integrity when it comes to renovating houses and furthermore is a graduate of New School of Architecture here in San Diego.

What you guys are in store for this upcoming season on Flip This House from the San Diego team will be unlike any other season in the past so its a must see for house flipping fans.

Sorry but there wont be any painting over rotten wood, shoddy lipstick rehabs, faked arguments with contractors or staged open house sales. I’m looking forward to the spotlight on the hot San Diego house flipping scene, and happy to see that it will involve someone ethical with good design sense and doing quality rehabs to show the nation how California does it! finding outdated houses and people who want to sell their home in San Diego are what we look for.

Tune into the new Flip This House season debuting July 20th on A&E. If you are saying i want to sell my home fast San Diego then give us a call.

Over the years we’ve been approached by 3 different production companies to do realty shows like Flip This House, Property Ladder, Flip or Flop and Property Brothers but never found the right “fit”, you might remember this old post

 

https://tomtarrant.com/another-real-estate-reality-show-offer/

New Carlsbad Lagoon Lot

New Carlsbad Lagoon Lot

I picked up this 1.3 acre parcel in Old Carlsbad on Aqua Hedionda Lagoon last week and am getting started on plans for a 3500+ s.f. contemporary custom home. You can see its very close to Carlsbad Lagoon where there are fun summer activities like wakeboarding, kayaking and stand up paddle boarding although the beach is still only 1 mile away.

I’ve got about 30 hours of due diligence in with The City already and feel pretty good about the parcel although its never had a house on it after a sub division lot split in 1980. There are a lot of challenges with this lot but neighboring parcels have all been developed or received approval.

This lot is also in the Coastal Commission area which requires Coastal Development Approval before any grading, public improvement or building plans can be approved.

Home values in this area of Carlsbad are very strong with values in the $1M range. It’s going to be a long permitting process this summer though before we can break ground, I’ve already hired a civil engineer to do a new Topography Survey from which we can do a Preliminary Site Plan with elevations, drainage and grading.

Additionally, we are required to submit a Geo Report for the soils and a Bio Report that documents endangered plant and wildlife on the lot, namely Coastal Scrub Brush and the infamous Gnat Catcher bird. Once we can get all this in to the City we’ll be considered for a Coastal Development Permit after a 30-day wait, and then we can start actually working on the house plans.

This whole process could easily take 6 months from what I’m told so don’t expect to see me start grading next weekend. This is going to be a really fun project, we are really excited to also be doing something in North County and leaning more modern with this home design.

I’ll share some of the prelim info as we get into this and start playing with conceptual designs and eventually work towards another 3D model of the house and site.

Modern Bungalow Sold $765,000

Modern Bungalow Sold $765,000

The San Diego real estate market is on fire right now, home prices in my area are up 20% over last year and in nearby neighborhoods like North Park 92104 there is only 1 month of inventory at the current sales pace!  It’s putting a real damper on the local house flippers as they are having trouble finding properties to rehab. 3 guys I personally know are going to Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs to find projects.

Strategically, I put it on the market on a Tuesday to give everyone time to react before an MLS advertised double-open house weekend. The strategy worked out perfectly, by the open house we already had 3 offers to work with. In this market its common to have 10-15 offers within the first few days, but this is generally true for entry level houses or high demand markets in the suburbs. By leaving the house on the market a whole 8 days, I felt it gave adequate market exposure yet didn’t irritate any of the first buyers by waiting too long and playing the game.

We had a specialty product for a very special buyer, in an inner city neighborhood where median sold home prices are in the low 500’s. To illustrate the market appreciation this year, when I bought this vacant lot I calculated a house built there would have sold for $629,000 based on comps. Half way through the build there were 2 comps at $685,000. By the time I was done we had sales comps in the low 700’s for remodels, not new construction, so I put a value on the home of $750,000. Not having a back yard was a definite negative so I had to price this in. You know that the seller does not set the sales price, the market does. A house will sell for whatever a buyer is willing to pay. Furthermore, houses are not sold, they are bought, so listing agents don’t “sell” houses in my opinion.

I used value range pricing and listed the house at $749,000 – $799,000. The first offer came in at $710,000. The second at $749,000 and a third at $750,000. When the smoke cleared, and after everyone had a shot to go higher, we countered the strongest buyer of the 3 offers and they came up to $765,000, or $413.50/s.f.

Listing this house and getting it under contract was the easy part, getting SDG&E to install the gas meter so we could close would prove to be the hard part and took almost 8 weeks! Our wonderful buyer hung in there so we finally closed today, congratulations to the new owner and we hope you enjoy the home as much as we did building it.