New South Park Project

by | Jan 7, 2012 | Craftsman Bungalow, San Diego Real Estate Market, South Park Modern Bungalow, Videos

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!

Ready for Blast Off!

Ready for Blast Off!

by | Dec 31, 2011 | House Flipping, San Diego Real Estate Market

Here’s the house design I came up with for my new Mid-Century Modern project. As you can see I’m breathing some modern life into the great house while leaving the original lines untouched. All these materials I’m adding really play well with the space-age architecture of the 1960’s and should hit a young, hip & sophisticated buyer perfectly.

I love this style house, American culture was obsessed with space travel in the 1960’s and it showed through in a lot of house and furniture design. Some of the interior fixtures like the Sputnik Light I’m considering look like something out of George Jetson’s house. My big change to the facade is the tongue and groove Cedar siding that I’m strategically placing in the center, the stained Cedar warms up the stark white modern stucco and sterile aluminum windows and garage door, while still following the horizontal planes of the original architecture.

I’m going frosted glass on the front door with a little more matching wood on the frame to tie it in. The house numbers and front porch lights will also be brushed aluminum to add a nice finishing modern touch.

I did a walk through video also to show the scope of work. Evidently we’ve started to develop a little bit of a following here in San Diego for our home remodeling, 2 interested parties have already emerged and showed interest in buying this home when its completed. As we get in the home stretch anyone is welcome to come see it before it hits the market. Demo started today on the garage floor and driveway, stay tuned and follow along as we get into some Mid-Century Modern fun for 2012. Happy New Year and We Buy Houses also! Call for a cash Offer (619) 438-0234.

New Mid-Century Modern Project

New Mid-Century Modern Project

by | Dec 17, 2011 | House Design

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we go again with another San Diego house flip, I picked up this killer house right in our neighborhood of Bay Park this week. It’s a 1962 4 bedroom, 2 bath 1650 s.f. with attached 2 car garage. It’s literally less than a mile from my house and untouched nor updated, the architecture is perfect for a Mid-Century Modern renovation.

M.C.M. is becoming very popular and you don’t see many people doing them, so its going to be fun as well breaking out from our normal material choices and trying a whole new look for this project. The house is in a great area and on a culdesac, the only negative is that there is a huge private school & play ground right over the rear fence. I’m just going to have to find that buyer who works all day and loves the house so much they look past it.

Some of the ideas I have so far are all new aluminum windows and rear sliders from Milgard, they actually look real modern and I’ll use a mix of casement and awning windows where egress permits. Kinda funny, this will be the first time I actually put aluminum windows in, and don’t take them out. The front door will be frosted glass and the main facade feature will be an Amarr aluminum commercial style garage door with frosted glass panels as well.

Both bathrooms will get fully gutted and have floating vanities. In the all new kitchen I’ll be opening the wall with a peninsula between the living room, for a long bar top and the new sink and dishwasher location.  That back wall where the sink is now, will be a clean wall of sleek euro style cabinets with a gas range in the middle and stainless vent hood, with no visible microwave.

I’m seeing the frosted glass backslash looking killer here as well, as much as I dislike glass accent tile. Besides opening the wall up between the kitchen and living room and taking off a few interior doors, there’s not really any big floor plan changes as I want to also stay in period and these gems have wide open spaces and great flow anyway. I’m thinking an under mount sink, possibly something other than granite for the counters, and bamboo floors throughout the whole house with no carpet.

I’ll probably keep the walls white inside and do another dark warm color on the beams, really similar to how it currently looks. Outside I’m thinking of sophisticated shades of gray with a light body color. I’m doing all of this on a pretty tight budget so I cant get too crazy. The kitchen will be flipped from my usual style, with warm wood cabinets and light counter tops.

The architecture of mid-century modern is marked by discipline. The house has such killer style, I’ll play off the original architectural theme of continuous planes of materials and keep everything clean and minimalist. The wide open spaces, big overhangs, exposed beams and tongue and groove ceilings are really going to look neat once its got all new cosmetics. The driveway and garage floor have severe cracks from the nearby Pepper tree so I’ll have to cut it down and re-pour the entire garage floor and part of the driveway and it’s also time for a new roof as well.

Call us if you want to sell your San Diego house. Escrow closes before New Years so stay tuned for some fun Mid-Century Modern fun!

Painted Lady Sold Full Price $499K

Painted Lady Sold Full Price $499K

by | Dec 7, 2011 | Painted Lady

It’s days like these that I’m especially grateful for actually getting paid to do something I love. The Painted Lady closed escrow today, for full price at $499,000 to a really nice VA buyer. Some people shy away from VA offers, but this is my second deal sold to a VA buyer and we don’t mind at all accommodating buyers whom have served our great country. This buyer actually found the home from my Craigslist ad and after then searching online he stumbles across Jim’s online coverage and my renovation blog,  seeing the great lengths we went to in order to bring the grand old lady back to life. I received a really nice email from his agent stating that the buyer was even more excited about the home after seeing 10 YouTube videos of the whole renovation process and was now a big fan of ours, its great how just plain old doing things right and sharing stuff on our blog pays off.

There was a back-up buyer in place who had initially offered $460k for the house without agent representation. They then returned after finding an agent and wrote up $479k, which after paying the 2.5% would have really only been a 4k stronger offer. The new agent proceeded to tell me that an appraisal wouldn’t use Golden Hill or South Park comps. That weekend JtR launched it in MLS, did his killer web blast and we held the open house, by Monday the next week we had it under contract in just 4 days official market time. The first buyer came back and was willing to pay $499k with no realtor, after seeing that they lost the deal and then waited anxiously in back up position. At this point we’re wondering what happened to the mystery agent who said it wouldn’t appraise. I’ve made a new friend with this other buyer who now wants first dibs on our next project or possibly my remodeling services if they find something that needs a redo. It’s funny how buyers want something even more if they cant have it and its interesting to see how such emotions play into these deals. Thanks to Jim Klinge & the whole team at Klinge Realty and Nancy and Gloria at Fidelity Title for all the professional help. That’s all for now, Merry Christmas to everyone and please let me know if you see any deals that I might like! New project coming soon: )

Inspections and Appraisals

Inspections and Appraisals

by | Dec 2, 2011 | Uncategorized

Happy Holidays to everyone! It has been nice to take a break and spend time with my family and new addition for the holidays.  We are out there turning over stones and looking at tons of new fixer upper houses to buy in San Diego, thanks to everyone who is also sending me leads. We Buy Houses in San Diego so if you know of a house please contact me.  The Painted Lady sale is closing next week after easily passing the physical inspection and VA appraisal. We even have a back-up buyer in place who is devastated she didn’t get the home.

The home inspection was pretty interesting to say the least, we sometimes miss something but generally have had no problems with our homes passing after all the work that we do.  This inspector however took a different approach and basically made some stuff up to fill his report. The big front picture windows we had custom made are of course tempered glass for safety, the inspection report I saw however said they were not. Tempered glass has a little logo in the corner, easy to see. For some reason this inspectors eyes weren’t focusing that day I guess. Foundations on old houses are another item that inspectors just feel they need to address for some reason, even if they are fine. The inspector wrote in his report that the house was not anchored to the foundation. Really?? What are all those J bolts through the bottom plate in plain view and the UFP plates along one side? I can see how some inspectors might not want to do the army crawl and check the entire perimeter under a house that sits low to the ground but there’s enough room under our house to have a party, believe me I spent all summer under there! Also the guy calls out the plumbing for being old cast iron which we removed and replaced with ABS. Probably the funniest thing I read in his report was that a light didn’t work in my hallway. I say to myself, OK a bulb must have burned out but surprisingly enough I get there and see that the dimmer switch on the 3-way wasn’t even on! If you are going to say something is wrong on a report wouldn’t you take a really good look first? When you get an inspection report that has obvious errors it’s best to just address them and provide your buyer with something in writing that shows where you feel their inspector was wrong. In our case my buyer was happy I showed him where probably 5-6 points were clearly invalid on the report.

Remember, 3rd party home inspectors are not City inspectors nor general contractors, and most of the time have minimal building knowledge. A home inspector credential can be obtained with 60 hours of online courses. Getting a bad inspection report is pretty common and sometimes is enough to spook a buyer and cancel a sale. It’s emotional enough buying a home, especially for a first time buyer. One home inspector in San Antonio named Matthew Gessner from Amerispec was famous with all the local real estate agents for blowing deals, its a wonder anyone uses him. A bad home inspection report sticks with the property, right or wrong, and has to be disclosed to future buyers if your transaction falls apart.

As I mentioned The Painted Lady had no problem appraising for the sales price. Home appraisers like to compare apples to apples but in our case Grant Hill doesn’t have any other sales comps for turn-of-the-century Victorian Houses, however within the 1 mile and 1 year guideline, the average price for a home like ours is around $600,000 although its best to use comps within the last 6 months and a half mile if you are an investor.  If you are doing a big spec project like ours I would take a look at whats comparable within the year and a 1 mile radius, if you cant justify your sales price with what you find, there is a good chance that an appraiser wont be able to either. I’ve known several real estate investors here in San Diego that after rehabbing houses and getting into escrow, they had to settle for a lower sales price after a low appraisal came in so be careful with determining your ARV.