Real Estate Snippets

All Price Ranges Can Be Distressed

The public is incredulous when informed that distressed houses come in all price ranges . . . Let me repeat, ALL price ranges.  Sometimes the house has grown old with its owners and the owners do not have the physical means (either financial or physically) to make repairs.  Over time, this kind of home accumulates a lot of deferred maintenance and a need for cosmetic upgrades.

Sometimes the house started out as a second home and just didn't grow up over time to become a primary residence.  Second homes may be cabins first with limited time spent by their owners on maintenance because the purpose of the second homes are fun!  Over time, this kind of home accumulates a lot of deferred maintenance and a need for cosmetic upgrades.  (Hmmm.  I seem to be repeating myself!)

Sometimes, the house started out as the cute little farmstead on an acreage.  The acres were developed and bigger homes built around it.  The value of the little house diminished as the land value increased.  These "little" homes don't always have deferred maintenance but because they are older and smaller than their neighbors, the structure itself has lost value making it worth the effort to tear it down and build a McMansion (a big house replacing a little one).

The story behind the house I showed today is unknown to me.  It was billed as a rehab.  I rejected it as a rehab.  There is so much deferred maintenance that it would be a complete tear out job.  The good news is the lot has appreciated dramatically in value.  Check out the tour and tell me if you would consider this house to be worth rehabbing or should it become the site of a future McMansion!

A Reject

For those of you who follow my blog regularly, you know I'm a "rehabber", a person who buys distressed St. Paul houses and fixes them up for resale.  Rehabbers are different from those who restore.  Someone who restores shops around until they find authentic replicas or replacements for what's missing in the house.  A restorer would never replace an old window.  They would fix the old window so that it functioned correctly, carefully stripping away the old paint down to the old wood, retying rope to the window weights, reglazing the outside of the glass panes to look like the original.  Rehabbers fix for profit.  Restorers fix for love.  I mix both in my own house.

A prominent character flaw of rehabbers is their eternal optimism.  They see potential in every home.  They see how an irregular floor plan can be fixed to "make it work".  Even condemned houses are not beyond a rehabber's optimism.  Throw some money at a condemned house and it can become a true gem.

Today, however, was an unusual day for the rehabber in me.  Seldom do I tour a house that I feel is beyond repair, but I found one today.  As I approached the side door with my keypad in hand, my nose started protesting.  "Yuck," says the nose.  "What's that musty smell?  Yuck!  That surely isn't mold and filth in this price range!"  The house was modestly (?) priced at a half million dollars.  Now I don't know about you, but a half million dollars is significant in my book.  I don't expect to smell offensive smells in that price range.

The door opened a time warp.  The familiar acrid smell of a leaking oil tank slammed into my face.  Surely not in this price range?!  The warp continued.  The kitchen did not have one clean surface, not one.  The old cabinets had obviously not been cleaned in about 80 years. Some doors hung by one hinge.  Drawers were worn from use.  There wasn't a wall in the house that was plaster or sheetrock.  It was all paneling and all the ceilings were yellowed tiles.  The floors were raw plywood worn smooth from years of being uncovered.  No switch plate covers; not one good window; raw 2 x 4's around the basement stair; a trap door stair opening.  It felt like an old farmhouse from the '20's complete with the barnyard smell and the grit under foot. 

It was eerie to be walking around alone in this house at dusk.  The creeps were crawling up my neck and into my hair but I forced myself to descend the open stairs to the basement.  It was the only clean part of the house.  To complete the time warp, however, there was an ancient half bath with the seat-less toilet and a wall hung sink.  Neither appeared to be salvageable.  Oh, and not to be forgotten . . . the big green oil tank as my nose suspected was in one corner with its dark smear of leaking oil beneath it.  The smell was overwhelming and the creeps in my hair won out.  I exited pronto.

Nope, this house had no hope.  It was not capable of being fixed.  It needed to be blown up and started over.  At half a million dollars and taxes of $4800 a year after the homestead credit, I was appalled.  Surely the city had not seen this house.  The lot was great, but it costs a lot to remove the house and start over.  Even a lake lot wouldn't be worth this price and with this house . . . ?  I cringed again as I drove away.

Bathtubs

We've come a long way in perfecting the old washtub in the last couple hundred years.  As a child, I can remember Grandma putting the big metal tub on the gas burner stove in the basement in preparation for washing.  It was the same tub my mom had bathed in as a child, I'm sure. 

A former client showed me his prize antique find:  a bathtub which looked very much like an old horse trough from Western movies.  The ends were wood cut in a half circle with tin attached to the round side to form the tub.  It didn't look like anything I'd like to bath in now, but it was perfect for the old farmhouse he was restoring.

Old clawfoots have been purchased and reglazed for Victorian restorations.  Manufacturers saw the demand and now produce new clawfoots from fiberglass with ticket prices started around $1,000. 

There is any shape and any size tub available today if you're willing to pay the price.  Even walk-in tubs can be purchased for home installation making it much more comfortable for those who can't lift themselves out of a standard tub or who are fearful of falling.

If you're doing a remodel and have a unique space for your tub, check out your options on-line or consult with a professional bath designer for creative solutions for your space.

I Wanna Be a Rehabber

So you've watched the infomercials at night and want to be a "rehabber" when you grow up?  (Rehabber:  person who buys homes in disrepair and fixes them up for resale.)  Click on these pictures of a St. Paul home to enlarge them and see if you've really got the stomach for it!  My estimate is we'll need 2 forty yard roll off boxes just to empty the personal possessions and then we'll still have to remove all the carpet.  Not a task for the faint hearted!  The novice wonders how one can tell if the house is in good enough shape to buy it when one can't see beyond the debris!

Paint Promotion

Fall in Minnesota is the time for finishing yard work, planting tulips, enjoying the beautiful leaf colors, and generally preparing for our winter cocooning.  Our next season will prepare us for the holidays and family gatherings.  Often handymen bemoan the fact that customers want their projects completed before Christmas and then January and February drag on in dreariness.  For those who plan ahead, Benjamin Moore is having a promotion that offers a $25 gift certificate to Pottery Barn if you purchase at least 4 gallons of Benjamin Moore Regal paint.  If this is your kind of promotion, check it out today!

Rehab Rules Broken

Rules are often broken, even the rules for making money.  Every so often it's important to take a little more risk than normal.  At least that's what I'm telling myself today.  The partnership which I am a member of has purchased a cute little house.  When I say little, I mean 532 square feet of little.  Normally, as a rehabber I would not have even considered this house, but there were several things that drew me to it.

• The floor plan makes sense.  The front door enters the living room which is open to the kitchen.  Half walls currently chop the space somewhat, but they will be removed.  The feeling is bigger than it actually is. Behind the kitchen is a side hallway with a bath entrance and behind that is the bedroom.  The back entrance is on the side of the kitchen by the hallway.
• All the windows are new, siding is new, roof is new Timberline shingles, and the long cement driveway is new.
• The wall board and plaster inside have all been removed down to the bare studs.  All that's required for finishing is new insulation, vapor barrier and sheetrock.
• The kitchen is small but very functional.
• The furnace and electrical are upgraded.
• It has a full basement which can be finished for additional living space.
• The neighborhood is middle class and working class mixture.
• The purchase price was right.
• Resale can be kept at $100,000.
• It has a one car garage.

Normally, I would never choose a one bedroom house to rehab, but something about this one caught my eye.  The plan is to finish the project and hold the property for a couple years until the market settles down again.  My hope is a nice single person or couple will like this little gem as much as I do.  We're willing to do a contract for deed, so spread the word to family and friends.

Snakes

I don't know about the rest of the world, but my tolerance for distressed properties is very high.  Missing plumbing, filth, garbage houses, rodent infestation, roach infestation, most any gruesome thing you can imagine would be a house I would consider for fixing and placing back on the market.  The line stops with snakes.  Nope, if the house is full of snakes and they don't look like they're moving out, I'm outta there!

Since reptiles are a protected species, one cannot just fumigate them and sweep them up like you can roaches.  Rodents?  Call Ron's Rodent Rooter or Scurry Away and for a minimal fee they're gone.  But snakes are protected.  If they've chosen your house as their abode, you either relocate them, which isn't particularly easy because too far away puts them in the wrong habitat where they'll die and too close will encourage them to come back; or you move out!  Well, I suppose one could co-habitate as well.  Crocodile Dundee I am not.  Nope, I'm not sharing my body heat with any snakes.

This is one owner's plan for dealing with a snake house: "They sent a videotape of the house, their children and, of course, the snakes to the producers of "Extreme Home Makeover," in hopes the television show would send its decorators in for a filmed renovation."  Read the entire story here.

My plan would be: next!

Thanks to Steven Hong, a ReMax agent here in Minneapolis, Minnesota for finding this article on snakes. 

Paint Again?

One last little bit of info about paint.  Did you know that light colors of paint actually are more opaque than dark colors?  On one of my trips to the local Sherwin Williams store, I was whining about having to paint two coats of the cranberry wine color I had chosen.  The helpful clerk smiled that knowing smile and explained why dark colors have to be two coated to cover well.  Light colored paints have a more opaque base as they do not require a lot of added pigment to create the chosen color.  When one chooses a dark color like chocolate or cranberry wine, the base that the pigments are added to is almost translucent.  A great amount of the "color" that goes on the walls comes from those "little dab 'il do ya" pigment adding machines!  As a result the dark colors need two coats.  When you think about it, it makes sense.

(c) Bonnie Erickson 2006

Paint

Paint .  .  .   probably the least expensive and easiest thing to change in a house and gives the most "wow" for the time invested.  I love to paint.  It's like cleaning something that's very dirty . . . you can see the results of all the time and effort you put into the task.

Painting is not for everyone, however.  There are big "no-no's" associated with the task that are in my list of "things I hate that painters do". 

• Removing the switch plate and outlet covers but rolling over the switches and outlets with the paint.  How hard is it to roll around a hole in the wall?
• Painters who use masking tape to protect the woodwork and don't see the sneaky trails of paint behind the tape when they remove it.
• Thinking one can paint around the trim without masking tape and doing a shoddy job.  I'm a perfectionist and LOVE to paint around the trim (called "cutting in") without masking it, but most people can't do this.
• Rolling the paint to the top of the wall and hitting the ceiling with the roller.  This is really gross when it's a similar color to the ceiling and it looks like there was a water leak.  At least when there's a bright red strip around the edge of the ceiling that matches the walls, you know the painter was a schlepper.
• Forgetting to drop cloth the floors and dropping big globs of paint all over.
• Painting the metal rim on the ceiling light instead of loosening the light fixture so you can paint under the metal.
• Not using a wiping rag for when the paint drips on the closet doors.
• Painting doors, windows, and any movable surface shut.  Time after time I have required painters to come back and open windows that were painted shut.
• Painting the outside of the house but not the window pockets (the area between the inner window and the storm) or painting half of the window pockets so two colors show because they didn't want to take out the storms!
• Thinking that scraping paint on the outside of a house does not require a drop cloth.  Sometimes that paint is lead based and needs to be kept out of the soil.
• Slopping paint on the front steps of the house which are cement because it's outside and doesn't require a drop cloth.

Many of the things on this list I learned by making the mistake myself.  You only spill the paint can on the front porch once without learning to use a drop cloth thereafter!  It was a bear to wash off and never did totally recover!  The steps looked like they had been whitewashed by the time I was through!  Other items on the list have been added because of housing inspections.  They were things I hadn't thought of (Hmmmm.  There's lead in that there paint chip!) until some "friendly" inspector informed me of the error of my ways!

(c) Bonnie Erickson 2006