Well, it’s a bit of a strain, actually. But like Lee has been saying, you need a plan to get through the rough times, so you can enjoy the good ones. We have positive movementum, though, and there’s actually lots of GOOD stuff in here. It’s time for the weekly update.

Oakridge

As Russell said, “lots of good progress” on this one.  We have a plan for the remodeling of the kitchen, and lots of pictures to share, which you can look forward to tomorrow! This one’s moving right along. It certainly has a lot less mess in it, and we are even on the second dumpster of junk. There was a barbecue pit inside a room. That’s not legal. The plan is to get rid of the walls and make it a nice open patio.

Saint John

This one has the most news. First, Carol has made a new virtual tour for the house. It’s really pretty, and we think we will be able to use it to market it on the MLS and not just on the ListingSpark tool we’d been using.

Second, we had to remove our Facebook ad, even though it was doing incredibly well, because we began to get so many comments about us being evil people gentrifying the neighborhood. Rather than explaining that we actually weren’t the folks who did the original renovation, nor that we didn’t take some poor person’s house away (we saved a woman from being locked in her house by her grandchildren with drug issues), we just took the ad down.

Gentrification IS a real issue, and I think it’s something all of us need to ponder seriously. Every city needs affordable housing, and when you fix up a whole neighborhood and sell the houses for double the original price, there are indeed folks who need to find new housing. Each of us needs to decide for ourselves how we want to live with that. In our own renovations, we have fixed up houses to where they are safe and clean, but not to where they price out current residents (for example, the house in Round Rock that Lee and I did before we formed this company, which is still a house for working-class people, but no longer is falling apart).

Taylor Homestead

Finally, we have some good news. We have been negotiating with a buyer. We were already not pleased that the new price on the house wasn’t on the material they saw, so we accepted a lower bid. Then, their inspector declared the house needed $14K of leveling. Like, an entire new pier and beam system. He said car jacks were holding the house up (nope, that’s a leveling jack that the previous leveler left; he’s coming to get it). We explained that the house was marketed as a fixer upper, and would not be free of issues. Otherwise, we’d ask more money. We also showed that we had the house leveled a few months ago. The house is in Taylor. The ground moves there. If you have a house in Taylor, it will need some tweaking fairly often. But, the buyers still wanted us to lower the price to where we’d lose money on it.

Anyway, after we rejected the offer, they came up enough that we will make money, at least some money, on it. So, we accepted that offer and will close on January 10.

Meadow Arbor 2

This one is just fine and moving right along. The house is getting a new roof from our insurance, and it should close on the 29th, once they have all our documents and everything. HOORAY. Money for future projects!

Blue Ridge

Remember that one? That was the first house we did as a company, which we accepted three offers, but appraisals messed up the sales. And the one where the previously great contractor had so many problems that he ended up secretly living in the house and delaying finishing.

Anyway, more good news! We got a very reasonable offer of $225K for it! The current renters love it (and what’s not to love; the house is in a really cool neighborhood in a great location. We just have to negotiate a few things. We said we’d replace the flooring.

Chaparral

We just got a bid to get the trim repainted that we can actually afford to pay before any of these other properties close. Whew.  We have learned a lot of lessons here. Maybe we will be able to finish up on some of the other unfinished parts of the rehab.

 

Other Stuff

We have a couple of interesting leads we are working on. Very interesting ones. Look forward to more!

 

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