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Monthly Archives: July 2018

Is It “Worth” a Million Dollars?

Other hot news of the day is that we are under a cloud of African dust, which makes for interesting sunrises.

I heard a feature on the radio this morning that mentioned that Austin had the highest percentage of million-dollar homes in Texas. It could be worse (or better), of course. San Jose, CA has a median home price of over a million. This may explain how I know people who have lived in the same apartment there for 25 years. The article was about the whole US, and according to research by LendingTree, the most cities with a high percentage of homes over a million dollars are in states along the coasts. Denver and Phoenix are exceptions.

I got a chuckle out of the article in some ways. It was sort of like a “don’t move here if you want affordable housing” list. It was also a “Sue Ann will avoid these crowded cities” list, but that’s just me. Basically, in much of the US, a house doesn’t have to be a mansion to be “worth” a million dollars anymore. Wow.

Implications?

One way this applies to us is that it’s another sign that prices are going up, up, up and will have to eventually go down, especially around here. Right after this feature on the radio, by the way, as a report that consumer spending has increased by some hopeful percent in the past month, even though incomes have not risen to match the spending. More consumer debt sounds like a recipe for more people having poor credit ratings and having trouble buying a starter home (I’m not really worried about those million-dollar people).

For people who are in the redevelopment business there are a few more implications I can think of:

  • There’s someone out there who will buy your high-end renovation, if that’s your thing.
  • There’s also a huge under-served population of people looking for affordable housing that’s not scary and dangerous.
  • All those people with poor credit may mean opportunities to renovate then owner finance, for passive income, if that’s in your business model.
  • People will also continue to look for houses to rent.

Opportunities are always out there. Do you have any other thoughts on this proliferation of high-end housing in this area or where you live? We’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m hoping Lee will have some thoughts and write up another blog post.

PS: 512-80708777

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Mattresses and Mushrooms

There’s a good chance we won’t be using this “free” sink. On the other hand, it’s in good shape…

Hello again! I just thought I’d write a quick note to update you on the Mattress 8 house. We got the bid in from our contractor, Richard Nagle, and Lee really liked it a lot (in other words, it was lower than we had feared it would be). So, we accepted the bid and will get started when he has time on his schedule.

One reason the cost for this renovation will be low is that we aren’t fixing the house up to be a showpiece; we are fixing it up to be a livable rental property For example, we are repairing the roof, not replacing it, we’re not tearing down walls, and we are going to use as much as the “free” material we found in the house.

Mushrooms

Here in Texas, we’ve had a lot of mushrooms popping (dare I say, mushrooming?) up in the past few weeks. It’s rained a lot, and we’ve had a lot of thunderstorms, which I’ve read may encourage them to fruit.

Pretty little parasols.

At our ranch house, the most common one in the fields is this one, the green-spored parasol mushroom. It’s a big one, and very pretty. Too bad it will make you (or your dog) really sick. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out this post over on my nature blog. You can keep browsing and learn a ton about dog coat genetics, too. Spoiler: another name for this mushroom is the “vomiter.”

So, if these are cropping up in a house you have on the market, you might want to discreetly remove them, so avoid tempting any little kids.

Need us? Give us a call at 512-807-8777. Carol will answer or cal you back if she’s still enjoying her short vacation (after all, they have to have that house READY to show in only 5 days after moving in!)

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Rattlesnakes and Migraines (no relation)

This is FLOOR TILE! We also have vinyl planks for the rest of the house. Could that mean we get floors soon?

Hey, Mandi, How Are You?

Quick update for those following the saga of my migraines. I got some new medications; one is preventative and one is a rescue medication for the breakthrough migraines. The rescue med was tried Monday July 9th, and went into the “Do Not Use EVER AGAIN!” pile on Wednesday (July 11th) morning. It knocked me out through Tuesday.

Lee came to check on me because no one had heard from me. Imagine my surprise when he said, “It’s Tuesday.” and I said, “What? It’s not Monday?” I think it worked as far as knocking out the migraine, but it knocked my conscious mind out for two days too. Had some interesting dreams. One highlight was trying to fix a door at the ranch with Sue Ann. Harvey and Brody (dogs, not her kids) chewed up a heavy metal door (Yeah, I don’t think they really could, but in dreams, anything goes) and Sue Ann and I were trying to fix it with wood putty before Lee got back from vacation. Why he went without Sue Ann, I don’t know, but that was the situation. Anyway, I am just tired this week, but doing pretty well. I just wish I knew if we managed to repair that door in time.

Now everything in the house is WHITE. Even the floor is primed.

What about the House?

While I was knocked out, Chris and Garry (we have been misspelling his name all this time. I’m so sorry!) were hard at work on the Rattlesnake House. It has been textured and primed! She looks like a real house again, doesn’t she?! We are still very happy with the progress.

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The Wandering Mangums

Here’s the house we are moving out of. We’ll miss this pool!

Sue Ann has mentioned a couple of times that my husband, Russell, and I have been moving frequently since we moved out of the main Villa Park house. I hear some of you are curious as to what exactly we’re doing with our vagabond ways, so I’m here to fill you in!

When Sierra moved off to college, we decided to downsize. We had just finished a “homestead flip,” where we bought a house, fixed it up, and sold it for a good profit. The next house we found didn’t work out (Kerrville Folkways), and we were looking to try something new and fun and to learn more about the greater Austin, Texas area.

We ended up signing with an innovative company called Showcase Properties of Austin (also known as Dream Home Manager), which specializes in helping sell high-end properties in this area for clients who are having trouble selling them because no one is currently living there.  According to them:

“It is a fact that vacant listings look & show better when they are staged and at Showcase Properties, we are passionate about assisting you in doing just that with our no cost solution. Statistics show that a finely staged and manicured home sells 70-80% faster and for 13% more money than an equivalent vacant home.”

That’s where we come in! The company finds qualified people (they call them Home Managers) who will rent the homes at a substantial discount, stage them with their own furnishings, and keep the house ready to show at an hour’s notice. With my background in home decorating and real estate, I was confident we had the ideal kind of furnishings to help sell a house, so I knew we were the perfect candidates for this job! And since Russell and I have spent our married lives moving around for the military and his work, we are comfortable pulling up stakes and starting again. Russ says he likes it because, “It makes you weed out your crap!” We’ve become very good at not holding onto stuff.

You can see how this works out well for home sellers, too. The property is rented and someone else helps with the utilities, plus you don’t have to keep checking to keep the house show-ready.

When a house sells, we get 30 days’ notice, look through the available Showcase Properties homes, and find a new place to live! After the initial move-in when we we started out, they pay for movers to switch houses.

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Rattlesnake Clean and Ready to Prime

This is the stairway window. It’s got texture on it, but that is okay. It’s a goner.

While we were out of commission for a week, things did progress on our projects, and we did evaluate a lot of houses. We even have some exciting prospects!

At the Rattlesnake property, work moved forward, even with the Independence Day holiday coming smack in the middle of the work week. At least it’s not on Wednesday too often!

Inside Closely Resembles a House

Inside the house, Chris and Gary have all the texturing of the walls finished. All the “good” windows were taped off carefully, but the ones that are still going to be replaced now look quite freckled and festive. That tells you one more thing that has to happen before flooring: the rest of the windows. But first, they will prime the walls. It’s getting real.

Look at all that wood. The stairs are done.

Another step forward is that the guys finished out the stairs. There are now nice pieces of wood on the risers, and they very neatly finished off the end of the stairs that extends past the kitchen wall. Those stairs are such a major improvement over the old, scary ones.

Outside Amazement

Outside the house, Gary did a wonderful job cleaning up the considerable amount of debris that had been building up outside the house. There was old insulation, a lot of glass from old windows, boxes from drywall supplies, and oh so much more. It was beginning to look like some sort of hoarder residence or something, and we certainly didn’t want Joe the Cat living in such surroundings (ha ha).

It’s still not perfect, but what you do NOT see is an empty refrigerator and many bags of insulation. Hooray!

It all got hauled off, which means the grass (I had originally said “lawn,” but who am I kidding?) lawn will be mowable around the house again soon (our ranch helper, Tyler, mowed the rest of the property, so it looks like people live there now).

And speaking of hauling things off, the empty refrigerator that had been gracing the back yard was donated to a charity, so it’s gone, too. A nicer yard PLUS a good deed. Much of the excess furniture and stuff that’s in the garage and storeroom will be taken away by their owner at some point this week, too (rain delays occurred this weekend). That will  make us all breate a little easier.

This view never gets old. And where that small pile of glass is, there was once a big pile of glass and debris. Good work, Gary!

Other Notes

We still haven’t gotten that bid on the Mattress 8 house. Lee is prodding. Carol and Mandi are both finding us good leads, and that makes us happy.

Russell continues to do MLS Monday each week, while Sierra (who we will introduce you to more soon) is in charge of looking up the comparables for them. Lee then reviews them and lets us know which ones we should jump on, if any. We have systems!

And, wish Carol and Russell good luck, as they are moving again this week. We hope to have a blog post on why that keeps happening, soon. It’s pretty interesting!

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