Seattle Real Estate, Fixer, Real Estate Seattle

We are in an odd time for the general, and remodeling contracting business. Large projects are getting to be fewer all the time, even in the upper end homes. There are more maintaining the home projects going on. Some of the big time contractors are taking on smaller projects while they reorganize. What that means is that most contractors are keeping fewer employees on the payroll.

This leaves a grey are of who has a contracting license, to go along with the ability to do the work. Being a contractor means you need to be licensed, bonded, and insured with a registration in the State where the offices are.

When you drive by a Home Depot you see people standing around looking for a day of labor. You pay these people in cash, and it’s generally assumed these people are in the United States illegally. Lately there are some people who are looking to pay some bills standing around also looking for a days worth of cash.

As a home owner you can ”employ” a person on a casual labor basis to work on your home. They are there to assist you in doing projects. These laws have always been on the books because you do have the right to work on your own property. You are allowed to have help.

I’m just thinking out loud here for right now, but I do think there will be a growing trend of casual labor. For the price you would normally pay a contractor you could hire a person, or two, to work in your home, and maybe get the same results by personally supervising the work. It would depend on the people, but I have seen, and talked with, some very skilled labor who need work.

FixerFixer.com is more about repairing property than buying, or selling. We have fulfilled many needs in the Real Estate industry over these past forty years. One of the biggest needs in the near future will be to maintain property. If you are holding onto a property hoping the market will change, or you are planning on living in the same house for years to come, there are things you need to consider.

The first thing we would suggest is a whole house inspection. You had it done when you bought the property, and you should do it again to come up with a check list of repairs. The inspection may fit into some plans you have for future projects. It’s a lot cheaper than hiring an architect, and some home inspectors have great working knowledge about property.

The next thing we always suggest is do the things that make sense. Keep cleaning, keep up the yard, paint, chaulk, replace, as you go along. Make a budget for the things you need to have done, or the things you can do yourself. You can get to a wish list later.

Next you should know what makes sense to do and what should wait. You should have an over all plan. We like to work from the top to the bottom, but with the amount of water we had here in Seattle this year the basement may be a priority. Along those lines you should be very careful about the “expert” help you get. Many companies are hurting for business which works two ways. You can get cheaper bids, but some companies are trying to “milk” simple jobs. A lot of projects that are very quick and easy are getting complicated by contractors stretching to job out. Actually I’m going to write more about that in a few more posts.

Long story short, you should have a list that has priority projects. We will help where we can, and as always if you have questions you can e-mail, or call.

This is the thrid installment of videos showing my Real Estate office as a way to introduce our services:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk30eqBtuAE

This is another video showing my office and me talking about the internet. The third one will be uploaded this week end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LejB7bKy9sg

This is another attempt at video blogging. There was a seminar I attended that showed this to be an effective way to share information. We want to do some live demonstration in the field, so this is a warm up with more to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwV_ZWpku-M

My first house was referred to as the chicken coop by the people in my office. It sat on a good sized lot with two structures. The location was absolutely great, close in, and dead ended into a park. The structures had sat vacant, unfinished since 1958. The original pink plumbing fixtures were still in crates in the living room.

It was cheap, and bought on a contract. It was paid off long before the balloon payment date. The work was paid for in cash. After about six months it was livable. The electrical was the only thing that need permits, everything else was already in place.

The story is long, but the results were a finished product owned free, and clear within seven years.

Real Estate is a hard work business with substantial economic rewards. If you keep in mind that building an estate is a long term project, rather than a get rich quick scheme, it can open a lot of doors for you.

Remember to have a plan, and follow the plan. Of course you need to be flexible, you need to watch for options. Keep you goal in mind to work toward. You goal should be financial security so you have an estate to leave your children.

This is the purpose of this site; to show you that yes, you can do something, anything, with a property.

This is a couple who boughht a house, a major fixer from what I understand, and are going to rebuild it. They have done one project in Hoquim Washington, and are on to this one. They have stated they intend to put $200K into the rebuilding.

I’m going to put the link tho their blog site here, and on the blog roll: http://stevianhouse.blogspot.com/

There is an article a little further down on this blog about foreclosures. You can read it if you like, but it is now irrelevant. This years selling season has already been over shadowed by shadow inventory. Short sales, and properties flipped from auction purchases have already lowered the price point of property.

The bigger issue is the number, vast number, of properties that are still waiting to be sold as Bank Owned, or auctioned. Bank Owned properties are still selling for, what I think are premium prices. As time goes on the buyer pool will shrink, and when we get into July banks will want out, all the illusions will be gone.

The complaint right now is the lack of inventory. Most sellers are holding back hoping for a miracle. In a future post I might discuss core value of residential Real Estate, coupled with the declining price of rents. For right now we are still in a holding pattern with both buyers, and sellers wanting to see who blinks first.

The fact is Residential Real Estate is grossly over built. You can do any simple math calculation, but the myth of our land restricted building area is completely out the window. The Growth Management Act should have been a major indication that we can now maximize in city building. With the end of the CAP Initiative all down town development is once again unhindered. We should see another ten years of grand development that will suppress current pricing.

There are excellent properties for sale. My feeling is that you may want something that needs work, but then again, I would say that, because that is the purpose of this site.

There are two types of debt working against us, both household, and government. Over all debt is robbing future economy. Government debt is a concern for all of us.

The great equalizer of debt is inflation. Paying today’s debt with future dollars make the debt seem smaller. That’s what has made Real Estate a great investment tool. You lock in a price today, and pay for that debt in fifteen, or thirty years with inflated dollars.

This recession has two things that are going to make a recovery difficult. Number one is that people are augmenting a lower income with consumer credit spending. Second, and more importantly is that inflation is very low. As much money as the government pumps into the economy you would think we would have hyper inflation.

The term that was uttered before the end of last year was deflation. I had to look it up. That’s when the price of assets goes down. We saw some of that, but not much. The Fed dumped in money to make things more expensive and now in the process has driven up the price of commodities, a topic for another time.

What that means is that the same as the government took future home buyers and gave them a reason to buy sooner, with the home buyer tax credit, the government is now helping to rob our future economy. Being unable to kick start inflation to help soften the blow of paying down debt more people will have to pay debt with real dollars. The value of the dollar is still a topic for another time.

My point is that with the economy stalled this is a time to invest on growth. Real Estate is a hedge against inflation. We buy these assets with the idea we can pay down that debt with future dollars. If the value of the dollar remains the same then the price we pay needs to be a lot less.

Over on my cleaning sites at www.aspringcleaning.com and the others we have been talking about cleaning mildew, outside. It’s amazing that I don’t have more information about that here.

I use a solution of bleach, a little detergent, and water to saturate areas of mildew. About 30% bleach to water, a table spoon of detergent mixed in a watering can, and sprinkled on decks, walk ways, siding, fences, and let sit for 30 minutes.

OK, you do that a few times, broom, or sweep a few times in the winter, and you get headed in the right direction. What the experts will tell you is that you need a stronger solution to really kill the mildew. We’ve talked about a lot of stuff over the years, but no one has said that the bleach solution, or cleaning in general is a bad thing for your property.

As a matter of fact, as I said in the last article cleaning is the most cost effective thing you can do. Giving your house a bleach bath, or two in winter doesn’t have a lot that can be hurt.