Monday, January 27, 2014

Featured Home 4th week of January, 2014 - McDonough, GA Home listed at $1.695 Million.

Wow, I guess in my next life, I can buy this house.



This $1.695 Million home is situated in Henry County's premier Golf Community, Eagles Landing.  The pictures are to die for.  The seller is represented by Atlanta Fine Homes, Sotheby.

As of this writing, it is the most expensive home in Henry County.  If you are interested in seeing this home or others, don't hesitate to contact me to schedule your private showing.

Choose the #1 company in Georgia to represent you when you are ready to buy or sell your Luxury Home. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties,

(If the link to the property does not work, that means it is no longer available. Not to fear - I have more.)

Want to search for homes as you drive through Atlanta area neighborhoods?  Download my free mobile app - it searches both MLS and FMLS!

Either 

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Flipping 101, Part 2

In Flipping 101, we were exploring the posibility of buying this little house to flip.

Yes, you guessed it. We are not going to buy this little house.

We could not get the numbers to work. We are just devastated.

Here is the original foot print. This is a modest, 1963 ranch with a carport and an outside entry laundry room, 1000 square feet. We were going to convert the carport to a bedroom and turn the laundry into a bath, adding 200 square feet.


Here are a few Things we did not count on:
  • Rewire the house - $4-$5 per square foot - $4,800 to $6,000.
  • Install an LVL- that's a beam.
  • Plumbing costs- about $5,000
Add that to demolition and framing, about $12,000

That's over $20,000 and now there's

  • interior painting
  • exterior painting
  • kitchen cabinets and counters
  • some HVAC work
  • bathroom tile work
  • some landscaping...
We were going to do some of this ourselves, but there's still cost of materials.

We had a contractor give a preliminary estimate. He  said "Moving Plumbing is easy''. I heard  "Moving Plumbing is cheap''. ..

He gave an initial estimate of $15-18k and that morphed to - mid twenties! Then the final came in at $35,000!

So, we can't buy the house, because as a flip, the numbers don't work. If your going to live there, it would be fabulous. And actually, you may he able to buy it with an FHA 203K (not KS) loan. You can't do the 203ks because there is some structural work and that loan type does not allow for structural.

Moral of the story: insist on full, accurate figures before you buy the house. We had a due diligence period in order to check everything out and, unfortunately, had to terminate the transaction prior to the end of the due diligence because of our budget.

It would have been nice, don't you think?


The measurements are pretty accurate -just trying to give you a quick visual.


Thursday, January 16, 2014

What to look for when renting a home.

This 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch is a great example of what a tenant should be looking for when renting a property.

I handle some rentals for my company.  Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Georgia Properties manages the properties. I am the front-end and back-end person.  I advertise the homes, meet prospective tenants, show them the property, arrange for them to make application and when/if accepted, I execute the lease with them and collect the money due and move them in.  At the end of the lease, I do a final walk-thru with the tenant and re-secure the home for re-rental.

We always try to ensure that the home is in turn-key condition before we put it on the market.  It's really no different than selling a house.  In my experience, the better the condition, the faster it will rent. If you are the owner, you always want to make sure that there is nothing broken or breaking.  It will only get worse.  Some tenants are more careful than others with your property.  Some will not report things that need attention - for no other reason than they don't know better.

For example, the home in the featured video needed a new bathroom floor because the original floor had developed a crack.  It was just a  hairline crack, but it seemed to go right under the toilet.  Now, it didn't crack for "no reason".  Since we own this home, we decided to investigate if there was an underlying leak that contributed to the crack.  If the there was a leak, the subfloor would deteriorate and then we would have a major problem.  We checked it out and there was a minor leak, but we think the flloor cracked because of normal settling and age.  So, we pulled it out and  put in a new, modern floor. BTW, we = our contractor, Mike Waldner.

Then, we discovered that the master bath shower had some loose tiles.  With some careful repair work from our very skilled contractor, Mike Waldner, that tile is as good as new.  He carefully removed the tile, cleaned up the back, repaired the wall behind the tile and re-installed it.  The tenat should have told us about this.  Actually, that shower backs up to the other bathroom.  Some of the water from the shower could have been running toward the floor in the other room.  Left unresolved, this could have been a catastrophe and could have lead to mold, rot, unsafe, unhealthy conditions.

We like to give the home in clean, ready to move in condition. All homes need maintenance.  This one had a new roof and fresh exterior paint a few years ago.  This year it had new carpet and fresh interior paint along with the bathroom maintenance.

I have rented in the past and there is no greater turn-off than looking at someone else's dirt.  As a landlord, you cannot expect top dollar unless you give a good, quality property in good condition with everything in good working order.

As a tenant, be sure to speak up if you see something in disrepair.  Make sure any deficiencies ar written in your move-in inspection form. If you don't, any issues could be assessed against you when you create your move-out inspection form.  These forms are for your and the landlord's protection.  Check out this video again.  Good Condition Home

If the home your looking at is not spic and span like this one, you might just want to keep looking.

And, landlords:  if you are not getting a tenant quickly, you might just want to re-evaluate the condition of the property you are trying to rent.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Flipping 101, Part 1

I've watched all the rehab shows. So have you. Flipping Boston,  Flipping Las Vegas, Flip or Flop - more titles than I can remember. Hours and hours of TV- ideas, successes & major problems.

I am a real estate agent. I've been in hundreds of houses. I've been through countless inspections, I'm a major DIYer. My good friend Essie is an excellent decorator & loves "the idea" of doing a flip. We looked in earnest for a couple of months last year & couldn't find anything.

Then there it was. Another friend listed this little, old house-only 1,000 sq.ft. I looked at it for a client. It was a sad little house, my client didn't like it. It hung around. My friend had some nibbles, but no one bought it. The owners eventually lowered the price & after much thought & planning Essie and I decided to buy it.


We are being careful. She talked to her financial planner. I researched the market. I talked to an appraiser. I had a contractor look at it to see if we could make the changes the house needed & still make the numbers work. Possible sales price minus purchase price minus rehab costs, should give us SOME profit. It SHOULD work.

So, we wrote an offer. It was accepted! YEAH!

Contactor called ... he thinks he is off by $3-5K! what???

It's O.K. we got it for a good price. Had the inspection today. Went pretty well. Found out the HVAC is pretty new -YEAH! Found out we might not be able to remove some walls
without extra support, yikes!

It's O.K. still in due diligence phase.

Stay tuned. It's going to be so pretty when we're done! We're refinishing hardwood floors, new cabinets, granite counters, new windows, adding a bedroom & bath. Oh my goodness!

I really hope it works, it will be so pretty when it's done....

See Flipping 101, Part 2