The house is being sold with a set of plans for an accessory structure. That would be lovely to add a guest house or office in back yard
OOOH, I misread. That was YOUR first flip?? 4 years ago?
^ First flip documented on CC.
I think she is up to over 20 flips now.
Not my first personal flip, but the first one followed on CC. It was a strange little hoarder house that had a lot of ceiling height issues.
Well, personally I like the variations in ceiling height. Gives it some interest and sense of space in such a little house.
The front porch you agonized over still looks cute. 
And I well remember the butchered tree!
Just a FYI that the house on N E B O went into contract in 1 week!! Makes me happy that the buyer is able to capture the appreciation in the market over her period of ownership.
After a real drought of potential properties to flip, I had 2 interesting prospects land in my pocket today. I am analyzing them tonight and I will post about them tomorrow.
One is in La Mesa and I received the information from a wholesaler. Wholesalers are the people who put up the bandit signs “We Buy Houses All Cash - As Is”. The small signs you see on telephone poles, etc. Or they send out postcards to homeowners. They will get the property into contract and then shop it out to their large email list of investors to see if anyone is interested. Those that are interested go to the house and perform an inspection and make a commitment to buy and then the wholesaler will ‘assign’ the contract to the investor to close the transaction.
The other lead is for a house in Bay Park. This is a divorce situation. Believe it or not the owners just purchased the house in December and are already in the middle of a nasty divorce. Must have been some kind of remodel nightmare or something… just kidding. They cannot afford to pay commissions, so the lawyer is shopping it out to known investors. I don’t think there is enough up side on that one, but I will go look at it.
Finally! Can’t wait to hear what these look like.
Divorce House:
I drove by this house in Bay Park. It is on one of the main feeder streets that comes up the hill from Morena Blvd (for those that know San Diego). The location is fantastic, the lot is on the top of the first hill before the street flattens out a bit. However, there is already one large new build 2 doors down that blocked about 1/3 of the view from the lot. Plus, there is a huge house in the middle of construction next door on the view side. After looking at the foundation of that construction site, it looks like the house is going up 2 stories and will block sunlight into the single story house but not block the remaining amount of view.
The house has a big fence in the front that is blocking it from the street. I’m guessing this was built for privacy reasons or something, but it kind of makes the front porch of the house seem very blocked in. Remaining view is from the bayside of the front porch and the living room corner windows. Otherwise, this house is going to get blocked in when the new house is finished next door and probably seem really dark alongside the west side of the house.
So, the only upside on the house is if you continue the domino effect. I would have to add a 2nd story and add square footage to the house. Currently the house does not have a garage. It has a long tandem driveway. This is not the norm for the neighborhood, I would have to build a garage on a sloped lot to add value.
There is no room for just cosmetic improvements and sell it back out again. I would have to endeavour a huge project with a lot of structural engineering and about a year of permits and construction work.
I have decided to pass because this is not the type of project I want right now.
Wholesaler House:
This house has some upside potential. It is in a middle income neighborhood and the purchase price to get it would only be around $550k. It doesn’t need any square footage added, it is already a 4/2. I might be able to squeeze out a powder room into the current layout to add value. I would also build a nice outdoor living area with a covered patio to add value. Wouldn’t need to worry about someone building a mini mansion next door.
However, the comparable sales around it are all over the map. But there is another house only 3 doors down that was flipped and sold for about $685k but it took 3 months to sell. I’m worried that bringing the property out at $685k might push the boundaries of a bank appraisal in the neighborhood, which is never good. Makes it hard to get a buyer to qualify for their loan.
I am going to inspect this house tomorrow morning, so I will report more
Keep in touch with that divorce attorney… many folks who go through divorce just don’t have the energy to deal with the stress of putting a house on the market… you could be providing a valuable service to them. We walked through one of these sad situations where the husband moved out and the wife just did not care because she was losing the house anyway… there was dirty underwear on the bath floor, dishes in the sink, etc. staged and photographed but then let go off.
Yes, this same attorney is the one who brought the crazy jeweler house that was in deplorable condition. This time h e didn’t even bother sending it out to his entire rolodex, he only invited us to look at it because he knew that my agent and I would work fast and give an honest answer… not play games with an offer.
Wholesaler House
I went to inspect the wholesaler house yesterday morning. When I arrived, the wholesaler was not there yet and there was a very confused listing agent that had opened up the vacant house and he could not figure out who all these people were. He kept saying “I’m in contract with Walter, who are you?” I just danced around the question. Finally Walter showed up and he walked me through the house. There was only one other investor there looking at the house.
There is an interesting twist on this one… the neighbors are willing to pay $25,000 for a lot split carving out a small slice of the property that is down a hill contiguous to their property. However, this is not something that I can bank on because it takes about a year to do a legal parcel lot split in order to have a parcel number to sell the neighbor. But, maybe it would be interesting to a future buyer to gain the $25k. The neighbor has some sheds on the portion of the land
Yowza… have never seen so much rat poop inside a house. House is in terrible condition, what else is new? The sad story of an elderly person that was living in the house as a total mess and then passed away. It’s a probate sale. There are at least 4 layers of old roof on the house that have to be scraped off, needs new water heater and HVAC system, although the AC compressor outside looks in good condition.
Lot is completely overgrown and will need at least $5,000 of clearing and landscaping. There are all kinds of illegal ‘additions’. The garage was converted into living space, there is an enclosed porch on the back of the house and a side ‘shed’ like thing attached to the house. House smells like urine.
The good news is that it has a large pie shape lot at the end of a cul de sac. Back yard is decent and it has a view of Cowles Mountain and ‘open’ space in the back because it is raised up above the next street. I could renovate the existing 1700 sq ft and make the yard nice with an outdoor covered patio. OR, I could do a master suite addition and legalize the enclosed back porch. However, I have researched all of the comparable sales in the neighborhood and the norm is 1600 to 1800 sq ft and there are no sales in the area at 2000 to 2200 sq feet. This makes it difficult to sell a larger house at a significantly higher price due to bank appraisal issues when a future buyer tries to get a loan.
Either way, there is not enough margin in the wholesaler’s asking price. I crunched my numbers and let them know what I was willing to pay. Since I do not know the exact number that they are in contract for, and they want to make money turning it, I don’t know if they will like my number.
They may keep it for themselves because there are 2 really good comparables of flips in the immediate area (one only 3 doors down) and ‘Walter’ is the one who did the flips. But, they are sitting on 5 properties right now and they don’t have the capital/cash to hold this one.
La Mesa Grandma House
I am giving up on the Pt Loma area and now expanding my search back to the La Mesa area. I’m focusing on homes that have lingered on the market over 60 days or have been ‘expired, cancelled, withdrawn’ recently. I’ve identified a perfect candidate that is priced way too high. Wait until you see the Grandma in this house…
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I called the agent and she said they would take any reasonable offer at this point. I’ve crunched the numbers and I don’t think I can make a ‘reasonable’ offer, but it never hurts to give it a try
The agent also has a brand new listing that she says might be a good candidate for me. It’s a middle income family home that needs a kitchen remodel. But it’s only been on the market for 2 days, so I don’t know whether the sellers would entertain a low offer. I’m going out to the Broker Open House today and meet the agent and check out this house
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In the first one - I really don’t get the wallpaper/stenciled ceilings (can’t really tell which, hopefully it’s stenciled). Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea?
What is it, like 35 steps up from the street to the front door? Lots of exercise…
The kitchen’s not all that bad, rip down the floating cabinets over the peninsula and nuke the ivy, although I am not crazy about the brown cabinets.
So much ugly carpet.
NRE, nothing beats the ugly carpet that used to be in your new digs
I’m sure it was the height of style in 1970. 
Hope it found its final resting place at the dump.
cb, that first house is actually very nice. It needs complete redecorating, but that’s nothing for you. What’s a potential sale price if it’s all fixed up?
I just got back from visiting both the houses. The one C o w l e s Mtn already has offers so that isn’t going to work.
Had a long discussion with the agent at the Cowles Open House (because noone else was there). I brought a lot of comps to make my case for a much lower offering price on the Grandma house. She says the elderly owners are stuck on their asking price, they’ve been stuck at that price for 6 months!!! They are going to relocate to Arizona to be near their family. Evidently they have been driving an agent crazy in Arizona also… going out every month and the agent shows them houses in Arizona. So, the two agents have been in contact with each other. However, she believes that my offer is not that far off of what the true market value should be for the property.
They are stuck on the $760,000 asking price because that’s what Zillow says their house is worth
One key issue is that the elderly owners got rooked by a solar salesman somehow and they have solar installed. Not a bad thing but they still owe $14,000 on the solar!!! And, they have some kind of crazy Hero loan that tacks on an annual amount to their property tax bill to pay off the solar. No buyer is going to accept that, so those sellers have to pay that off in escrow as far as I’m concerned before I would buy the house.
I drove the house… the front driveway is extremely steep and it would be scary to park a car in the driveway. But the good news is, once you get into the garage, there is an interior staircase from garage to main floor. But, can you imagine getting heavy trash cans down to the bottom of that driveway??? Yikes. Not to mention trying to get a dumpster parked somewhere because the street is very skinny and you would not be able to park a dumpster in the street.
I need to consider carefully that it will be a hard sale in the future because of the steep driveway and exterior stairs. that would eliminate most empty nest buyers. And, I don’t think it appeals to a family because there is not a large grassy back yard.
I think it could come back out at about $750k to $775k, but you can see that means I am not going to pay anything close to $760 for it