<p>Thanks for the sleuthing and the details on the Flipping San Diego show. I watched that particular show. </p>
<p>I don’t know why they feel compelled to state guesses, even educated ones, as the truth or outright lie about the terms such as time frames, sales price, real cost of renovation (i.e. stating a value for the things they likely get for free as long as they advertise the things through prominent display), etc. The show would be more interesting if they used real numbers. It might even help keep some people out of trouble - the people who watch those shows and conclude how easy it is to make a bundle in just a few short weeks and have fun doing it.</p>
<p>Today is even more glamorous. I have been to Home Depot 3 times already and it’s only noon. </p>
<p>We have no water at all today. The porta potty is out in the direct sunlight, officially a sweat box. I should charge admission! And the only way to try and clean my hands is a small bucket of water.</p>
<p>Pizza’s on its way ( did I mention I hate pizza?) for my standard Friday lunch for the crew. I plan to watch and see if they even dip their hands in the bucket before they start chowing down :)</p>
<p>I have been enjoying reading about your adventures in house flipping, coralbrook. I have even more admiration for your gumption after seeing the pictures. Thanks for sharing this journey with us. I hope you find a way to share the transformation visually:)</p>
<p>New research shows that germs are good for you… build healthy immune systems amd cut down on allergies and autoimmune diseases like Lupus, arthritis, etc. So, look at the lack of handwashing as a good thing!</p>
<p>Hand washing: When we traveled in Tanzania, the custom was for someone to pour a small amount of warm water over your hands while you rubbed them together. It actually cleans pretty effectively–better than a dip bucket. (You can use a small thermos.)</p>
<p>Interesting thread. My son is planning to buy his first home (not to flip but to live in) and had sent me a link to a listing that he was curious about. The area he currently rents in, the houses are just outside his price range. He loves the town and it is a reasonable drive to his work. He really would like to buy there rather than further out with a longer commute. When he saw this listing, he was surprised to see a house in the area that is within his price range. It was a foreclosure owned by the bank. Absolutely adorable looking little house from the outside, but the pictures of the inside - oh my! We just could not fathom what could have happened to the inside. The walls were dirty, and the floors were just *odd *looking. We wondered if the owners had trashed it because of the upcoming foreclosure. After seeing the photos of your house, I’m wondering if they were horders. We kept looking at the pictures of the floors and zooming in for a closer look and wondering “what on earth…”. (my other thought was some sort of flooding had occurred)</p>
<p>He was going to call the realtor and go have a look and tell us. Haven’t heard back so I don’t think he has seen it yet.</p>
<p>Wow, Coralbrook, the house does have some charm from the outside, but the interior looks like it should just be gutted. Unless there are plaster walls that can be salvaged. And those are the marketing photos?!?</p>
<p>It is very difficult to give advice to first time buyers. Most first time buyers cannot see past the horrible condition or ugliness of someone else’s d</p>
<p>As you travel along on this journey with me, we are going to look at the comparable properties in the neighborhood. A property just went up for sale by one of my competitors - one of the groups that has been overpaying recently. </p>
<p>This is a house that I looked at and I made a serious offer. It was listed at $299k, but there were dozens of offers and sold for $342k, but the buying agent for the investor took a commission reduction, probably about $5k. It had foundation issues and was in horrible condition.</p>
<p>The photos and listing that you see for this house is the BEFORE photos and listing - although the listing only had one photo. The competitor purchased this 3 bd/1 ba property for $342,000. My agent estimated future sale price could be about $450,000. I just couldn’t pay $340k for something that needed that much work. It sold on July 26, 2013.</p>
<p>They just listed the property for $469,000 as a 3 bd/2 ba property. I have no idea how they got the property fixed and turned around in about 4 weeks. I give them credit for that but they probably did not fix plumbing and electrical. I can see in the MLS that they did a low budget fix, ceramic floors, cheap kitchen, cheap floors, etc. But they had to spend some money clearing out the landscape and putting down sod. In about a week you should be able to see photos and info on Zillow.</p>
<p>This is the property that I am going to watch because it is very similar to mine, slightly less desireable location. And, it has a 2 car garage which I probably will not be able to have - going to have to demolish my garage.</p>
<p>That’s an interesting tip about the golf ball for the floors - I will tell him that. </p>
<p>He lives in Charleston, SC and would like to buy in the Mount Pleasant area. He probably couldn’t afford to pay a lot to have work done to the house on top of buying it. He does have some friends who have some pretty good building skills and would probably help him out though.</p>
<p>The floors are very odd though. The kitchen floor we could not figure out from the photos - almost looked like we could see some tile but there seemed to be something kind of ripply on top. (wondered if it was sand actually). Lots of nasty looking stains around the carpets in other rooms as well. Looks like it was a lovely home at some point but judging from the rather icky state of the toilet in one photo, not well taken care of!</p>
<p>I’m dying to hear back from him.</p>
<p>Really enjoying following your journey here. Would be exciting to see photos if there is a way to do that. (maybe if you can set up a site somewhere, those of us who are interested could pm you to get a link?).</p>
<p>For those who are interested in dale ave. redfin has 22 photos of it and listing price is 469,900. From the photo, it looks nice and new.</p>
<p>There are many real estate sites on the net now, zillow is not the only one, there are Redfin, Realtor.com, homes.com, homefinder, homesmap, Trulia, Century 21 and other large national Realtors such as coldwell banker, they all have downloaded MLS information. As professionals who subscribe to MLS, we have other options that also provided title information and prior sales information.</p>
<p>swimcat,
Is the kitchen on the first floor? If so, you need to make sure there is not a foundation problem. Look at the corner of the windows, do they have cracks or we call it stretch marks? Does the ceiling in all rooms even with the wall without a gap?</p>
<p>I will tell him to look at all that. Wish I was close enough to go have a look myself (he lives about 1200 miles from us). The house looks so nice from the outside. The outside and inside don’t match at all!</p>
<p>That Dale Ave house looks decent. Interestingly, though, on the Zillow site, before the first sale, it said specifically that it needed foundation work. I wonder if the flipper actually took care of that. Cosmetically, it looks fine.</p>
<p>Several months ago our [wonderful] contractor looked at a postential flip with us. It was bank-owned and they were asking $119K. Our contractor thought it would take $70K to bring it up to decency. (Not just bathrooms and kitchen, but the siding on the outside, and turning a staircase around so it functioned again like a single-family house.) Since comps in the area were going for ~$200K, it wasn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I wonder if our contractor thought that more needed to be done that actually did need to be done. Oh well.</p>
<p>Not old - built in 2000 according to the listing.</p>
<p>(I don’t mean to hijack this thread, just the photos of coralbrook’s flip made me wonder about the possibility of hoarders being part of the problem with the state of the house)</p>