Ummm...Not Sexy At All...Not Yet

Yeah. So. Hrumph. I had pictured this "rehab thing" as being fast-paced and exciting, kind of sexy and dangerous. But I just spent four hours on charts. There are over 150 houses in my assigned quadrant and I need to catalog the status of each house (Occupied, Vacant, For Sale, etc.) to get the lay of the land. That's what I was doing when I was driving around the neighborhood with my voice recorder a few days ago. Predictably, I didn't reliably record the disposition of most houses on that run, so I have to go back through. Sure, I do have evidence on my snotty, Valley Girl-accented recording that "any house that I don't idennnnntifyyyy is probably occupiiiied....7808 occupiiiied...7010 probably vacannnnnnt...7012 (sigh) ugly, but occupiiied..." and so on. Back at the office though, I couldn't trust my own snark, so I had to head back out to complete the job.

But what took four hours? Well, as I mentioned before, that plat map I had was barely legible, so I needed to search the web for a free plat map of my quadrant. A plat map, for the uninitiaated, is an overhead view of all the lots and streets in a given area. They look like schematics of piano keys (the lots) with straight and curvy streams cutting through them (the streets). These maps are rarely updated frequently enough to keep up with the shifting lot boundaries and addresses of a city that is constantly in the process of reinventing itself, so there are lots on the map that are not reflected on the street and vice versa. Free electronic plat maps are not easy to find. And when you do find one, it will not be easily manipulated to fit your 5 block area, so you have to fiddle with screen shots and cropping and the travails of printing on 11x17 paper. When you have done all of this, and drawn in the plats that were left off because youknowwhat?it'sfineandyoujustcan'ttakeanymore. The next step is to begin marking the map from a recording that makes you sound like one of those "Heathers" girls who deserved to be beaten to death with a mallet for the love of Christian Slater. It was so embarrassing that I shut my office door to keep other people from hearing the sound of my voice, which I suppose they hear all the time, but I can't really sound that obnoxious all the time, can I?

Creepin'

xPart of learning a neighborhood means you have to drive around it -- a lot. And you have to know the disposition of each house: is it occupied, recently renovated, vacant, for sale, etc. I tried cataloguing my quadrant of earth last Friday, driving through with a faxed blurry plot map of each lot in my quadrant. It was not pretty. First, I am terrible at reading plot maps. They are essentially street maps with each lot outlined on either side of each street. It sounds simple, but I couldn't drive, try to find myself on the map, try to find the address on the map and look inconspicuous all at once. Second, the addresses on the houses themselves are hard enough to ascertain without having to then find the smeared letters on the map and write in the status of the home. Third, my non-profit wouldn't be working in the neighborhood if the residents weren't a bit down on their luck and perhaps unable to find full employment. So, that means that there are a number of young men standing around, staring at me and my car trying to figure out why I am creeping through their neighborhood with a squinty glare and a pen.

When I returned to the office, I explained my experience to a co-worker who suggested that I take a digital voice recorder to record my impressions of the homes that I could then transcribe when I returned to the office. This evening I headed back to my assigned quadrant feeling like a P.I., ready to record my impressions into the voice recorder. I hoped that I would not look like an intruder, and more like one of our fair city's many self-absorbed drivers yelling into a cell phone instead of paying attention to the road.

I met with mixed success. A very good friend called as I was on my way over to the neighborhood and I arrived while I was still on the phone. I could not have a cell phone conversation and assess homes into my voice recorder, so I did what I did not want to do, I stopped. With my lights on. People appeared on porches and in windows to see who this stranger was on the street. I abruptly ended my phone conversation and began driving slowly, trying to look nonchalant as I spoke into my recorder: 343 on Axel Street - in need of renovation; 345 -- for sale; 349 -- occupied; 355 - vacant; and so on. I got more than a few stares, but I played with my hair, looked nonchalant, and had an engrossing conversation....with a voice recorder.

Fixtures!

You *can* have beautiful fixtures in a house that is to be sold to people of moderate means. Check out these fixtures! And this not some leverage-up-to-your-eyeballs-and-wind-up-on-the-courthouse-steps price point; the house with these fixtures will be listed for under $100,000. Check 'em out!

Funky! Interesting! And did you see that shower? The slate?! It's beautiful.

Friday morning started out like a movie scene where you know that everything is about to change for the protagonist. After 3 days of constant rain and clouds, the sun broke through on Friday. I had the chance to eat breakfast with my husband and curl up in his lap before running out to my meeting. The drive to the target neighborhood curves around blocks of single level sturdy brick and frame houses built in the 1950s. Behind their doors many people who owned their homes outright were misled into horrible refinance schemes that led to financial ruin for the owners. Other houses, holding hopeful young families, were sold for laughable prices to people who were sure they would be able to refinance into more affordable payments as the market continued its meteoric rise. Now “For Sale – New Price” signs compete with bobbing Christmas deer in front yards. A young mother bundled up against the chill pushes her baby down the sidewalk around “Sell Your Home Fast” signs.

But it is still a beautiful day. Natasha Beddingfield is singing cheerfully on the radio and I am on my way to make lemonade from lemons. This is not what my job was supposed to be. I was hired to manage an affordable housing program. The program, devised by well-meaning people who wanted working class people to be able to choose to live near the city center, depended on the continued health of the housing market as well. The program sells beautiful, brand new condos to people making 80% of the area median income for a set primary mortgage, less than $150,000 for one bedroom condos. The rest of the market value of the home is covered by a subsidy from the city that the buyer must repay when she sells the home. At resale, the idea is that the city will get the subsidy back to loan to another buyer and the original buyer will be able to keep any increase over the original market value of the home. Even better, the buyer enters the transaction without downside risk because she if the market tanks and she sells the home for at least its fair market value, she will not have to repay any portion of the subsidy that can’t be repaid with the proceeds of the sale.

Now, however, with market values drifting downward and credit tightening, it’s hard to find buyers who make enough to get a loan but not too much to qualify for the program. It’s also increasingly difficult to find buyers who want to purchase anything at all, even with a guarantee that they can’t lose money. We understand. Houses in America are much more than shelter; they are status symbols, tax breaks, and most importantly, they are viewed as investments that are never supposed to lose value. The last few years have shown us that purchasing a house expecting much more than shelter can be a heart-breaking proposition.

Still, in the spirit of making lemonade, I joined up with the team: someone else from my office, the representative from the foundation and the real estate agent. The agent led us on a tour of what a renovated home could like and still be sold at a below-market price. Sure, the homes are farther from the city center and the landmark that stuck with me the most on the way there was the nightclub advertising “ThugNation”, but the area is obviously home to a lot of people who take a lot of pride in their homes and working here is going to be very enlightening.

Journey to RehabLand

For this blog to make sense, it will be helpful for me to give you some context for how I arrived here.

When I was eight years old (I promise this will be short), I asked my mom what a Negro was. Instead of just directing me to the closest mirror, she introduced me to literature on the struggle for equality for black people in America from the moment of our arrival through the aftermath of the civil rights movement. I fell hard for social justice. I was particularly drawn to rectifying residential segregation. I wanted to be a crusading fighter. I could see myself on courthouse steps marching toward freedom. It just felt right. So I went to law school. There, I picked up a curious interest in real estate law, instead of civil procedure. I thought real estate would allow me to do well and do good by addressing residential segregation and the poor, underserved neighborhoods that residential segregation created. But, I hated the practice of law. Oh, I really hated it. During a summer internship, I was lured by the promise of a luxurious life and big money. I didn’t like the practice of law, so I figured if I had to do it, I wanted to be well-paid. Besides, I thought, I was going to practice real estate at the firm. They would train me so that I could soon leave to start my own affordable real estate development company. Another summer associate and I sketched out business plans and I read real estate development textbooks during the summers so that I could get a basic understanding of the industry.

When I arrived at the law firm as an employee instead of an intern it was, to put things mildly, not to my liking. I endured for a while, aided by great family and friends, the power of New York City and a very comfortable salary.

In 2006, I found myself in a new city looking for a job in the industry I wanted to join when I left law school three years prior – affordable housing. I soon found a position at one of the city’s best-known affordable housing non-profit companies. Two years later, and one year into a recession that has hurt the entire economy but devastated the local housing industry, I am starting on a project that I had planned to start on my own five years ago: I am, on behalf of my employer, locating troubled houses, acquiring them, rehabbing them and selling them to middle to lower income households. And I am horrified.

By horrified, I don’t mean that I am against the plan; I think the plan is great. But I have never done anything like this before. I am a first time homeowner myself; I have no experience in buying houses, working with contractors and selling the finished product. So, I have started this blog to chart my journey into RehabLand.

Because I work for a non-profit, I am expecting that this experience will be different from most home rehabbers. My company is interested not rehabbing homes to flip for the highest price. We follow our mission of increasing housing choice for families at all income levels and we expect that dollars will follow. As a result, we are working with housing counselors and churches, neighborhood associations and nearby employers, to find people who are interested in buying enough house to be safe, comfortable and build equity, but not so much house that they end up as casualties of the foreclosure crisis. We are seeking to make affordable housing decent housing. My boss is sternly against the shoddy fixtures many for-profit developers throw in their homes for people in the middle- and low-income ranges. “Why do they have to use the same old tired brass fixtures?” she asks me, “Can’t they shop around? I know IKEA must have something interesting and appealing for the same price or less.” So I guess I’ll be going to IKEA. I’ll let you know what I find.

Tomorrow (or later on today) I go to meet my first clients. They represent a foundation based in an area where the fall-out from the sub-prime debacle is attempting to ravage the entire neighborhood. Rehab and resale to working class families is the sort of thing I’ve been saying I wanted to do since 2002. I am very excited, but very nervous. I’ll let you know how it goes.