Foreclosed to Fabulous: A Journey into Home Rehab

Before & After

2010-07-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

Today, I present three of the first houses I worked on.

This house will close with a homebuyer later on this week. I superloved this house when we first saw it although it was very dated. Look at this door!

These mouldings!

All of these wonderful bones existed before the rehab. LOVE. I fought for this house because I could see its fabulousness even though it was old, rickety, had been abandoned for a while, and kind of had an odour.

This a four bedroom, two and half bathroom home is located in a golf course community in a suburban neighborhood. We fixed just about all of the major systems in the home and modernized the cosmetics on the rest.

The basement was the former owner’s fun space. The sign above the bar read “Happy Hour” in Technicolor. Charming, but not really resale-ready.

href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crunako%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml">Here is the basement after renovation. We removed the bar, changed the carpet, and painted the walls, among other things.

The living room had dark, sad paneling and a dated fireplace.

We brightened everything up nicely, I think.

The second house is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch home. It’s not yet under contract and I can’t understand why except that the neighborhood is a little out of the way.

Dining room before:

Dining room after:

Bonus room before (sad old-fashioned built-ins):

Bonus room after:

Quick Interior House Assessment Tips

2010-07-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

I'm back with part 2 of Quick House (Rehab) Assessment Tips.

Interior:

It is of utmost importance that the house be well-sealed against the elements. I am guessing that if you wanted to be one with the outdoors you’d be at REI picking up a tent instead of looking for a house. So most of the interior checkpoints focus on ensuring the house keeps the outside out and water where it belongs.

Bathrooms

Do the toilets appear to be well-anchored or does it look like they have been leaking? Look around the bottom of the toilets and tubs for water or water stains. If you find water stains in a bathroom on an upper floor, go downstairs and see if the leak has come through the ceiling.

Throughout

Look up: are there wet spots on the ceilings? If so, are they still wet? Could be a leaky roof or a leaky bathroom upstairs.

Look down: corners and trim should not be compromised. If you can lightly kick the trim and it comes apart, that is water or termite damage.

Will we need to replace the carpets and wet room floors? The answer is probably on the carpets and maybe on the wet rooms (kitchen, bathrooms, laundry).

Unless the previous owners lived very lightly and had your decorating taste, you will almost certainly have to paint, replace light fixtures and appliances.

Check the trim around the back door. Here you are looking for signs of water damage indicating the door was not well-sealed and for signs that the door has been repaired or replaced because it was kicked in. Again, not a definite cause to walk away, but you should know.

Is there black pellet-shaped debris on the floors? Could be rat droppings, just sayin’, I've been there.

Does the floor plan make sense? Every now and again I’ll go into a house where the floor plan just makes me angry. It’s more of a fun house than a home. Floor plan changes are very expensive and I’ll usually walk away from them.

Are the floors even? I have a particular aversion to rolling hardwoods, slanted living rooms and thin carpeting covering a hard board with no subfloor. These flaws are not insuperable, but if the floor is really janky, you may be looking at an uneven foundation.

Bedrooms

Open the closet doors and check the corners and ceiling. On more than one occasion, I have seen the only evidence of mold or leaks has been in the closets. Open all doors and peer inside.

Kitchen

How gross are the cabinets? Some cabinets are great and just need light cleaning. Some are disgusting with missing parts or caked-on gunk. Missing parts can be difficult to match. On one house we threw a lot of money at trying to clean old cabinets before we just gave up and put in new ones.

Open the cabinet under the sink. Do you see signs of leaks? Is there a garbage disposal? Your inspection will let you know if it works or not.

Will you need to replace the countertops?

So there you have it: my quick and dirty house assessment guide.

A New Look and Quick Exterior House Assessment Tips

2010-07-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

Has it really been SIX months since I last posted here? I apologize for being so absent, but here is my explanation. Since around December, I have been the project manager responsible for putting 93 houses under contract, closing on 59, completing rehab on 9, and selling 2 to home buyers (11 additional houses are under contract to close with home buyers). In the garden, I have suffered bitter defeat, small victories, and about 51 mosquito/gnat/spider bites. Mama is tired, y’all.

Still, I have missed sharing my experiences and I’m back with a whole new look!

I’ve learned a lot in the last six months, but since most of that time has been spent on acquisitions, I guess I’ll start there.

Sometimes I’ll arrive at a house while an agent is there with a home buyer. It is unspoken real estate etiquette to wait for the current party to finish before going in. Owner-occupants, however, take forevvvvvver to evaluate a house because they look at things very differently from investors. The owner-occupant is thinking, “Do I love it? Can I see myself living here? Where will my couch go? Is the kitchen big enough?” The investor is thinking, “How much is it going to cost me to turn this house around?”

I often need to see 15 or more houses in one day. Including driving time, that can easily eat up 8 hours or more. I don’t have time for the owner-occupant approach. I need to get in and out and on the next. I am not a professional inspector, but I need to be able to quickly ascertain whether a house is going to be within our price range to acquire and rehab. Foreclosed houses usually do not come with a disclosure report – they are sold “as is”. To kick things off, I will provide you with my methods for assessing a home quickly.

Please note: none of these tips are adequate substitutes for a real home buyer’s inspection. If you buy a house “as-is” without an inspection you will RUE THE DAY. Most of us will not want to climb around on the roof and cannot tell what polybutylene piping looks like (to your bank account it will look like replacing all the plumbing in the house). I certainly hate getting on my hands and knees to check if there is galvanized pipe under the sink. It’s hot, dirty and there are spiders down there. So hire a professional, please. The tips that follow are just to help you make an initial assessment when you are out and about.

Home buyer’s guide to 10-15 minute property review:

Exterior

Water

When you arrive, walk around the lot. Does it appear to be even or sloped? If it has rained recently, check to see if there is water standing anywhere on the property. If you don’t see standing water, are there spots where the ground is supersaturated? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” and the water is close to the house, take note.

Now back up and look up. How does the roof look? We’re not looking for uniform color; we’re looking for waves or other signs the roof has been compromised. Sometimes roofs with leakage problems will appear to have undulations running parallel to the ground. If these are extensive, count on a new roof. Now check your data on the house, if it’s about 10 years old and in foreclosure, you should guess that the roof has never been replaced and will need work.

While you’re focused on the roof, also check the soffit, fascia, and gutters. I could try to explain what soffit and fascia are, but this picture I grabbed from www.csgrestoration.com is worth a thousand words.

The way I keep it straight in my head is that “fascia faces ya.” Whatever, it’s cheesy; it works. Older houses will tend to have wood soffit and fascia. Untreated wood rots. Soffit and fascia often have to be replaced; usually replacement rings up in the range of a couple hundred dollars.

Take a look at the gutters. If they are all bent up and crazy-looking, you’ll likely have to replace them for about $1500. Follow the gutters if you can to see where they are directing water. Sometimes gutters will direct water along a valley in the roof where the fascia isn’t well-attached and rainwater will run right into the house. Gutters can also be so full that baby trees are growing out of them – true story! – in that case the gutters have ceased to direct water anywhere and you can almost bet on water damage inside.

Pests/Termites

If you are in the red clay termite belt of which Georgia is a part, suspect that there are termites in any home that has been sitting vacant for a while without termite treatments. My experience has been that 100% of stucco surface houses have had termites. Termites are not necessarily a deal-killer, but they do need to be treated immediately and a professional will have to assess the extent of damage they have caused.

Many homes will have nice landscaping around the perimeter of the house. If you are the gardening snob I was before I actually got into the garden, you may prefer the look of pine nuggets to pine straw. Again, if the house has not been treated for termites in a while, pine nuggets up against the house should give you pause. For some reason, termites are attracted to pine nuggets in a way they are not to other kinds of mulch.

As you are walking around the lot look for ant hills close to the house. If the ant hill is up against the house, there is a good chance the ants are inside too. Again, not a deal-killer, but you’ll want to be aware.

Pause now and again to check out window frames and window sills. If they are exposed to the elements, chances are they will need repair because the wood will rot over time. Same thing with wooden door frames. I still find it difficult to distinguish whether wood has been eaten by termites or weakened by water just by looking or handling the wood. Still, weak wood is weak wood and it all has to be repaired.

Siding

What has the builder used to cover the bones of the house? Rotten wooden siding (hard to identify, especially if the house has been recently painted) usually has to come off in its entirety for upwards of $10,000.

Hardiplank and cardboard siding come in many different varieties. Some are easier to repair and replace than others.

Brick is beautiful, but the joints in the masonry can get loose letting in water.

Vinyl siding is easy to match and replace damaged pieces.

We’ve discussed stucco. I grew up in SoCal, so I like stucco, but stucco that has not been properly taken care of will have cracks that require extensive repair, may have been bleached in the sun, and as I mentioned before will most likely need some attention to termites.

Peeling paint could mean that you need to repaint the entire house or just parts. If the house was built before 1978, you may need to do some lead paint tests.

Amenities

Is there a wooden deck or patio? Has the wood been treated? You may be able to get away with a sand ‘n’ stain, or the whole thing may have to come down if it is unsafe. I’ve been to many houses that have small 2^nd floor balconies. The previous owners often had grills on these balconies (look for burn marks where the grill was). That gives me heartburn, but your inspector can give you the lowdown.

Wow, the quick exterior checklist took up much more real estate that I expected. I’ll post the quick interior checklist later on.

Of Foreclosure, Families and Furniture

2010-02-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

A lot of times this blog comes across as very cavalier about foreclosure. It's my job and the ho-hum of scouting empty houses can become impersonal. The reality of foreclosure's impact on real people collided with routine earlier this week. We visited a house with furniture still in it. NSP regulations require that homes be vacant for 90 days prior to putting in an offer so usually the houses are empty. However, entering the first house we encountered a pile of furniture -- a bookshelf, a chair, knick knacks -- right in the entryway. Someone had tied a small wicker basket on the pull chain of the living room ceiling fan as decoration. The basket was not HGTV-ready, but it was an authentic and personal trace of the people who once lived in that 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home on an awkward corner of a middle income subdivision just about 10 miles from my office.

The presence of furniture gave me pause. It drew my attention to the dark spot on the floor where a dresser once stood. Furniture humanizes the insane paint schemes I have seen in many bedrooms, transforming tacky walls covered in little pink hand and footprints and ceilings decorated in purple rabbits into nurseries that once held children where parents planned to raise them in safe, stable surroundings. Then the market tanked. Or the job vanished. Or the landlord went under. Or all three. All that gets left behind are walls that I am going to hire people to paint over in pleasing neutrals, carpets that I will replace because they are stained with juice, food, mud and furniture spots. I felt complicit in erasing the memory of the people who once made their homes in those places and who were caught up, as renters or as buyers, in the orgy of easy money and easier real estate that brought about a personal, national and global economic implosion.

Sometimes I feel like I'm cleaning up after a disaster: every bit left behind is a reminder of what was destroyed, yet I know that something new--and sustainable--will spring from the destruction. Those former residents have moved on and to remain viable, the neighborhood needs to ensure that vacant houses get occupied to maintain values, safety and aesthetics. So I paint over carefully-drawn designs and stickers of smiling zoo animals; I tear up heavily used carpet and torn vinyl; and I replace woodwork chewed away by the family dog, hoping that the restart I provide will create the conditions for a renewal.

No Access: 3 Dirty Tricks of Real Estate Acquisition

2010-01-29T04:32:00.000-08:00

Ah the joys of real estate. Apparently the market is heating back up because the dirty tricks of the trade are starting to peek out of their down market hibernation.

Before the market started to turn, access to foreclosed houses was not a problem. You got the code, opened the box and sashayed on in. Sometimes, the doors were just left unlocked. Nowadays however, heifers want to keep the competition at bay. Here are the top 3 dirty tricks I've encountered:

1) Jam the only access door from the inside so that subsequent viewers can't see the property. The last person to see a house will lock the deadbolt from inside and climb out of a window to ensure that anyone coming by afterwards will not be able to get in to see the house, even if they have a key.

2) Camp out at the property and when a prospect arrives to view it the interloper proclaims (falsely) that she already has had her offer accepted and she is just waiting for the carpet guy to come by so you might as well keep on moving.

3) Take pictures of the real estate agent, potential buyer and their license plates so that you can upload them on YouTube later while claiming they are out to "destroy the neighborhood." This is not a joke; I keep my sunglasses on me for unsolicited photo sessions.

More common ploys are to remove the mailbox, obscure the house address, hide the for sale sign and toss the house key in the bushes leaving the lockbox/supra key empty. The silly thing is, in this state, only 1 of 3 foreclosure deals that go to contract actually close. Chances are that the deal the trickster is trying to shield so desperately will fall through anyway. I know it's easier to climb out of a window than to line up solid financing, but only the latter will get you title; the former will just get you dusty.

All is fair in love, war and real estate, but you know what? If you want to keep me from buying the house, just offer more. It won't be that hard.

7 tips for eliminating houses from listings

2010-01-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

I often receive large batches of listings from the sources we use to acquire houses. There are far too many to see individually so I need to use a heavy hand to whittle down the stack to a manageable group that we can go and see. These 7 tips, particularly #5, may not be as helpful to those of you who have lots of resources to use in bidding wars and list price offers but to bargain hunters who have to keep prices very low like me, these tips have saved a lot of time.

1) Where you can see the “Days on Market” or DOM, the property should have been on the market at least 60 days. The more DOM, the better for negotiating.

2) If the house is listed over $80,000, it should have been on the market for at least 90 days (I have made some exceptions for listings over $80K that are fabulous, but I am only asking the agent to keep his eye on them to see if they go down).

3) If you are getting overwhelmed by 3 beds/2bths, start looking for larger houses and pick only very cheap 3/2s.

4) No properties with HOA fees.

5) Approach every listing with extreme disdain. Does the listing have the smell of desperation? This scent is becoming more and more faint as the market improves, but still if there is no hint of a willingness to negotiate, keep moving.

6) Size (less than 1200 sq ft and more than 2250 sq ft). The smaller properties are hard to sell; the larger properties are crazy expensive to renovate.

7) Wood siding. More times than not, it all has to be replaced and the return on the investment is low.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: With Incredible Indoor Amaryllis!

2010-01-25T05:44:00.000-08:00

One of my best friends gave me indoor-blooming red lion amaryllis for Christmas. This is a plant I have wanted to try, but couldn't bring myself to drop the cash for it. Thank you, Santa!! Readers, this plant is awesome! It sat in a box on our front porch for a week while we were out of town for the holidays. When I got to it, it looked hale and hearty with 3 sets of foliage popping out of the top. All I had to do was take it to a sunny window, add water and wait. We started out here:

Soon we were here:

And now we are here in the land of fabulous blooms! Each stalk has 3 gigantic blossoms:

It's so perfect that it looks fake! In this landscape of snow, front and biting winds, it is so nice to watch life and color claim its space and shine.

My-my-my Poker Face

2010-01-25T05:26:00.000-08:00

Today marks the fifth time in 30 days that I have been told that my face mirrors exactly what I am thinking or feeling. It is the second time in 30 days that I have been chastised for such expressiveness at work. I'm not going to lie to you, dear Readers, I find all of this kind of tiring. My husband tells me that a poker face is something you have to practice and hone. I mastered my brand of poker face when I was a teenager. I called it "stony face." Whenever I would be getting chewed out for some infraction, I would practice making my face look stony. The effort involved in mastering my facial expression took my attention away from what was being said, so when I looked like I wasn't paying attention it was because I wasn't paying attention. (Hi Mom! Hugs!)

So it is with me. If I look uninterested, happy, bored, tired, it's because that is how I am feeling. I don't have techniques that allow me to pay attention to an asinine conversation and not register the frustration in my face. You could say it's a good trait: I'm not a good liar. You could also say it's some Sun Tzu-inspired fatal character flaw. Whatever.

What I want to know from you is do you have any suggestions on how I can improve my poker face? In the meantime, I will leave you with a little Lady Gaga doing her poker face.

Poop

2010-01-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

Propelled into action by the mandate to buy eleventy houses in 20 minutes, we have been hitting the streets hard looking for inventory. The county wants to concentrate on neighborhoods instead of flitting around the jurisdiction, buying houses scattered hither and yon. I have a preferred subdivision which is undergoing a lot of foreclosures, but is still pleasant, well-kept and has retained its value as much as could be expected under the circumstances. Three of us headed out last week to a house in the subdivision. On the way over, I announced to the group that unless the house had been gutted buy fire, we were going to buy it, so everyone needed to get their minds right.

The house was in worse shape that I expected. The front and back porches needed extensive work, along with the usual list of cosmetic fixes inside -- paint, fixtures, carpet, appliances. I walked from room to room snapping pictures. The electricity was off and the flash of the camera helps to illuminate dark rooms, particularly bathrooms which usually don't have the benefit of windows. I stopped in the doorway of a hall bathroom upstairs, checked it out and kept moving without taking a picture. The rest of the team, two men, stood in the bathroom door and snickered, "I'm surprised you didn't start yelling when you saw this."

"What?" I came back to the door.
"You didn't see that?" Joe pointed at a dark mass on top of the closed toilet seat.
"What?" I asked. "It's a dark rag left there by the work crew."
"Oh. OKAY." Joe grinned and walked away. "If that's what you want to believe."
"What is he talking about?" I thought and leaned in deeper in the doorway.

OH SWEET MOTHER CARRY ME HOME. It was POOP. Poop. Dried human poop. On top of the closed toilet, not inside. Why?! We're still putting an offer on the house, I'm just glad it was the last one of the day. I needed to have a glass of wine after that.

Git Her Done. NOW.

2010-01-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

As many of my past posts have illustrated, while the local governments have been getting their NSP sea legs, we have received many hurry-up-and-wait directives. "We need you to have a gajillion houses under contract in two weeks!" shrieks the local government. I dust off the pipeline that has been sitting idle while I await directions, leap into the field and put in half a gajillion offers. I gather up all the various paperwork required to submit homes to the county for approval and continue to mine sources, negotiate counteroffers and wait for county approval. And wait. And wait. And we lose deals while we wait. It would be different if the county would respond that they've reviewed our offering and don't like the houses, but they don't respond at all. At all!! I'm supposed to cheerfully shrug off all the wasted time and effort. I know I shouldn't care since I can't move forward without the county's approval, but I know I will ultimately be judged based on my production regardless of the forces beyond my control.

Anyway, so a few days ago, my ultimate boss, the head honcho comes into my office with his face all alight and tells me gleefully that the county is ready to move forward in aggressively acquiring houses.

"Okay," I smiled beatifically at him and turned back to my computer screen.
"No, really. They are committed now."
I turned back to face him.
"And that means that we'll need to have 10 closings a month for the next 6 months."
If he hadn't been serious I would have burst into peals of laughter. Ten closings a month is a dream. Why? Well, we do desktop reviews of about 25 houses for every 5 we go to see. We see approximately 5 houses for every 3 offers. We have to put out about 3 offers for every 1 we get accepted. By the way, we also have mountains of meetings and 5 other jurisdictions where we are starting rehab and resale processes for houses that have already been purchased. Ten closings a month? Okay. We'll get right on it.

I contacted our realtor, who is awesome and extremely hard-working, and told him the news. He laughed too, but promptly sent me over 50 listings to review. I picked out 21. Twelve were available. We visited them and decided to put out 7 offers. None have been accepted or countered yet. It's a slog, but we are pushing.

The next day, the head honcho revised his goals for the county. Instead of promising 10 closings a month, he committed that we would have 60 houses under contract by the end of March. You know it's mid-January, right? Seventy-odd days to put 60 houses under contract? It's beyond laughable; it's absurd. Everyone I work with who is a practitioner knows it's absurd but no one will tell him. I'm not going to tell him either since I, apparently, am negative enough (see the next post). Still, we are going to mine every source we can thing of, put out a flurry of offers and deluge the county with requests for approvals. It's going to be an extremely chaotic, bumpy ride. I hope we're all strapped in.

And....We're Back!

2010-01-05T02:54:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010! It's been a while because I was on a long, and judging from some prior posts much-needed, vacation. Now that I'm back in the saddle before I head off into the wild blue rehab yonder, let me take stock of where I stand: 2 houses purchased, no construction started (sigh); 1 house completed and on the market for six months (bigger sigh); 3 houses under contract and scheduled to close this week, but without the County approvals, it's not looking good (exasperated rolled eyes + big sigh).

At the office on Monday morning I find extensions on 2 of the closings scheduled for this week (yay!) and one very p.o'ed sales agent for the third (sorry dude, government stuff takes longer). Still, the p.o'ed agent is well within his rights - we've extended the closing twice. Now I find myself contacting everyone I can find trying to get his house closed in 3 days. Hee!! Three days! It's so preposterous that it makes me laugh. But, save the day - when I made the request to my lender (the cool one, not that one makes me want to tear my hair out) he did not shoot me down immediately. As long as the chain of title is clean, he should be able to fund and I should be able to close and be a hero -- or at least less of a heel for taking so long to get to closing.

I'm excited about this house. It is conveniently located, has a brick facade and is on a street with other well-kept houses. And it's less than $100K! Check it out:

The entry way!

I spy a fireplace...

The master bedroom. Ooh la la, the ceiling:

Nice kitchen:

And of course, to me the best thing about this house is the next door neighbor's monster-sized mum!! GORGEOUS, people!

And I'd Shoot You Too....I'm Sorry, What?

2009-12-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Long live democracy. The ancient Greeks (I don't know why I have been stuck on the ancient Greeks lately) took their politics seriously. Polis referred to the city-state and anyone who was eligible to take part in the polis (generally free men), yet abdicated that responsibility and decided to remain in a self-involved bubble was called an idiot. Obviously the ancient Greeks were not familiar with county commission meetings where even people who are intimately involved in the polis can prove themselves to be idiots as well.

I attended a county commission meeting this morning. The commission meets in a converted church. There are sheriff's deputies present, but no metal detectors, not even a wand. People breeze in, standing in the doorway and filling out comment cards. The walls are painted a fresh peach neutral, sunlight pours through the arched windows and the commissioners sit in the converted pulpit on a slightly raised platform behind a long desk that separates them from their constituents. They are bathed in warm, beatific light from recessed lights overhead. Where the pews have been removed, the audience sits in newly-installed row seats. A podium with microphone is situated between the two columns of seats. County residents have been speaking all morning about the state of the county's budget. One of the last speakers to arrive to the podium is a gruff looking man; his hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail that reaches the middle of his back; his thick padded blue plaid jacket covers a dingy gray sweatshirt and appears to scratch his neck. He places his thick dirty hands on the podium and begins to speak.

The first few minutes of his speech are spent berating the chair of the commission. His large, work-stained hands fiddle with his prepared remarks as he calls the chair arrogant, reminds the chair that he works for him, scolds the chair for driving a county-issued vehicle and finally adds, "You're a thief. If a thief were in my house, I'd shoot him and then call the sheriff. Yeah, you're a thief. I'd shoot you."

I'm sorry, what? I glance around and no one looks discomfited. The chair is scribbling furiously on his notepad. The sheriff's deputies look bored and stay put. I rest my chin on my hand to keep my jaw from going slack. Sure, the chair of the county commission is not the President of the United States, but are threats of violence so commonplace that a direct threat to an elected official elicits no reaction at all? Did I mention that there is no metal detector at the door? Did I also mention that the speaker is wearing a bulky jacket that could have easily concealed a weapon? It's not like it would be unprecedented for someone to just haul off and start shooting in unexpected places. At the end of the meeting, during the time on the agenda for the Chair's comments, the Chair notes the remark and states that he doesn't "quite know how to take that comment".

I'm sorry, what? Take it as another notch on the headboard of violence in politics. Violence in (and between) politicians is more common all over the world than I realized. In our own Congress in 1856, South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks caned Massachussetts Senator Charles Sumner over a damning speech Sumner gave about slavery and the Southern way of life during the "Bleeding Kansas" era of our history. Brooks beat Sumner with a cane he used after being injured in a political duel some 16 years prior. Just a few years ago in 2004, the Vice President told US Senator Patrick Leahy to "go f**k yourself" on the floor of the Senate -- verbal violence counts. And it's not just us. In 2005, members of the Ukrainian parliament came to blows over legislation for their entry to the World Trade Organization. In 2007, an Israeli parliament member slapped a lawyer who made a disparaging remark about his budget priorities and the Taiwanese parliament had a full-fledged brawl (article on both incidents here).

The assemblies in ancient Greece must not have been Tupperware parties either, judging from Caesar and Marc Anthony. Still, I like to think that we can disagree without being disagreeable and that there is still room at the table of participatory democracy for our better angels. To the man who began this story threatening the chair of the county commission because he felt his property taxes were too high, I say this: Sir, we live in a democracy. Here, the motto is you win some, you lose some, you throw some away. The reason we don't kill and maim elected officials we don't like is because the democratic experiment is based on the premise that we all get a fair chance to vote for our candidate and if she loses we still respect the winner's position because the next time around our candidate might win and we would want her opponent's supporters to treat her with respect. It's the give and take of democracy, dude. You should get used to it because the undemocratic nations I could point you to would not take kindly to your well-honed Wild West/Ted Kaczynski flair. I'm just sayin'.

Mama's First NSP House

2009-12-04T05:18:00.000-08:00

After finally completing the Sisyphean task of closing, mama has her first NSP house. Before you look at the pictures, I will warn you: It is NICE, people. It was only built a few years ago as part of a brand new subdivision that got caught in the maw of the financial/credit meltdown.

This house will require light rehab and roof work. We should be able to put a family in it within the next 2 months.

Three cheers for progress!

Part of the master bedroom:

Kitchen:

The Sisyphean Task of Closing

2009-12-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a mortal king who was accused of various misdeeds including robbery, murder and gossiping about Zeus' dalliances. To punish him, the gods sentenced him to push a large boulder up the side of a mountain and regardless of his effort, once it arrives almost to the top, the boulder rolls down the mountain where he must start pushing it to the top again, for eternity.

In my experience, real estate closings are sisyphean, except instead of there being just one person toiling alone, a whole team of people band together to push the boulder over the mountain but anything, a light wind, a wandering pebble, or someone stopping to tie his shoe will send the entire thing crashing back down to the valley where the whole team must all start again. In the last three years I have been involved in over 100 closings. A few times we were able to get the rock over the hill smoothly and on-time, but in most instances, the closings were delayed, pushed back, or rescheduled and we all slumped away drained and dejected to try again later.

All this is to say that after being nearly crushed by the boulder, I finally closed on my first NSP house!! I'll post pictures of it later, but I had to share my excitement at getting through the acquisition phase. Now on to getting contractor bids and choosing the general contractor whose team will make the house irresistible!

How Does Your Garden Grow?: OWW. Amending Soil Hurts

2009-11-30T06:43:00.000-08:00

I have complained on this blog many times about my obstinate, heavy, non-draining, angry, rock-filled clay soil. For this year's fall planting season I decided to do something about it. Before planting the 472 tulip, daffodil, pink oxalis and grape hyacinth bulbs that I accidentally bought this summer, I decided to dig 3 big flower beds, get rid of all the dirt and refill the beds with luscious, dark store-bought soil (I ended up planting 646 bulbs in all).

Like every other project I take on, it turned out to be WAY MORE WORK than I had ever imagined. There are 3 flowerbeds, each one is about 3 feet wide, approx. 20 feet long and one foot deep. Each bed holds approximately 1 gajillion pounds of heavy clay. At first my husband and I thought we could knock out the project over a few days. Sure, the digging wasn't fun and I am constantly mortified by how much stronger he is than I am, but we were making progress. Until Lawn Waste Trash Day. The guys didn't even attempt to take our 8 bags of heavy clay away. Instead, they put a big embarrassing neon green sticker on one bag that said "WRONG. LAWN CLIPPINGS ONLY." Blast. Now we had a problem because even though we could dig all day, we did not have the means to haul away 3 gajillion pounds of heavy clay.

I set to work through Craigslist and found some guys who would come out to dig the holes and haul the dirt. They worked for 10 hours digging and hauling. The poor guys didn't even have a pickax, so I let them use mine. Here is what one of the driveway beds looked like before:

and after:

I know it's hard to tell, but a foot down is deep. This is a picture of one of the workers standing in the hole:

This is the "short" bed at only 15 feet:

This bed, which fronts on the street, is longer than the car! Now it's filled with drowned tulips and topped with pansies.

As the guys finished digging a bed, my husband and I started to fill it with large bags of gypsum, soil conditioner and mushroom compost. We do not have a truck or a limitless supply of cash to spend on dirt, so after about 40 bags of dirt dumped into the gaping maw of earth made no dent in the work, we decided to mix in some of the original dirt. You have to use hoes and rakes to mix the compost, soil conditioner, gypsum and clay. It is hard work. We were covered with dirt when we finally came inside at 11:30pm and we were in unspeakable pain. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to peel off soil-caked clothing. It even hurt to lie down.

My only comfort was watching episode 3 of Glee on my Apple TV and drinking tea spiked with vodka (which, by the way, is divine).

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Cercospora Leaf Spot

2009-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

Seriously, dear readers, I'm about to toss my remaining hydrangea plants into the kindling pile.

You may recall when they were ravaged by mushroom root rot. Out of 9 original hydrangea, 6 of them survived the mushrooms only to be ravaged by something called cercospora leaf spot which also hitched a ride here from the nursery. The fungus doesn't have the decency to just kill the plants, it keeps them in this semi-weakened form where they are 1/2 yellow, 1/2 green and will not thrive or flower in the spring. The disease attacks the bottom leaves, and not matter how many I ctu off, there always new bottom leaves to get spotted, turn yellow, wither away and die. I'm advised to get a high nitrogen fungicide to kill the spores. I really feel like I'm in a bad relationship with my hydrangeas. We both know it's not working; we've grown apart but no one has the courage to just call it quits.

I'm not ready to break up just yet, though. I'm going to get the fungicide. We've fought through mushroom root rot and ravenous slugs, surely we can beat this leaf spot together. But if we can't, I will have ot put on my Dereon jeans, 6 inch stillettos and sing to those hydrangeas: "You must not know 'bout me/ You must not know 'bout me/ I could have another shrub by tomorrow/ so don't you ever for a second get to thinkin'/ you're irreplaceable...."

Witness the slow and dramatic death of a hydrangea with cercospora leaf spot.

Ten Things I Am Thankful For In My First Year of Non-profit Rehab and Gardening

2009-11-26T02:38:00.000-08:00

Looking back, I have a lot to be thankful for in my first year of single family home rehab and gardening. In fact, this started as a list of 5, then it grew to 10.

1) The extended Homebuyer Tax Credit. For all the people who will be on the other side of those newly renovated houses....keep buying!!

2) My First NSP Closing (more to come)

3) The Development Divas' sense of humor. Sometimes the reality of the enormity of the task we have taken on stresses us all to the breaking point. Still, we manage to smile, or even laugh: "Smile though your heart is breaking/Smile even though it's breaking..." -- thanks, Nat King Cole!

4) Patient family and friends who never complain when I go on ad nauseum about my work or when I spirit them off to look at my properties when we're just supposed to be going to the grocery store.

5) Really great real estate partners. There are a lot of posts here about real estate professionals who are behave less-than-professionally, but our partners (agents, inspectors and assorted consultants) are really a hard-working, fun group of top-notch experts who are driving our program to success.

6) Funny, friendly and unforgettable neighbors. From Rottweiler Phone Neighbor to the great kids on Gopher Pause Lane to all the others who just stop to wave, gossip or demand that I not put a renter on their street, all the neighbors make sure this work is never boring.

7) Our continued safety. I make light of crime, but I know we are all very lucky that we have not had so much as a frightening near-crime experience.

8) The varied decorating ideas I get from touring houses: How about putting roofing shingles inside the bathroom? Rustic!

Or using your kids' hands to spruce up the ceiling?

Or even documenting your love of live band music mural-style?

9) Pansies that don't stop blooming.

10) Smug, home-made, home-grown food.

Meetings: My Kryptonite

2009-11-24T05:56:00.000-08:00

Meetings are like my kryptonite. They drop into the workday, and with the sheer power of hot air and wasted hours, threaten to derail all semblance of productivity for the day.

My department of Development Divas (yes we are all women! Holla!) is constantly having a planned or impromptu meeting. There are also conference calls, vendor interviews, vendor coordination meetings and meetings with all of our local three-legged race jurisdiction partners. It's a wonder we can get anything done at all. Add to this that I am a horrible meeting participant. First, if the meeting is too early in the morning (before 10am) I am likely to show up wearing oversized sunglasses and clutching a huge cup of coffee like a real estate version of Rachel Zoe. Second, regardless of the meeting's start time I can only concentrate for 30-45 minutes at a stretch. After that, I start fiending for my Blackberry. When I've checked all emails, Facebook, and maybe even played a surreptitious game of Brickbreaker, then I start planning my next meal, my next outfit, or my next social outing. I start making off-topic stream-of-consciousness observations to myself: gee, her eyebrows look great; where did she get that lipstick; I wonder if he knows his socks don't match; my but she's a loud talker, I can't imagine her volume level when she's actually upset or maybe she's asserting her dominance over us by screaming I would have felt more comfortable if she'd just peed in the corner and marked her territory in that way at least it's not my office; I'm getting a headache; I think I'm hungry; and so on.

After an hour, I become like a fish heaved out of water. I can't stay still; I shift around in my seat; I make excuses to get up and walk around. If it were at all appropriate I would fall to the floor writhing and gasping for air.

Am I the most dramatic personification of Short Attention Span Theater ever or does anyone else agree that meetings and conference calls are life-force-leeching necessities of the working world?

Holla if you hear me!

Legally Blonde/Flippin' Birds

2009-11-20T05:38:00.000-08:00

"Legally Blonde" hit the theatres when I was in law school. Elle and her world were absolutely not real reflections of our own, but they were tinged with a heavy enough stain of truth to be a good parody and to remind us to lighten up a bit. The thing I found most endearing about Elle was that she mixed common sense practicality with an innate intelligence. She didn't lose herself in the weeds of philosophical purity; she got the job done with no-nonsense observations: "Happy people just don't shoot their husbands" and "the rules of hair care are simple and finite", hard work and a great pair of shoes. In my acquisition work, I am caught in a schism between opposing acquisition strategies that make me wish for some of Elle's Cosmo instincts that light the path from a wet perm to a murder conviction.

Remember when I wrote about the 2 battling acquisition strategies in our camp? There was one school of thought that wanted houses in great condition. These houses would cost a little more, but because they only required light renovations and were in desirable neighborhoods we could acquire them and heavily subsidize the purchase price for middle income families. The second school of thought wanted to leave the almost-ready homes for owner occupants to buy directly from the banks and asserted that the best use for government funds would be to buy houses that no one wanted, fix them up and return them to the market. We thought we could strike a nice balance and pick up houses that would satisfy both philosophies smorgasbord-style. That works in some areas, but not in the ones I am project managing. The market today is an entirely different animal than it was 6 months ago. In a race to cash in on the $8000 federal first time homebuyer tax credit, owner occupants have crowded back into the market. Investors smell the bottom and have come roaring back as well. The houses that are in great condition fly off the shelves like marked down Jimmy Choo slingbacks.

Thinking about all of the houses I have bid on or put offers in on only to lose makes me feel like Elle in Legally Blonde in the scene when she walks into the Harvard Halloween party underdressed as a Playboy Bunny: I'm doing all the right things in an environment that has totally changed and here I am wearing bunny ears in a shark tank. Just last week, I spent ALL DAY touring houses on Wednesday. I spent 2 hours on Friday preparing all of the prices for the 9 offers we wanted to put in. After I sent them to him, our agent told me that we had “missed our window of opportunity” for the week because we had taken too long to put in offers. Why didn't I give him the numbers on Thursday, you ask? Because on Thursday of that week I spent all afternoon touring another county with a different agent. I got her our offers on Friday too. One agent (selling a house that was so clean I could have slept in it that night) said that the Seller was awash in offers and wouldn’t accept anymore. The Seller stopped accepting offers?! What is this? 2005?! Fine. I haven’t heard back about the other houses yet, but our agent gently suggested that we increase our offers to listing price or better.

Surely higher offers would increase our success rate, but HUD’s regulations require that NSP participants pay at least 1% below appraised value. Without an appraisal, we have to rely on comparative market analyses to bid over the listing price and hope that we are still within range when an appraisal comes in. Yes, we do stipulate that if the property appraises for too little, we have the right to back out of the transaction but that makes our offer less palatable as well.

More importantly, if we are losing houses to owner-occupants who just got the deal of their lives, then so be it. I tried to be neutral about where I stood in the first post about this dilemma, but I think it's fair to say now that I am firmly aligned with the buy-busted-houses camp. We have never considered ourselves in competition with owner-occupants who don't mind giving a home a little TLC. However, my fear is that investors might be re-entering the market to buy and hold until the prices rebound. If they do that, the houses will remain vacant or may be rented to people who are not interested in being a stabilizing influence in the neighborhood. Not all investors are speculators with little regard for neighborhood health. Still, some of hardest hit neighborhoods have suffered deeply at the hands of unscrupulous investors and mortgage fraud schemes during boom and bust years (click here for an informative video on how mortgage fraud has destroyed communities in Atlanta, Georgia's West End neighborhood). However, the tightening of the market makes it increasingly more difficult for non-profits to meet the tight timelines imposed by HUD for the use of NSP funds. If you don't use it, you lose it and local governments are rightly exorcised at the possibility of losing federal funds that their neighborhoods desperately need.

No one has written the Legally Blonde version of low to middle-income housing rehab yet. The heroine will wear Puma, not pumps and I suspect she'll know her way around a wet saw (I'm talking to you, Paula and Angela). She'll be able to sweet talk ornery agents, quote mortgage payments off the top of her head, rattle off obscure HUD regulations and secure easy funding from commercial lenders with high loan-to-value ratios. Her love interest will be a struggling British primary mortgage lender with a heart of gold played by Colin Firth.

With the small screen being deluged in reality rehab and design divas, Hollywood has got to give us a development doyenne who is fictional enough to be funny but real enough to inspire. The story could revolve around the protagonist becoming proficient in buying and rehabbing houses in a subdivision where all the streets area named after birds. Her love interest will be a primary mortgage banker with a heart of gold played by Colin Firth. It'll be called "Flippin' Birds" (get it? get it? ha!). All right, Hollywood, start writing. As I wait for the premiere, I'll be stacking up homes that not even the "we buy ugly houses" people want. Sigh. Comic relief, please!

And THEN, Y'all...AND THEN....

2009-11-18T06:44:00.000-08:00

Well, let me just start at the beginning. I buy foreclosed houses. I don't always buy houses that I would want to live in, but houses that someone would want to live in. This particular house falls in the latter category. In my opinion, the floor plan is suboptimal, it needs a lot of work and more vision than I currently have, plus 2 yippy dogs live next door. We had been unenthusiastically going back and forth in negotiations over this house when the seller finally decided to accept our offer. I did not celebrate. But I did complete the rest of the post-acceptance process: ordered a work write-up and an appraisal and sent in the approval form to the County. By this point in the process, we have spent many staff hours and sunk costs into the property. This is also the house that befouled my Calvin Klein suit with spiderwebs. All so that the County can send me a curt email: "123 Crappy House Lane is in a flood plain." Huh?! BOOOO!!! We check for flood plains before we go to all of this trouble, but recent apocalypse floods in the metro area have altered all of the flood plain maps, so sometimes unpleasant surprises do still arise.

I instructed our agent to please pull the offer. We were well within our due diligence period and didn't want to sink any more time or money into this property. Our agent, who has put in far more work on this offer than the listing agent has, completely understood and told the listing agent, who is also the listing agent for another property we have an offer in on, to please pull the offer.

And THEN y'all, AND THEN the listing agent wrote our agent a superstank email and copied me on it (unprofessional!). Essentially, she expressed disbelief that the house could be in a flood plain (like we just made it up; like we'd have to make up an excuse to withdraw during due diligence, you silly woman) and then said that we'd have to have all government inspections completed on the 2nd property she is representing before she'll take the offer to the seller on that one. But here's the thing: that's a crappy house too. I'd have bought it if the seller had accepted the offer, but I'm not going to beg her to take the offer to the seller. That particular house is half-brick, half-cinder block, needs all new everything and is not in what one would call a desirable neighborhood. So boo to you, lady. Now you can sit on both of those clunkers. Let me know how those commissions are flowing.

I'm mostly bitter because her attitude was totally out of all proportion to the slight. Real estate is unreliable and fickle in these times, especially in the foreclosure market. To prove how much up and down we go through in a day, here is my house tally from this workday:

Offers accepted by the seller: 4
Offers accepted and then pulled by the seller: 1
(This was on a house I salivated over; and this is the second time the seller has pulled my winning bid on this house. The second time! But did I stink up the room with my reply? No, I sweetly gave thanks for the opportunity to be turned down again and asked to be held as a back up. Because I have home training.)
Offers accepted and then pulled by the buyer: 1
Net contracts for the day: 2

Real estate thing is a capricious undertaking in a small world, people. No need to get nasty; long memories cement bad reputations.

Post-script: the second house, the one the listing agent created all new hoops for us to jump through, has just gone through a price reduction -- to the price we originally offered. Are we going to reinstate our offer? No. See what ugly gets you? A big steaming bowl of nothing.

I Am Too Pretty For This....

2009-11-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Standing on the porch of an empty and foreclosed house after a government meeting that featured lots of yelling, I am staring at a lockbox that is so covered in cobwebs that I think it might be leftover Halloween decorations. I'm wearing a suit. It's Calvin Klein, people. I don't even like being out here in Calvin Klein. But here I am. Standing on a porch by myself in clear contravention of the boss of me's rules about visiting houses alone. With the time change, it's getting dark quickly.

I feel like I am only kind of breaking the rules since this is actually a visit to a house we are in active negotiations on. I'm only here to make a bulleted list of the upgrades we want that might not be obvious to the person doing the rehab estimate such as new entryway flooring, new cabinets, new bathroom vanity, take down the dated arches in the dining room hallway, etc. I'm still going to be chastised for being out here, but the real problem is this ridiculous spider web. I don't even have a tissue or a branch. And it's getting dark; and there are snoopy neighbors about so I can't stand on this porch forever. I whisper heartfelt regrets to Calvin, tell myself that I am too pretty for this, and work the lockbox through the spiderwebs. What's worse is that I'm wearing a thick tacky lip gloss that reaches out for all airborne debris and plasters it across my mouth. Even though my mouth was nowhere near the door I felt like the entire web was draped on my lips. I am writing this hours later and I am still wiping my mouth.

As I walk into the house, I remember that there is no electricity so if I close and lock the door for security, I'll be standing in the dark. I hate foreclosed houses. I go back to my car for my flashlight, see the work gloves which I foolishly left in the car during the cobweb battle and go back to the house. I switch on the flashlight, close the door, and the place suddenly wreaks of wet carpet. Every room now seems to have been recently occupied by squatters. Why are there branches on the floor in one of the bedrooms? Who left clothes in the bathtub? My bravado is melting away into swirling visions of me and my Calvin suit being tortured to death over long days in this stinking dark house. Ack! I started to walk more quickly and make my rehab declarations out loud in an effort to make some noise and to remember what to write down when I was back in the safety of the car, "New flooring in the downstairs hallway, all new light fixtures, clean up the ceiling in the hot water heater closet, all new interior doors..." .

Back on the porch, I felt more secure but I was faced with the trauma of replacing the webby key in the lockbox. Oh, Muhammad Ali, I am too pretty for this.

Crime is Cramping My Acquisition Style

2009-11-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

You can probably tell from some past posts that when I have a few hours available, I will sometimes hop in the car with my HUD key, list of addresses and GPS to take quick tours of 5-7 hours at a time. I find this is an efficient method of reviewing houses because it doesn't require me to spend time calling listing agents and begging them to grant me access to their properties and it doesn't require that I coordinate my schedule with several other over-committed people so we can go out as a group. I can just go, check out the houses and go home to play Deal or No Deal with HUD. Easy.

As usual, it seems as though things can never remain very easy for very long. A spate of random shootings is putting the cabosh on my impromptu solo viewings. A co-worker sent an email with 4 or 5 scary headlines about random shootings to the CEO and copied the Development Divas. Our director immediately replied that we were all banned from visiting houses by ourselves. I argued that although the shootings were unexplained they were not particularly random -- what was some dude doing shuffling around in front of a gas station at 2:30am anyway? That's certainly not when I do my house hunting. Also, when I go look at houses by myself I lock the door behind me instead of leaving it wide open as so many agents do. With her patented "Toddlers" argument style from the Great Pool Debacle of 2009, my director told me that locking the door was of little utility because if someone has been squatting inside of the house then I wouldn't be able to make as quick an escape if the door were locked. Preening from that tautological victory, she then laid out in detail the unexplained double murder last year of 2 on-site agents at a new subdivision in the metro region.

I don't take these dangers lightly, but statistically it's more dangerous for me to drive to work every morning than to go see vacant houses alone. So I told her I'd think about it. She said she'd tell my husband and see what he thought about my risky behavior. I exploded, "He's not the boss of me!" Sometimes the most juvenile response is just the most appropriate.

That evening, I told my husband the story. At the end, when I was expecting support, he just blinked and said, "You do realize that she actually is the boss of you, right?"

Smack down.

I told my boss about my husband's reaction the next day. She dissolved into laughter and did the cabbage patch right there in my office. I'll be safe, but I'll be salty.

CONFIDENCE: Thank you, Muhammad Ali

2009-11-12T06:04:00.000-08:00

Usually when I am feeling low I like to think of \lyrics from "Sound of Music": "I have confidence in sunshine/I have confidence in rain/I have confidence that spring will come again/besides which you'll see I have confidence in me!"

But yeah, this whole work overload/nervous breakdown thing is getting to me. So I had to turn to a slightly stronger character for inspiration: Muhammad Ali. Whenever I feel like the world is closing in, all eyes are on me; all accusing fingers are pointing at me; I'll never close on another house again and my perfect little birthstone will sit vacant forever I just channel The Greatest. And he says:

"There's not a man alive who can whup me.
I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty.
I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked."

Hells yeah. I AM too smart. And too fast. And too pretty. I will buy houses, make them desirable, safe and code-compliant. And I will SELL THEM. And then the USPS will have to put ME on a stamp. Because that is the only way I'll ever get licked.

Back to the grind. I have 15 offers pending. 2 houses under contract and about 70 houses under review in 3 jurisdictions. I closed three condos in an unNSP-related program on a Friday evening 2 hours after everyone else had left the office. I am overseeing the resale of 11 condos in that same program and marketing 11 more for sale. I closed refinancing on 3 houses and need to arrange financing for the 2 I have under contract. I am helping to organize a meeting about a county's code rewrite, a roundtable with a Congressman and am assisting in the sale of a multi-family property. But I'm feeling pretty good. I may just float like a butterfly...and sting like a bee.

The Enemy is Me

2009-11-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

For instance, a senior associate called me into her office one afternoon to go over some documents. I brought the documents with me all paperclipped because the partner we were working for hated staples. After making me sit in her office while she finished her personal call for 20 minutes, she grabbed the documents from me, threw back her head and started cackling, “Ha, ha, ha, you’ve never worked for me before. I hate paperclips!” all the while ripping off the paperclips and throwing them around like confetti. “Hate them! Hate them! Hate them!”

I kind of just stared at her blankly because this kind of nonsense was par for the course (and actually quite mild in comparison to other antics) in BIGLAW during my tenure there. But the point is this: I just had a similar experience but the crazy person was ME!! An inspector brought me beautiful full color rehab reports on a few properties to review, but as I started to sift through them I realized that in his haste to give me these beautifully packaged reports he put the pictures for House A with the report for House B. I just started laughing, took the reports apart and starting flinging the report covers and bindings around my office. Now I slip on plastic report covers as I move around my 10x10 office.

I think the stress is getting to me.

3 Jurisdictions + 3 Launches = 1 Exhausted Project Manager

2009-11-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

Warning: My frustration level is about THIS HIGH. So, if reading someone ranting and raving, complaining and whining on a Friday is not your idea of a good time, check me next week when perhaps I will be a little more Mary Poppins because right now I am feeling more Ursula than Ariel.

Today's Calculation of Frustration: 3 Jurisdictions + 3 Program Launches + 2 Stroppy Bureaucrats)/2 Well-meaning Micro Managers = 1 Exhausted Project Manager on the War Path.

No sooner than I write a post about liking workaholics that I darn near have a weeklong nervous breakdown from work overload. And a real estate agent we work with to buy houses just called to see my "workaholic" and raise me a foreclosed home tour from 3pm to 8pm on Monday night. I folded.

As you know, we were finally given the go ahead to get started buying houses. And about 2 weeks after getting the "clear to launch" our local government partners have already jumped out of pocket, starting running around the room and generally riding herd. They were requesting face-to-face meetings and calling before 10am with idle threats. Please, if you want to effectively threaten me, wait until after 11am. Before then, I can only sort of listen and nod with the vague understanding of someone whose mind is still in the morning mush stage.

Now I have had time to absorb all that has happened. And here are my generalized responses:

Dear Jurisdiction 1, you have a lot of nerve. You have given me a sliver of the toughest, most crime-plagued neighborhoods in the city with a housing stock that is older than the Union itself and asked me to turn it around in the blink of an eye. With 5 dollars. You are delusional. You have also requested that I only sell, not rent, the houses. Oh my dear sweet partners, I would love to take you on a daytime tour of these neighborhoods where an unfamiliar car draws young men out of their houses, where young women are actively marketing their wares and where a news van just hangs out waiting for the next story.

Rehabbing for neighborhood stabilization reminds me of gardening. Although I may think begonias are beautiful and have a deep desire to have them in my garden, if I just plunk a few down in my hard, weed-choked soil and walk away, they will die. I have to prepare the ground. I have to pull weeds, mix nutrients in the ground and make sure the plant will have the right sun/shade mix so that it will thrive. It's the same with scattered site rehab. We do not have enough money to buy out entire blocks or neighborhoods and change the very nature of the soil, so we have to choose ground to sow that is somewhat ready for planting. I drove through neighborhoods earlier this week that were heartbreaking. Most of the houses were abandoned, vacant, boarded up or in deep disrepair. It was in the middle of the day, but no one seemed to be at work or at school. There was a sense of listlessness and isolation tinged with menace. What am I supposed to do over there, dear readers? Buy 3 of the 10 empty houses I can see without turning my head? Let's say I could get them rehabbed without having to replace everything in the house multiple times due to theft. Now they are ready for sale. Who will buy them? In my town, lucky "urban pioneers" get robbed when they are not at home; the unlucky ones are assaulted in their homes, pistol whipped in front of their children and then robbed by roving bands of dysfunctional and untethered young men. The jurisdiction is apoplectic about the possibility of renting the houses, so what then? Shall we let them sit empty for 12 months or more? Is pretty blight better than ugly blight? I think blight is blight. Here is my suggestion, Jurisdiction 1. Let me work in a slightly wider sliver so that I can get into neighborhoods that are actually tipping point neighborhoods and not tipped over neighborhoods.

Dear Jurisdiction 2, please do not tell me about how I need to be buying more houses more quickly when you have a 30 day minimum approval period for acquisition. It is not 2008. We are not the only people out there buying houses. There is no such thing as a 30 due diligence period in a residential home sale. That sort of nonsense just kills deals. The banks could care less that we are a non-profit working with the county's NSP program. You may have heard the phrase "money talks, bs walks." It's still true.

Dear Jurisdiction 3, bless your heart. You are so in earnest to get everything right with crystal clear "processes" that you will ne-e-e-e-ver get started. Never. AND because you are passive-aggressive, you COLD IGNORE the emails I send you that contain clear-cut action items in them. Action items that we previously agreed to. I have spent/wasted about 35 hours hunting for houses, putting in offers on houses, sitting in conference calls and meetings and writing 11 million different lists and spreadsheets for you. I am all out of effort in this relationship. I need you to put your back in it, too. Until you can meet me halfway, I am putting you on ice.

So yeah. Working for governments is like being bound up in red tape, dropped into the English Channel and being told to swim for the shores of Calais. Fast. Or being in a 3 legged sack race -- too many limbs, too close together with too little coordination. We get to the finish line, but we don't get there quickly and after making so many stumbles on the way to the goal, our hair is a mess, our clothes are filthy and the people who opted out of the race (the investors) went and ate all the cake while we we were madly hopping about the fairground.

On days like this I feel like a flailing swimmer, flapping about in the ocean with a life jacket on spending way too much energy just to keep her head barely above water. Add to that the fact that I have been having fond memories of my former life at the law firm when at 8:30pm I would be preparing to order a sashimi dinner on the client, here I am digging into my bottom drawer to make saltine and peanut butter crackers. It's a lifestyle choice that I consciously made and through all of the irksome obstacles, I am much happier here in this ocean of hyperactive ambitions than I was there in that cesspool of dashed dreams. But still. No one told me I was signing up for a 3-legged race.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Indoor Plants Growing Like Weeds and an Update on the Outdoors

2009-11-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

Hello dear readers. Today's post is the promised update on the progress of my indoor plants. The paperwhite narcissus bulbs are sending roots down and sprouts up. They grow so fast that they make me a little nervous. I highly recommend paperwhites for a super easy indoor growing project. All you need is a container, rocks and water. Easy! I'll post more pictures when we have blooms.

The pumpkins are reaching the end of their capacity, I think. I read up on growing pumpkins and apparently they just love full sun. Way to sell the seeds in October, Target. I've been keeping them inside to try to simulate as much warmth as possible, but I don't think I'll be seeing any "great pumpkins" out of these seeds. It was fun for $1, though.

Even though there is a lot of activity going on indoors, the fall continues to be an interesting time outside as well. I am in the process of amending the soil in approx. 180 sq ft of garden beds in the front yard, planting 646 spring bulbs (tulips, oxalis, daffodils, grape hyacinths), a wildflower garden and other assorted bushes and flowers for a spring and summer show.

I'll leave the tales of fall planting pain and misery to another post, now let's take a look at some planting that has been successful. I bought a raspberry plant from a local nursery a few weeks ago and it has been producing like a champ. Check it out:

I also have a little knock out rose bush out back. Its cohort died because this full-sun loving plant apparently doesn't actually love full sun. ANYWAY, I thought that after the 3 blooms it put out all summer it was kaput for the year, but then I noticed this itty bitty little bud.

Finally, during the summer I ordered 50 late-blooming mum plants. My husband was incredibly supportive, helping me to dig 3 50 foot long trenches on the rocky, hard clay hill in the backyard. For a week in July (when the plants arrived) he and I toiled and dropped big pools of salty sweat on that hill to get the mums in the ground. He installed sprinklers to keep them watered and then the summer sun burnt every single one of them to a crisp. Seasoned gardeners all said I was crazy for having planted them so early, but what reputable nursery sends live plants out of planting season? After being angry about the mass die-off for about a month, I forgot about the mums. And then one day, one miraculous day, there was inexplicable color on the dry, weed-choked hill:

A few of the mums, 13 of the original 50, survived! And are in bloom!! Crazy! This is a shot of a row of 5 or so mums that have bounced back. I wanted to have 3 rows of 50 mums dotting the hill in the backyard, but this is lovely and I will take what I can get.

Don't Let Your Mouth Write a Check Your Work Ethic Can't Cash

2009-11-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

I have a secret confession: I like workaholics. To be sure, I complain constantly about their incessant emails and phone calls; how they always have a new idea, new project, or some other fresh hell in which to enmesh me. I am surrounded by workaholics at work and at play. The people I volunteer with seem to be driven by obsession; my work colleagues send emails at all hours. But blast it all, those crazies make me better. Push me harder. And make sure I am never bored. When my Facebook friends can't find anything good to post, Twitter is quiet and Gmail is a grayed-out graveyard of read emails, I can always count on my workaholic colleagues to keep things jumping with calendar requests that I will pretend I didn't see and tersely worded missives about passing deadlines (I send most of those, but whatever). Sometimes I feel like my job is like the final weeks of a political campaign all the time -- there is always an emergency, we never stop working, we are supposed to look and act professionally while being tired, hungry and loopy, and we really think we are going to change our corner of the world. There is an essence in that kind of environment that carries an energy all its own. It is difficult to convey, but it is real.

How-and-the-ever, please please please do not fake the funk. Because acting as a developer gives me lots of opportunities to hire consultants, I am constantly bombarded with people who do a lot of jaw-jacking about all the work they do when they should be using that energy doing the work. There are a lot of big talkers in the real estate industry, like in any other. I have a contractor who constantly tells me that he can move faster getting the work done than I can get approval for it. Unproven. His work is beautiful, but he dilly dallies in getting me estimates and puts the wrong address on his invoice (let me tell you something, if I were lucky enough to be able to invoice someone for something you had best believe that my mailing address would be correct). There are other contractors who promise the moon but can't seem to locate pictures of their work or references. Bureaucrats who need that paperwork now(!!) only to use it to provide adequate pillow stuffing and inspectors who dazzle me with jargon and long histories of their storied careers; then I get the report and it's WRONG.

Sigh. I am not a tough customer. I dole out the benefit of the doubt long before it is earned. True, I am an email refresher and a follow-up caller. I might also send an email to follow up on my phone call because WHERE ARE YOU WE ARE CLOSING TODAY. In my defense, the better our consultants perform, the better we look and everyone goes home happy. So understand, if you tell me you are the bomb, I will be expecting explosions. Don't let your mouth write a check that your work ethic can't cash.

Happy Halloween: I Need A Pain & Suffering Stipend

2009-10-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

This morning I met one of our agents bright and early for an all-day tour of one of our counties. I jumped in his car and we set off. He was borrowing this car from a friend because his vehicle had been totaled. The friend had left a stray unwrapped candy in the car for a few days and dear readers, the car was overrun by ants. On the passenger side. Where I was sitting. You can tell by reading this blog that I am very professional (just go with it, okay), so at first I tried to hide my horror and used napkins to capture and kill the ants that were popping out of the console and dashboard. I could just imagine that they were getting in my purse, in my hair, on my clothes, but I tried to be very blasé-pioneer-woman about it. Until I saw one on my seat. I couldn’t kill it fast enough and I squealed. The agent, who was sitting on the ant-free side of the car thought my reaction was completely disproportionate to the threat, but very funny. I’m glad someone was enjoying himself.

Later that day, we were touring through a subdivision of houses that looked inviting from the outside, but were disasters inside. One house had chewed up carpets, an abandoned mirrored wet bar, a poker room and big piles of rat droppings everywhere. The little girl’s room (all pink with animal stickers on the wall) was covered in the tell-tale pellet.The kitchen counter was barely visible. I was paralyzed expecting giant rats with red eyes carrying bubonic plague fleas to burst forth and feast on my trembling limbs.It didn’t happen. But it could have.

The second to last house we went in was infested with biting gnats which did feast on my arms, face and hands. The walls and carpets were so caked in mold that I ran out of the house nauseous and gasping for air. I was immediately accused of being pregnant instead simply being worn down by the events of the day. By the end of the day, I was sick, itchy, and suffering from delusions of ants crawling all over me. I wonder if I can get worker’s comp.

Bridging the Gap between Want and Need: Champagne Tastes on a Kool Aid Budget

2009-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

We stand in the kitchen arguing about the utiltity of keeping cabinets that are older than 1990. I point out that with some new hardware, these cabinets could really get a new lease on life. My boss is fingering the covering that is peeling from one side of the cabinets and yells, "Look at this! They look terrible! New cabinets!" But I all I hear is .

I'm not just being hard on my boss. Our entire development department is extremely gun-shy from our first experience with a contractor who did lackluster work (a brand new roof is leaking 6 months after installation? A door fell off its hinges? The gas company wouldn't turn on the gas? Jigga?). To avoid those problems, on this go-round our desired scope of work is outsized: all new systems (flooring, HVAC, furnace), new cabinets, new appliances, new interior paint, new exterior paint/siding where needed, beautiful trim, no fiberglass tub surrounds, natural tile in all bathrooms and kitchens, all new fixtures. Not to mention the "green" touches that include insulation batts in the crawl space, blown-in insulation in the attic and new windows. I am here to tell you that is a pricey scope of work. One estimate came back at $69,000 -- for a $73,000 house! Obviously that is not sustainable or affordable, so we find ourselves in a quandary. We need a champagne product. We have kool-aid money.

Normally this paragraph would be the one where I tell you how we found a solution. But we haven't yet. I think we're going to have to get started on some rehab work before we can plot a reliable path to affordable quality on a large scale. My first acquisition closing is in 3 weeks., then the construction work begins. Stay tuned.

There's More than One Way to Skin a Cat on Gopher Pause Lane

2009-10-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

When looking at foreclosed houses, we often check out the rest of the neighborhood to see if there are other houses in the immediate area that are also vacant and foreclosed that we can pick up as well. Turning multiple houses within a few blocks of each other gives us a greater opportunity to maximize the impact of public funds aimed at helping to keep neighborhoods from tipping into vacant danger zones.

With that in mind, I went cruising around a few days ago looking at HUD foreclosed homes. I found one in a subdivision that I liked. In true subdivision style, the house was on a street called Gopher Pause Lane, not Paws as in feet, but Pause as in "The Men All Pause" (thank you, Klymaxx). I should have known it would be an eventful evening.

The out of control lawn at the house next door to the HUD house made me think it might be vacant so I jotted down that address for further research. Another house, across from the HUD house, also had the general disheveled look of a vacant house and a lockbox. There was no sign out front, so I drove over to get the address, but I couldn't find it. Usually when I look at houses, I do it in the middle of the day so most of the neighbors aren't home. I was behind that day, so it was about 6pm and I was not able to prowl in private, as is my wont. A young man in his teens was standing on his lawn watching me do the drive-by roll back and forth in front of the vacant house. My window was down so he called out, "You trying to find somebody?"
"No, I'm just trying to find the address on this house. Do you know it?"
"Nah," and he walked over to the car where we started up a conversation about all kinds of things: how the neighborhood used to be so much more fun when there were lots of kids hanging around outside in the middle of the street, but since the police broke it up it's been really quiet and by the way, police helicopters are brown and gold, not silver and black like the one flying overhead now; how if I am not the one moving in, could we please find families with teenage girls so he won't have to get in his car to visit girls; and finally about how he is going to complete his education so he can buy a nice house that is the envy of his friends.

At that point, he started yelling over to his backyard where 2 other young men were, "Hey! Shot me one! Shot me one!"
"What's 'shot me one'?" I asked, still sitting in my car.
"I'm asking him for a cigarette."
"A cigarette?! You are too young to be smoking!"
"I'm a grown man," he protested.
"A grown man in high school," I shot back.
He grinned. "Yeah."

At this point the 2 guys and a younger girl came over to the car. He introduced me to them as his cousins and sister. After the pleasantries, they offered to help me find the address. I got out of the car and started poking around under the overgrowth on the curb then someone piped up behind me, "Hey, why don't you look inside to see if there is any mail with the address on it?"
"I can't get inside. There's a lockbox," I yelled back.
Then silence. And again the grin, "I can get you inside. We used to hang out in there, but it's boring now."
Before I could protest, my new friend had sauntered over and opened the unsecured garage door which led to an open door inside the house.

Well, you know I ducked on into the house to see whether they had ruined it and if I wanted it. They didn't and I did. As I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching one kid wave unopened mail over the bannister, another kid called out from the front of the house that he had found the broken mailbox under the front porch. It had enough numbers on it for me to ascertain the address and after the young girl asked her brother to bring home an old mirror that was lying in the garage of the house (if it had been a fixture I would have protested but sometimes you have to pick your battles), we started heading away from our trespass. After a brief tutorial on my hair (I have locks), I got in the car, promised to try to find families with daughters and left.

I'm learning to be flexible in this line of work. So there is more than one way to skin a cat on Gopher Pause Lane.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Indoors!

2009-10-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

The fall planting season is upon us and I have BIG plans. I purchased 472 bulbs in a blind buying orgy in May and they have all arrived. They are crowding out everything else in the refrigerator as I wait for the weather to cool down enough to plant fall bulbs. An expert at a neighborhood nursery told me that I should wait until after Thanksgiving (jaw drop). I told her that my husband would kick me in the face if I told him that those 472 bulbs would displace food in our refrigerator for another 6 weeks. She looked uncomfortable. Oh I'm sorry ma'am, our banter hasn't progressed enough for you to realize that I use "kick in the face" all the time for "will be mildly annoyed". I know, wildly inappropriate.

ANYWAY, this post is about indoor plants. I am trying 2 new indoor plants: pumpkins and paperwhites. I bought the Buzzy pumpkin quick start packet in the $1 aisle at Target. It included 5 pumpkin seeds and a soil pellet. You start the seeds right in the bag on your counter! I didn't believe it would work, but how could I resist for only $1? Well shut my mouth and call me Nelly if those seeds didn't start to sprout in 4 days!!

4 days after planting (aerial view):

4 days after planting (front view):

8 days after planting:

On the 8th day I transferred them to a larger pot. Check out the root system that grew inside the bag!

Yippers! Nelly!

I have also become enticed by the promise of paperwhite daffodils ("narcissus" for the horticulturist in you). They are bulbs that you can plop in a vase with a bit of water and they'll bloom in 4-6 weeks! We shall see. Here are mine on day 1:

I'll keep you posted.

Happy indoor gardening! It's a heckuva lot easier than breaking through heavy clay with a pickax for hours. More on that later.

Ugh. Today I Should Have Stayed In Bed

2009-10-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

Today reminded me of a line in "The Day I Tried to Live" by Sound Garden when Chris Cornell wails "I should have stayed in bed..." with all the pent-up angst of a person whose day has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The CEO of my company tapped me to fill in for him at a training for using NSP funds. I was going to the training anyway, but somehow our company had been designated as the seminar's water boy. That meant I was stuck lugging around a "light" (read: made of solid lead) tin beverage tub and about 45 soda cans. The CEO, a man, promised me it was a light load that he had easily carried from his car to the meeting place for an earlier seminar. I always insist that I do not carry heavy items or move furniture at work, so he walked the sodas and the tub from his car to mine before we left the office. It looked heavy to me, but as I have mentioned before, he is outrageously kind, so I never dreamed he would lead me astray. And besides, what was I going to say? "No, Boss. I'm not doing that. Find another sucker. In this economy I could *easily* find another job."

The next morning (today) I am, of course, running behind. I still need to buy ice and regular sodas because all we had left were Sprite and Diet Cokes. My first stop is to a convenience store near my house. As I was walking into the store, a grown man riding a small BMX bike weaved over to me and said, "Hey, Black." I was really excited because usually black men only refer to each other that way, so I felt like I had been admitted to a little club! But that was the highlight of the entire morning.

The (in)convenience store had neither ice nor coke. On my way to the highway, a guy running a light that had been red for about 10 seconds nearly t-boned my car. Still shaking, I went to another store that had only ice, but no coke. In the third store, I found both ice and coke. Score.

Now I'm really late, still mad about the near-accident and hot. I got to the meeting place and I literally could not get the tub out of the back of my car. Remember, I had never moved it because my CEO carried it from his car and placed it in mine. The tub was huge, weighed at least 40 lbs by itself and had 20 lbs of sodas and ice in it. I began grumbling. LOUDLY.

At the moment of my greatest strife, a woman who is in a powerful elected position in my city arrived to the meeting place talking on her cell phone. By that time, I had unloaded14lbs of ice and half the sodas, but I was still struggling to get the tub out of the back of my 2-seater. Graciously, she got off the phone and came to my aid (and honestly, if she hadn't I would have talked about her until I grew hoarse because VIP or not, it is RUDE to strut by an acquaintance in distress).

The VIP tried to talk me down: "Hey girl, can I help you?"
"No." I said obstinately. "There just aren't going to be any drinks. This thing is ridiculously heavy and it's too big to get out of the car!"
"Well you got it in--"
"I didn't get it in! My boss put it in!"
"Well if he got it in, we must be able to get it out. And...there. Let me help you take this stuff inside."
And off she went, escorted by angel wings.

The police here are known for their quickfire parking tickets so I moved my car to a legal parking spot and ran back into the meeting room, not realizing that I left my hazard lights on from the unloading ordeal.

When I came out of the meeting 2 hours later, my car battery was completely dead. "Galileo," I said to my vehicle (because that's his name), "Come on. We can do this. They were just hazard lights." But no matter how much I sweet-talked him, Galileo refused to start. I just gave up. I called my husband and asked him to just come pick me up because I was DONE WITH THE DAY. He asked what I was going to do with my car. "Leave it! What's someone going to do? Steal it? Hrumph."

My colleague came over to see what was happening and as I walked over to her I stepped in gum. I was starving. There was fresh gum all over my heel. My car wouldn't start. And it was unbearably hot. I just started to deflate like a balloon that has been pricked by a pen -- it doesn't explode, the air just sssseeeepsss out.

But then I remembered. I'm surrounded by construction types! Someone has got to have jumper cables! And someone did! I got a jump, Galileo snapped to, I took my husband off of emergency car/wife breakdown duty and drove back to work.

When I finally dragged myself into the office in the early afternoon, I had 73 new emails and it wasn't even 2pm. "I should have stayed in beeeed!!!"

Rottweiler Phone Neighbor Update

2009-10-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

You may remember this post about the Rottweiler Phone Neighbor (RPN) at one of my houses. He's the one who parks various vehicles in my driveway and knows the history of the neighborhood. Well, one day I was checking on the house and he told me why he parks cars in my driveway: since retirement he has taken to detailing cars -- in the driveway of my house! Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said, "I've been noticing your car and you really need to get it detailed. It looks baaad." Wow. Now every time I go over there he reminds me about the need to get my car detailed. And he even told my husband that his car needed detailing too! Way to be, RPN. Just make sure no one breaks in the house, 'kay? Thanks.

Now that RPN and I are BFFs, he feels free to come to me with all kinds of requests. The other day I stopped by the house and he approached me (RPN is allllways home) while gesturing expansively toward the overgrown yard, shaking his head and tsk, tsk, tsking, "What is goin' on over there?"

"Hey, RPN," I greeted him. "I know it's a bit out of control. I'll make sure it gets mowed."

"Well I wuuzzz gonna hit it when I did my own lawn," he hinted.

"Really?" I asked him, letting him know I was taking the bait and he could finish his thought.

"But I didn't know if I was gonna get paid!" He finished.

"We pay our bills, RPN. I'll check with my property manager and have her contact you."

"Aren't you the owner? Don't you have the money?" He pressed me.

"Noooo. She is in charge of keeping the house straight. I am just the owner. I'll have her contact you."

When I contacted the property manager, she told me that she doesn't like getting involved with neighbors because they are always bugging her about getting paid immediately. I asked her to throw RPN a bone because I needed his good will. She called him and he cut the grass. A few days later I received a groggy sounding voicemail from a woman telling me she was a neighbor of the house and to please call her back. When I called back the new classic, "She's a 5 Star **tch" blared in my ear as the ring tone until a very tired sounding woman answered the phone. She told me she was RPN's wife (Erp?!) and he needed to get paid for cutting the lawn. Ack! The neighbor harassment had already started and she was calling me!! I told her I'd call the property manager and we'd handle it.

The property manager said that the woman had already called her all loud, rowdy and wrong, demanding payment in cash. I was beside myself with laughter and then she topped it off: "And she is none of his wife. She can claim it, but she can't claim it like you can!" I am a newlywed. I laughed so hard I nearly ran off the road. I really need to get a bluetooth. And a professional lawn guy.

The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: A Post Script

2009-10-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

A post script on the Great Pool Debacle of 2009: The recent Noah floods that deluged the metropolitan area FILLED UP THE BLESSED POOL even higher than it was before meaning that we had to drain it. AGAIN. I am about to hire prison labor to tear that friggin’ pool out of the ground with their bare hands.

Chatting Up the Neighbors

2009-10-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

An important part of keeping your vacant house more or less safe during all of the time you are not there is striking up a good relationship with your neighbors. They are a great source of "eyes" and may also direct their friends and contacts to the house as potential buyers or renters. Going into a new neighborhood can be difficult since no one trusts real estate professionals anymore, but being in the South helps.

I always enter a neighborhood with lots of smiles, waves and greetings; when the time is right, I put on the full charm offensive. This neighborhood gave me me some trouble though. The next door neighbor to the right has 2 dogs, one is a pit bull, that go completely batshit crazy whenever someone approaches the house. One of those dogs is the one that bit one of our contractors.

The next door neighbor on the left has two grim rottweilers that used to pop up and bark at me while he talked on the phone in the front yard. The dogs are bored of me now. They can barely muster a growl when I arrive. Rottweiler Phone Neighbor had been parking his and his friends' cars in the driveway of my house and though it made my blood boil, I knew it was a small offense. Besides, parked cars make the house looked occupied. So fine.

We wrote letters to and called Animal Control on Mad Dog Neighbor and now the dogs are no longer a problem. To help you keep the DogI don't ever see Mad Dog Neighbor. Rottweiler Phone neighbor, however, I see all the time.

ANYWAY, after the house had been staged and was looking fabulous, I started chatting up Rottweiler Phone Neighbor. He told me had been a resident of the street for 15 years. I wanted him on our side and I wanted to show him that we were doing good work and were not fly-by-night real estate parasites. Much to his surprise, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, I invited Rottweiler Phone Neighbor (RPN) in to check out the house. He was blown away by how beautiful it looked and he started to let me in on the history of the neighborhood. Here's a brief rundown:

2 houses across the street have been owner-occupied for 20 years. That makes me feel good;
One house across the street was vacant for 12 years (I just about fainted right there on the porch). It has just been rented (probably for $15 a month but WHATever!!);
A house two houses to our left just rented for $600. I've seen pictures of this house online. Supposedly it has been renovated, but it looks tuurrrrrrible -- sloppy paint, unfinished floors, a messy yard, and an anemic kitchen. Am I jealous that the owner has beaten me and rented his house already? Yes! But we can't even cover our operating costs at $600 a month, so c'est la vie;

After these tidbits, the stories start getting interesting:

The owner of the house directly across the street won the lottery a few years ago and sold his house. It turns out that he held title to the property with a wild deed (a wild deed gives the impression of a scroll running screaming through the streets waving its arms with its ribbon flying chaotically behind it. And that's kind of accurate. A wild deed is outside of the chain of title and does not confer clear title to the holder. Usually the holder of a wild deed loses in a title dispute. And that's just what happened here:) The new buyer ended up losing his purchase money and is now renting the house from the rightful owner. He cannot find the lottery winner to sue him. Of course, I have a little gem of a house to sell him if he ever wants clear title again; and finally
About 10 years ago, back before our house had central air, it was rented to a family who left their air conditioning equipment on the wooden front porch (do you see where this is going? I've written about a similar situation). Well, there was a short in the A/C that led to a spark and according to RPN, the house burned to the ground. No one was hurt.

RPN would have told me many more stories, but I started to edge toward my car. At that moment the postman drove up and RPN and I walked down to the curb. We were standing together under my umbrella when the postman helpfully piped up, "You two kind of favor..." (that means we look a like). I just smiled. Angrily. But then RPN started selling the house! "You should see what they have done to the house up there, man. It's nice! Do you know anyone who needs a house?" And then to me, "Give him a card!" I gave him two cards. You never know.

Stripes are the New Free

2009-10-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

We were at yet another set of meetings at local government offices and moving from place to place because our conference rooms were booked by other groups. On the way to the last conference room which was really a storage room with tables and haris in it, we were hit in the face with the strong scent of fresh paint. I screwdd up my face and toldm my collague that I was definitely going to faint because of the fumes and when I truned back around I saw the painting crew: they were all male and dressed in white jumpsuits with thick black stripes. On their heads, they wore square rimless painter's caps that were also striped in black and white. They looked something like the outfits Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence wore in the movie "Life". Actually, this is almost an exact replica of their clothes.

The mena were uniformly nice and respectful as we passed through -- they took off their caps as the ladies walked through their work cordon and called ahead, "Be careful," "Wet walls," and "Coming through!" I thought it was some kind of schtick. I turned toward my colleague and said through gritted teeth, "What is this? Why do the painters have to dress like convicts?"

"They are," she replied. "This is how they work off their time. They don't get paid, but they can get shorter sentences."

Oh. so the jurisdiction gets free labor, while the men pay down their debt to society and maybe pick up a skill that can be used for employment afer incarceration. Still, I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the guys -- they were genuinely respectful and it seemed like they were being used by the state. By the same token, I couldn't see the people on the other side of their criminal transactions -- the people robbed, homes burglarized, innocents beaten, or kids hurt in a DUI accident -- victims are almost always anonymous and forgotten. I never feel ambivalence about the guys who do work detail as I speed by on the side of the highway, but somehow being in close quarters with, and looking into the eyes of, another human being in captivity outside of the context of his prior actions, haunts me. Do you have any opinions or feelings about prison labor?

The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: Part II -- NEXT DAY UPDATE:

2009-10-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

I spent FORTY minutes on the phone today discussing this cursed pool. Apparently the "eccentric" constituents keep calling the county. They have had the police, code enforcement and animal control out to the house. My poor beleaguered public servant partners at the county are totally nonplussed. They want to do the right thing and try to keep the pool for the family that will eventually buy the house, but they don't want to waste taxpayer money on an asset that won't recoup its value and they have to do something to get Connie Constituent to please. stop. calling.

Well, I had the pool drained the next morning, as requested. So now the county would like to maintain the concrete bowl instead of collapsing the walls into the empty hole in case the next owner wants to spend the money to fill the pool back in. Look, the county is coming from a really generous place. They are trying to preserve the joy of a pool for the future family. We've all heard that the road to hell is lined with good intentions. I'm from southern California where just about every backyard has an in-ground pool. This may not be common knowledge outside of pool-centric areas, but the earth exerts a mighty force on the walls of in-ground pools. If you empty a pool and don't fill it back up with water relatively quickly, your pool walls will start to crack and collapse from the pressure of the surrounding earth. Simply filling the concrete bowl with dirt and gravel will not exert the same pressure as water. Any effort to reuse those walls will be futile because the outside pressure will ruin the structural integrity of the walls themselves.

I begged the county officials to release the pool idea and let the earth reclaim it, but they were adamant. I called the GC. He confirmed my supposition about the pressure of surrounding earth collapsing the pool walls in the absence of water. Essentially, here is how he broke it down:

The county fixes the pool by doing all the work mentioned in this post: $10,000
The county fills the pool with dirt and a future homeowner decides to later dig out the dirt and rebuild the pool with all of the accouterments that a pool requires: $10,000

Any way you slice it, to maintain that pool, somebody is going to be out $10,000. Either the county is going to have to spend it on the front end to fix and secure the pool and be content not to get it back in the final sale or the family is going to have to spend it to rebuild the pool after they move in.

How did this whole thing end? We are collapsing the concrete sides into the empty hole, filling in the rest with dirt, planting grass seeds and calling it good. I know I initially wanted to keep the pool, but the pool is now just a giant distraction. Kiss the pool good-bye; it'll be gone in a few days.

The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: Part I

2009-09-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

See what happens when you consult for someone else? Particularly someone who HASN'T SEEN THE PROPERTY? And someone who is a government official so whenever some crazy constituent calls the official jumps sky high and then lands on my shoulders?! I actually have a ton of respect for this government official; he is smart, has years of experience and a real love for his constituents. But he has not seen the house and he is currently tap dancing on my head about non-issues.

This is about the pool at the chalet. Yes, it has snakes in it, but it is in the country, people. There are snakes all over the place. There are snakes in the neighbors' backyards and in their pools too. Apparently this particular complaint was not about the snakes, but about the possibility of someone falling in the pool. The house, along with the pool, has been abandoned for 5 years. I don't know when, but at some point HUD sealed off the pool with a metal grid and plywood. A person could walk across the pool without getting wet, but some resident has been calling the county every 45 seconds about it and the county is understandably not trying to be held liable for hazards on a property they just bought.

So this is how the day goes down: my director (who hasn't seen the house) gets frantic calls and texts from the government official (who hasn't seen the house) about securing the pool. Of course, my director is customer service-oriented and she wants to put our client at ease. So she has another person on our team, Charlene, start looking for service providers who can drain and secure the pool. But Charlene calls me to get the address for the property and I immediately start arguing that this course of action doesn't make any sense. Charlene is used to ignoring my tirades and starts looking for vendors. So I call my director and tell her that I am directly contravening her orders. She can't imagine why I am so worked up about this, so I send her pictures of the secured pool. She says she just wants to make the official happy so could I please just drain and cover the pool? I don't want to do it. I think it's an unnecessary expense, but she looks at the pictures and says, "Well sure an adult couldn't fall in, but a TODDLER'S LEG could get caught...." O.M.G. A toddler? A toddler?! A toddler toddling about in the backyard of an abandoned house? FINE. FINE. YOU WIN. Anytime you use the toddler trump card you know you're in for a win.

I found myself purposely contravening direct orders from my director because I desperately want to keep all pre-construction and construction work at each property with one general contractor (GC). I am responsible for 84 houses and I am not trying to set myself up to have to have a contractor matrix for each one. Besides, I wanted to keep the pool; it could be a really cool feature and a great selling point.

I asked my GC about the pool and here is how he broke down the dollars:

Keep the Pool: new filtration system, pump, refinish the concrete pool walls and repair the surrounding concrete deck = $10,000-$15,000
Let the Pool Go: drain the pool, collapse the concrete walls into the empty hole, fill the hole in with gravel and dirt, plant grass seeds = $3000

Uhhh....now the pool is crowding out the interior modernization package. The pool is on shaky ground. Pools aren't even that big a deal with middle income families here and young families (the type that might need 5 bedrooms) will likely have young children or pets that will require an extra fence which is just more money to spend outside.

As I was coming to this realization, emails and phone calls kept lighting up all of my means of communication. The pool must be drained! What about the toddlers? Think about the toddlers! I gave him and ask the GC to have the pool drained first thing the next morning and we would move forward from there. Since I got him started, I get to keep him as my sole contact on the project. Score one for efficiency. The pool is still striking out and the saga will continue in Part II.

70s Style Ski Chalet: $1

2009-09-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

Boy howdy, we are drinking from a fire hose now. One of our local jurisdictions just purchased a house from HUD for $1. Yes, you read that correctly. But before you get geeked and run over to your local HUD office with pockets bulging with dollar bills prepared to make it rain on some bewildered HUD employee, hang back. HUD's dollar house program is only available to government bodies.

I received orders to make an appointment to meet a contractor out at the $1 house to conduct an assessment of the house: demo or rehab; do we want to manage the process or not. Originally, I was going to the house with another staff member more senior to me and I was planning to relax in her shadow. But, as often happens to our overstretched little team, she got pulled in another direction and I was sent out to the house, some 20 miles away from the city center, by myself.

I would usually use my GPS for a trip like this but my GPS had just forsaken me on a trip earlier that day so I leaned on printed directions from Google Maps instead. I lost my bluetooth several months ago and I don't like talking on the phone while driving in unfamiliar areas. But people from work kept calling and every time I'd answer the phone I'd miss another turn. By the time the contractor called, I was totally discombobulated and 15 minutes late. He told me that he was at the house along with an official from the county (what?!) and two police officers (what? what?!!). At that point, I was totally turned around and was clear off Google Maps. He offered to come and meet me. I told him thanks but it would take Jesus to lead me out of these woods. Then I remembered that my faith tells me that G-d inspired man to create GPS, so I fired mine up again with a meek little prayer and lo and behold I was only 2 miles away! I started out again, a ball of frustration and nerves, cursing every driver or pedestrian with the temerity to cross my path. Thirty minutes late, I rolled onto the scene, tense (because I really loathe being late), furious because everyone else found the hidden house but me, and hot because it was 345 degrees outside.

I hopped out of the car all tightly-stretched smiles and apologies and immediately started taking pictures of the wrong house! Oops. The actual house had been abandoned for five years, has snakes in its abandoned pool and has been the subject of escalating neighborhood complaints. That's why the police came out -- to talk to the neighbors and let them know the county is dealing with the property.

We entered expecting to find a crumbling shell, but I immediately fell in love with the house. It was designed to look like a ski chalet and boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a formal dining room, huge living room, family room and playroom.

There are two outside decks and an in-ground concrete swimming pool. The chalet wants a lot of TLC and updating, but its bones appear to be good and it reminds me of the student center in my beloved alma mater.

I have already started brainstorming on how to bring this house back to the market. We have to be careful not to over-renovate it because although it is in a neighborhood of large, generally well-kept houses, the area's home values are severely depressed. Completely rehabbed, we'd probably be pressed to sell this home at $200,000 (I know!), so I am having to tamp down my inner Vern Yip that yearns to cover the entire house in stained concrete and gold leaf, and rehab it to match the market.

I think I might also be able to make my black-wall-loving director happy by painting some interior walls darker colors. The interior space is so large that it could use some richer colors to warm it up. I would also like to bring the Brady Bunch-ski chalet look into the new millennium by covering some of the wood, particularly the banister, with drywall. We could go from this:

to this:

Nice, yes? Too nice?

I'll keep you updated on le chalet as we move along.

Crappy Old Crap Crap Market. Crap

2009-09-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

This crappy old crap crap market is dragging my little jewel through the mud! This jewel is not like a Tiffany & Co. jewel, okay? But it's totally like the small birthstone ring a teenage girl gets when she's around 15. It's her first real gemstone ring and it's small, but it's delicate and shiny and serves the purpose of making her feel beautiful and sophisticated.

I have a house like that little birthstone ring. It's blue and white. It's cute and has flower boxes with flowers in them. It has 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a nice backyard and a huge kitchen. We made it eco-friendly with attic and floor insulation and low-flow toilets. We repaired the plumbing and electricity where necessary. The entire house has been painted, it has new carpets, new subfloors and new flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms. There are new light fixtures, a new closet and new hardware. We will buy a new refrigerator and stove for the buyer. This little blue topaz is surrounded by other cute birthstone rings. The house is just 4 miles from downtown and one block from an elementary school. It would be a perfect home for a young couple or family.

Look at it and try not to say, "Aww...."

The living room/dining room area:

The master bedroom:

The 2nd bedroom:

The full bath:

The third bedroom:

The 1/2 bath:

The kitchen:

Tell me that furniture doesn't make you just want to move in yourself. But now I feel like a pig just pooped on my peridot. The original broker price opinion for the house after rehab was for $88,000. The house appraised for $90,000. We listed for $87,900. No traffic. $85,000. The market remained unimpressed. Now we are down to $83,000. $83,000 for allllla that!! Still, I think we are going to face the same stony silence. Why, you ask? Because the comparative market analysis showed that nothing but foreclosures and unrenovated wrecks have been selling in the neighborhood. The average sale price is down to $25,000. Even though my house is a sassy little sapphire, people in this area are very fretful about purchasing and with other houses selling for pennies down the street, they think that something selling for more than 3 times the average should be a palace. Expectations in this market are completely insane. I don't think $80,000 woud buy a palace even in Kabul. Sigh.

Plus, I just found out from a neighbor that the last owner of the house was an investor who had a family renting the home. They were paying the rent, but the investor was not paying the mortgage. The house went into foreclosure and the family was evicted by the bank. They had been there only 6 months. How I wish I could find them now. We'd give them a great opportunity to own and never be at the whim of an irresponsible owner again.

Crappy old crap crap market.

4 Facts of Life of Low to No Margin Real Estate Work

2009-09-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

There are several facts of life I am learning about working in low to no margin real estate development. I could also just call this post "4 Things that Blow in Foreclosed Real Estate Development", but that's kind of crude.

1.) It can be lonely. By necessity, we have a very lean operation. Each person on our team wears multiple hats and we all work very hard. Although we like to cover the work as a team, often there is only one person available to do any given task, and that's how I often end up alone, overseeing the moving of model furniture, viewing possible acquisition homes or doing any number of things. Supervising the move of the model furniture from one house to another can be particularly lonely because once the movers leave, I am left in a very quiet house trying to set up accessories, put sheets on the bed and make the finishing touches on a home. The loneliness is amplified by the fact that....

2.) You can never find a place to pee. Foreclosed houses or houses that haven't been occupied in a while never have functioning plumbing. It may work if it's turned on, but most houses are winterized when they are abandoned so that means no running water, particularly in the bathrooms. Men don't have much problem with this. They just tinkle, tap and keep on stepping but it is not as easy for women. There's never any toilet paper and if there is toilet paper it's normally inexplicably stained or moist and ewww. Being by myself with a full bladder and driving all over G-d's creation only exacerbates the fact that:

3.) With or without GPS, count on being lost. I've been lost with printed directions; I've been lost when I "knew" where I was going; and I've been lost with the GPS calmly intoning the wrong directions in my ear, "At the first opportunity, please make a legal U-turn." Our days are so full that it is hard to leave early enough to get lost and still make it to places calm, cool and collected. So there I am, alone, mumbling to myself about how much I have to pee as I make endless U-turns. When I finally arrive at my destination and talk to neighbors or potential buyers, I find that even though I am working in the public interest, people are so jaded about real estate investors, brokers, and builders, that....

4.) No one trusts a word that comes out of my mouth. Neighbors regard me with cold shoulder distaste at best and loud mistrust at worst. Other people think I am trying to sell them something they could do themselves (go for it, honey) or that I'm involved in some other nefarious developer plan.

While this experience is sometimes trying, through all the complaints I love being busy, being out about away from my desk, the process of creation and the fact that almost every day holds a surprise. But I do think I will start traveling with toilet paper.

6 Tips to "Reassigning" People to "More Appropriate" Roles

2009-09-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Today I had to reassign one of our consultants to a different role. Managing consultants and staff is not something I am used to, but I think I learned a little bit about how to reassign a person according to his strengths somewhat diplomatically.

1. Praise the person's current work. Everyone does something well. If you are not actually having to fire someone, you can always start out with praise for the part of the job that has been done well.

2. Let the person know that you want her to have more time to do the work that she is so good at. Remember, this is not a firing, but a reassigning for the good of the project.

3. Don't use the "death knell" voice. If you think your tone of voice would be best accompanied by funeral bells, change it.

4. Stop procrastinating and just do it. Starting tough conversations is like ripping a band-aid off. You just have to start and at the end you'll probably look back and decide that the anticipation was the worst part of the entire ordeal.

5. Don't imbue the interaction with the importance of nuclear war. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Giving feedback is one great way of helping a person to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. Besides, the reassignment may not be the big deal for the staff person that you think it is and you are unnecessarily making a mountain out of a mole hill.

6. When all else fails, pawn off the dirty work onto someone else. See if you can't convince a co-worker or boss to do the deed. I tried to get my director to take care of the reassigning, but she just wrote back "LOL". Still, it was worth a try.

Now as I finish this list, I realize that I have been totally reassigned! I got schmoozed out of my first role into this project management one! Thank goodness, because I could not stand the client interface/training/tax appeals part.

HA! Evil brilliance. Well played, Director, well played.

Which Houses to Buy and Why: 2 Policy Options

2009-09-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Lately we have been having policy discussions about which houses to purchase and why. There are many houses that don't need much work outside of some paint, carpet and appliances to be habitable again. We could buy them, do the minor repairs and turn them around in a jiffy. These houses would be a quick win. The drawback of a non-profit doing easy houses is that it's not necessary for a non-profit to turn those houses. They are cheap and don't require tens of thousands of dollars of work. A family that plans to occupy the house could buy it and use their own sweat equity and cash to renovate it to their liking. Shouldn't federal dollars be used on houses that no one wants? We can buy the clunkers and spend the time and money required to make them desirable again. We're not going into decimated neighborhoods, just damaged ones. We should buy the worst houses in those neighborhoods, not the best ones. The market will take care of the best ones particularly once we clean up the eyesores, right?

Perhaps. The other side of the argument is that the federal money doesn't just give us the opportunity to buy and renovate, we can also provide deep subsidies to lower the mortgage for low to middle income families, allowing them to purchase homes that would normally be out of their price range. "Whoa!" I hear you say. "Wasn't putting people in more home than they could afford the train we rode into this Great Recession? Stop. Stop. I'm getting off now."

Please don't hop off too hastily. You are right that outsized mortgages with complicated and misleading repayment schedules were the drum majors in the global march to Skid Row. However, the subsidies I am describing will permanently lower the price of the house for the buyer without adjusting, ballooning or otherwise becoming unmanageable. Here's an example. Say we buy a house for $85,000 and put $15,000 of work into it. We are not permitted to sell it for a profit. So our sale price is $100,000. Let's further assume that the median income for the area is $70,000 for a family of four. The rules require us to sell to a family making no more than $84,000 or 120% of the area's median income. Finally, imagine that a family making a total of $50,000 loves the house and wants to buy it. Their finances will not allow them to borrow more than $75,000 for the purchase. We can provide a subsidy of $25,000 that will act as a silent second mortgage at 0% interest and requiring 0 payments as long as the family lives in the home. They will only have to borrow the remaining$75,000 on a fixed-rate, 30 year mortgage, subject to whatever down payment requirements the lender may have. The second mortgage in some counties will be forgiven entirely over the passage of time. In others, the second mortgage will be repaid upon resale and the county will recycle the funds for new buyers. With the subsidy, the family effectively pays $75,000 for a house that is valued at $100,000, the street/neighborhood gains the stabilizing influence of an owner-occupied house and the government can turn a house and show success quickly for a small investment when a more involved rehab would require a much larger investment of time and money.

As an aside from a former housing and school segregation junkie, the subsidies aren't just about allowing a family to live in their dream house even though they can't really afford it. Better neighborhoods mean much more than prettier houses. Usually more expensive neighborhoods have access to higher quality public education options, are closer to employment opportunities, have broader transportation options, and have neighbors who can provide helpful introductions to newer and better economic opportunities. Making it easier for people to live in stronger neighborhoods can produce short term gains, but also long terms gains like changing the trajectory of children who are no longer stuck in neighborhoods with failing schools and negative role models.

My company is balancing the two policy goals, clearing clunkers out of the market and turning nicer houses quickly, in our work. I think of it a little like a well-balanced dinner plate: lots of veggies and protein, with room left for dessert too.

5 Tres Cool Ideas for Recycling Chic from NYTimes...and 3 Questionable Ones

2009-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who lives in Paris and is always on the edge of all things chic and fabulous sent me this article from the New York Times about a man making affordable houses in Huntsville, Texas out of recycled goods. Some of his ideas are really interesting and could be great additions to a home. Others, well, just aren't my cup of sweet tea.

In my estimation, here are the five best from incredibly fab to delightfully fun:

1.

"Stained Glass" Dutch Door. I have not been able to stop thinking about this door since I saw it. I love the shabby chic stained glass effect of the wine bottles and I can't get enough of the dutch door style. This is a definite yes and look for an off-shoot in an upcoming house. I am geeked. And isn't the homeowner attractive? Her face is perfectly symmetrical!

Wood Slice Counter top. This counter top is rustic without being old-fashioned. I could see it bringing a grounding warmth to a streamlined modern stainless steel kitchen. I'm pretty sure I would not be able to get any of my contractors to do this within budget, but I really like the look -- anything to free me from the monotony of granite and granite-look laminate.

Wine Cork Floor. I really had to struggle to decide whether this cork floor should be #3 or #4 on my list of faves. I think it would be so witty in a wine cellar or entertainment room that it won out over...

Mosaic Tile Bathroom Floor. I am a sucker for mosaics. While I don't particularly love this mosaic, I do like where he is going here. Talented and imaginative artists can make so many pieces of broken tile look a million times more luxurious and unique than the best pre-packaged tile. Plus, this could be really fun to do. Imagine laying out a design of yellow fish or duckies with your child for your child's bathroom. Fun! Bonding! Eco!

Picture Frame Ceiling. This one had to battle its way into the top 5. Of course, what you see before you is fuggerific, but imagine if all those frames were shades of lightly brushed gold and silver? That would have a very pretty and striking effect.

And now for the 3 pieces that make me never want to recycle again, listed from the worst to the merely unforgiveable.

1.
Cow Skeleton Chair. Seriously? A chair made out of cow bones? Tim Burton would be creeped out by this and it's his genre! I mean really, it's far too literal to rest my bones in bones, to match a cow's spine vertebra to vertebra with my own. Gross.

2.
Cow Bones Address Numbers. Second only to the dead-dry-bones-as-art chair are the dead-dry-bones-as-art house numbers. Al Gore just called. He said that recycling *everything* is a terribly obtuse way to interpret "An Inconvenient Truth" and that he can buy carbon offsets for his private jet but there isn't yet an offset market for creepy. So just stop already.

3.
"Story Book" Roof. I really wanted to like this. But no matter how I tried to reimagine it, the only fairytale his "story book" roof reminded me of was how the witch's house in Hansel & Gretel must have looked to her juvenile victims as they were gorging on her gingerbread shingles and gumdrop trim. That crazy zig zag rag tag roof would be the last thing they saw before falling into a sugar crash coma and becoming a witch's dinner. Not appetizing, is all I'm saying.

There you have it folks. Pop over to NYT to check out the rest of Dan Phillips' save the world design elements.

Let the Bidding Begin!

2009-09-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

We've just completed our first round of bidding on foreclosed houses in the county that I talked about in this post.

There are a few websites that allow qualified buyers to bid on foreclosed properties at great prices. We all know the thrill of online shopping. This is competitive online house shopping. It is awesome. Although we're buying houses with other people's money, I treat every dime as though it were my own, and people, I am stingy.

During the first session, 5 of us sat around a table with a laptop, a pile of appraisals, lists of target houses, color-coded maps of the county and a mandate to buy homes for at least 10% off the listing price. To come up with our bid price we poured through inspection reports and appraisals. We argued with each other about whether the comparables were any good and we plied through our memories to pull up images of the neighborhoods.

There are various rules for the bidding. The longer the house has been on the market, the lower you can bid with a hope of being successful. A house that has just become available will carry the lowest discount even if it's no good. This means you can be presented with a shell needing a gut renovation that lists for $100,000 and your bid for $20,000 won't be accepted as a matter of course because it's new to the market and the seller won't consider anything less than $90,000. On the other hand, a relatively intact house that has been sitting on the market for three months might sell at a 70% discount.

The auction is also conducted sealed bid style. You only get one bite at the apple. If you bid too low and someone else outbids you, you can't go back and increase your bid. You also don't want to bid too high, win the auction, and go out like a sucker who now has to either lower the rehab budget or sell for a higher price. The seller can also decide not to accept any of the bids if its reserve price isn't hit, and of course, we don't get to know the reserve price. Our entire strategy hinges on getting very low acquisition prices but we can't bid so low that we shut ourselves out of the market.

One unimpressive house came up that the Seller listed for $41,000. I remembered touring that neighborhood. It was riddled with For Sale signs and the house needed a lot of work. If we bought that house, we'd be competing with all the other for sale properties, bumping up against the rentals, and generally be killing ourselves with disposition of the completed house. So I yelled out that the seller has got to be crazy and I wouldn't give him a dime over $20,000. Everyone just kind of looked up from their papers and maps and stared at me. "Oh. Too much? I'm chill." And we moved on to the next house.

I love the bidding. It's a rush like playing the scratch-off lottery, bargain-hunting, and being a contestant on Price is Right all at once. Except if we don't win a fair portion of these bids, we won't just go back to the status quo of our everyday lives. If we don't win bids, we won't be able to purchase enough houses to meet our goals and deadlines. If we don't meet our goals and deadlines we'll lose the grants. If we lose the grants, I'll lose my job and my house will be next foreclosure up for bid. So yeah, it's kind of high stakes.

I think we'll be all right, though. I chose the bid price for a house just before I had to leave the room to take a call about loan documents (yawn). We won the bid! It was such a rush! I flexed the matrix right there in the office (which I do about once a day anyway-- the flex is at minute 1:47). Now the due diligence begins and soon we'll have a house!

Where's the Beef? Or the Houses?

2009-09-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

Smug food and drink recipes??

My poor reader, you must be wondering like Clara Peller, Wendy's 1980s era spokeswoman, "Where's the beef?" Isn't this a blog about housing rehab? (For those of you who want to relive those times or who were too young to remember them, click the quote for YouTube link to the 1984 commercial)

Foreclosed to Fabulous is about housing rehab. But sometimes you need a little filler while the main event gets ready. The garden and food posts are a little like the old school boxing girls who walk around the ring half-naked holding a sign while the boxers regroup. In truth, I thought we would be moving much faster in the acquisition stage but like so many other government programs, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) is extremely paperwork-intensive. Thus far, my company has been awarded contracts in 5 jurisdictions and we have applied to 3 different non-profit loan funds for money that will match the NSP awards to make the government dollars stretch even farther.

I didn't think you'd be interested in the travails of learning the different rules for five jurisdictions or the horrors of closing 3 loan funds. At one point I was so frustrated that I carried my ire across state lines. While on a leisure trip out of town I happened to be near the office of one lender. Ever the model of maturity, I kicked the exterior of the building and took an angry-looking picture standing near their sign. Hee! Immaturity is fun and cathartic. My boss didn't think the picture was all that funny, but those people made me do about 500 versions of the same spreadsheet! I could have done much worse. I contemplated making a welcome mat out of chewed up bubble gum. But I didn't because I am a grown up. And I need my job.

ANYWAY, we finally have the all-clear to get started on houses and I have been assigned to project manage 3 jurisdictions out of 5 for a total of 84 houses! It's feast or famine here people, so get ready for lots of posts and pictures as I get out of the office and into the starting block. I have to get at least 5-8 houses completed in a neighboring county by Dec. 31. OMG.

Smug Cocktail: Minty Mojito

2009-08-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to lie. The only reason I planted mint in the backyard was to use it in cocktails. Mint is a fast grower and a spreader and I haven't used it nearly as much as I had imagined. So you can picture my delight when my girlfriend, who was hosting a party at my house, came over loaded down with groceries and stamped her feet, puckered her face and said, "Shoot! I forgot to buy fresh mint for the mojitos, girl!"

Here was the moment I had been dreaming of when I put that fragile little mint plant in the ground several months ago. "Girl!" I told her. "You don't have to *buy* mint. Mint is free! It comes out of the ground!" Then I dragged her out to my backyard at 10 o'clock at night and made her wade through wet grass in 5" heels to witness (and lean over to smell) my mint.

This is my mint plant, wanting to be pruned and happy for the opportunity to serve.
As an aside, this is a gnarly spider I spied nesting on one of my fledgling hydrangea plants. Ewww!

Here is our very simple crowd-pleasing smug mint mojito recipe that will keep your guests shiny, happy and sipping.

Inside, we gathered together a bag of enticing limes, equal parts light rum and club soda, plenty of ice, and simple syrup (we ran out of sugar). Cut the limes into quarters.

Next, grab a clean handful of delicious smelling mint.
Mix everything together and serve.

To life! To health! And may your smugness be boundless!

Of Rehab, Theft, and the Silence of the Neighbors

2009-08-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

The purpose of the rehab I do through my company is to provide stability for neighborhoods that are experiencing difficulties due to the foreclosure crisis. The statistics on the effect of foreclosed houses in a neighborhood are sobering. A 1 percent increase in foreclosures in a neighborhood correlates with a 2.3% increase in violent crime in that same neighborhood (Immergluck & Smith, 2006). Residents that have seen their neighborhood's foreclosure rate increase by 10-20% have seen a correspondingly sharp increase in crime. Our work is focused as much on the existing residents in the neighborhood as on those who are moving into our houses. Quickly moving houses out of foreclosure and getting them re-occupied protects the house from becoming a refuge for criminals or squatters. Returning the houses to the market supports property values by eliminating the downward pressure of bank sales.

Still, the recession ushered in by the housing/banking crisis has created many desperate people who are looking to improve their economic situation by preying on the efforts of rehabbers. To date, crooks have stolen cans of paint and construction materials from a house in active rehab, a water heater from the crawlspace of recently acquired home pre-rehab, bedding and a rug from a fully staged house (don't ask, I don't understand it either), and an AC unit from inside a locked metal cage. The hot water heater and AC unit were stolen in broad daylight in full view of the neighbors. Stealing an underground water heater is no small feat. A truck backed up the driveway, guys got out and broke the lock on the crawlspace. They scuttled inside and yanked a 160 lb, 5 foot tall water heater out of the ground, dragged it into the truck and drove away. No one called the police.

The AC unit thieves waited until the tenant left for work, then pulled into her driveway, positioned themselves on the side of the house in full view of the street and tried to peel the top of the metal cage back with wire cutters. That took so long that they gave up and used a crowbar to break the lock on the cage and ripped a 343 lb AC compressor out of the ground and drove off. Again, no one called the police and no one saw anything.

I heard a story about a daylight robbery of a boutique in a residential neighborhood. The burglars broke the windows, but were stymied by burglar bars that would not allow them to reach in and grab anything. A gentleman who had been watching walked over and showed them that the store owner had left the long-handled hook that retailers use to pick up items from high shelves near the window. He grabbed the hook and they proceeded to pick clean everything that was within the hook's reach. How do we know this whole story? Because the neighbors who were sitting across the street on their porch watched the entire thing and told the store owner later. Sigh.

Theft adds an appreciable cost to housing rehab. It drives up the cost of the work so it increases sales prices and rents. It also drives other buyers from the area. Developers are limited in what they can do to combat theft short of hiring round the clock surveillance. We need the help of neighbors to take down license plates and call the police immediately when a theft appears to be in progress.

Greed through all levels of the economy -- from bankers and mortgage lenders to neighborhood thieves -- have characterized this recession. The silence of people who knew better allowed the fire to burn, engulfing the global economy. Just as the regulators, ratings agencies, banks and attorneys have to re-examine their roles and act with a larger sense of responsibility and backbone, individuals who want to live in safe stable neighborhoods need to act like neighbors and watch out for each other. I think De La Soul said it best, "Neighborhoods are now 'hoods 'cause nobody's neighbors." I'm only as safe as the guy living down the street because after they come for him, they'll come for me.

What $90K Will Buy in the "Country"

2009-08-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Okay city folks, I know how you feel about people who live in the "country". I used to live in NYC, where Queens is considered country and the Hamptons is down right rural. In fact, I went back to visit NYC once and sitting in a movie theatre during the African film festival a friend whispered to me that this must be such a different experience from where I now live. What's so different, I wondered, the running water, flush toilets, and popcorn that we can't gain access to outside of New York City?

I digress. Sorry city slickers, this post might break your heart. Last week I went for a drive through a suburb of my city looking for foreclosed houses in neighborhoods where saving a few homes could have a huge impact on ensuring stability for its residents.

This suburb is what city folks would call the "country". We even call it the country here in the city where I live. It's a good 25 to 30 minutes outside of downtown. I didn't see cows, but there were horses, lakes, and a slower pace of life than we are used to in more urban surroundings.

Do you want to know what $90,000 will buy you 25 to 30 minutes outside of town? This!

and this: and this too:

I know! I was shocked too. And the last house sits on about 1/2 an acre of beautiful lawn in a subdivision.

These pictures are of the side yard and backyard. The house had FIVE bedrooms and three and half bathrooms. It also had a bay window:

and a beautiful fireplace: Out of control. We saw another house like it in a subdivision with tennis courts, a pool and a rec center. It was also $90,000.

There is definitely a trade off between living out in the exurbs and living in a city. You can't walk anywhere but to your neighbor's house and you're far from the center of the action in the city. However, these houses are a prime example of the "drive til you qualify" mentality. People seeking larger houses who couldn't afford 2500 sq ft in the city just kept pushing out into the suburbs and exurbs until they found a house that fit their desires in their price range. Of course, no one ever factors in the cost of gas and car maintenance for a 90 minute or more daily commute into the city to work. And no one ever factors in the quality of life sacrifice to be caught in traffic for so many hours each day. The environment suffers and so does your personal life. Still, for people who live work and play in the exurbs, these deals are a steal. I guess theyse homeowners could also use what they saved on a mortgage to buy a helicopter. I hear those can get you across long distances in a hurry.

Popsicles and Pesticide

2009-08-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the stories I hear about housing rehab are so funny that I have to pass them on.

Two members of my team were out looking at houses one afternoon when a man came in to spray for bugs. He knew the real estate agent and they chatted for a bit before the exterminator started spraying insect poison in the room. My teammates were shocked that he sprayed while they were all standing in there so they ran out to avoid the fumes. Soon, the exterminator also left the house, walked over to the ice cream truck he was driving and shoved the pesticide and sprayers inside the back of the truck.

My colleagues stopped and gaped. "He doesn't sell ice cream out of that truck does he?" one asked.

" 'Course he does," came the reply. And to the exterminator the agent called out, "Say, did you ever get that freezer fixed?" He gestured toward the truck.
"Yeah. She's humming now." The exterminator/ice cream man climbed in and drove off.

I've heard of the ice cream man doing double duty as a pedophile or a drug dealer, but as an exterminator? Out of the same truck?! Ewwww....

Smug Snacks: Baked Tortilla Chips w/ Sour Cream and Fresh Chives

2009-08-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

When you grow plants that are also food, it helps if you like to eat them. I planted chive seeds in the pot next to my basil on the front porch and they have been growing like crazy, looking like Einstein's hair peeking out of a silver pot.

A while ago, I was on a sour cream and cheese kick. I think I was low on calcium or something because my nails would break at the slightest provocation and all I wanted to do was ladle sour cream and cheese into my mouth. At that time, I learned to make baked tortilla chips because tortilla chips are the most efficient way to ladle both cheese and sour cream into your mouth.

This recipe, like the last one, is ridiculously easy and fast.

First, the ingredients:
Corn tortillas
Salt (sure we're cutting down on salt, but we're making chips! I'm no martyr)
Cooking spray
Sour cream
(smug, homegrown) Chives -- don't forget the best part is sidling out to the front porch, hips swinging, to get the chives in full view of your neighbors. Try smelling them fresh from the pot. It's a heady onion smell, but it's fabulous!

Pre heat the oven to 400. Spray a cookie sheet (or 2) with the cooking spray. Use the scissors to cut the tortillas in quarters. For the scissors, I thank all my Korean friends who used to let me come over their houses and eat all their food when I was a kid. Their moms used to cut kim (seaweed) with scissors and I realized how brilliant they were for using scissors in the kitchen.

The tools

I digress. Place the quartered tortillas on the cookie sheet, spray them with cooking spray and douse the tortillas gently with salt. Put them in the oven. Watch them after about 5 minutes because they cook pretty quickly. Take them out before they are too brown or else they'll burn.

While they are baking, cut up your smug (or gasp, store-bought) chives. Toss them into a bowl with your sour cream and mix them up.

Your chips will look something like this when they come out.

And because presentation is all, make a nice arrangement et voila! You get double smug points because you've got baked chips and homegrown chives (so healthy! so green!). You may not be able to fit yourself, your smugness, and your fab dish all in one room. Enjoy!

Next time, I'll try to make my oh-my-goodness-you-made-this-salsa Salsa.

Do Background Checks On Your Renters, People

2009-08-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

If I could grab you by the chin, turn your head sharply to me and force you to look into my eyes, I would. And I would say to you, "Just like the criminal justice system, you pay on the front end or you pay on the back end." I know how tempting it can be to accept the first the person who shows up waving a cashier's check for the first month's rent and security deposit, but beware your prospective tenant may be driving a fancy car and wearing nice clothes because he makes a habit of skipping rent payments to buy consumer goods. That sweet older gentleman who came by with his daughter could be looking for a new location for the ladies of his house of ill-repute or drug distribution den. Looks are often deceiving and people who tell lies get so good that it's hard to catch them until you do some digging.

In the short time I have been doing this work I have had lovely people with checkered backgrounds try to rent my homes. Some are profligate deadbeats who have left piles of bitter landlords in their wake. Others were sex offenders applying to live in a house close to schools (this is illegal in my state). A credit check, rental history check, and criminal background check are essential. Many times people who know they would fall afoul of these checks come to single family homeowners because they think a small operation of one or a few people won't run these critical checks. Often, they are correct to the chagrin and everlasting regret of the homeowner.

One of my friends owned a rental home with electric heat. The tenant was glad to have electric heat because gas bills are expensive and the gas company often requires a large deposit. The problem is that electric heat can take a long time to adequately warm up a house. The tenants may have been like me -- I like a house that feels like an oven in the winter. Since the heater was not getting them there, what better way to make the house feel like an oven that to turn the oven on? And open the oven door? And hey, how about turning on a few burners to warm your hands, and oh! The house burned to the ground. Erp.

Now that family needs a new place to stay. If you don't talk to their former landlord, you would not know about the fire (why would the tenants tell you they torched their last place?). As a landlord, you may still want to rent to this family, but you should want full information.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Root Rot

2009-08-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Mine apparently grows with armillaria root rot (aka "mushroom rot"). I planted 8 delicate bare root ball hydrangea plants about 6 months ago. As is my custom, I worried over them incessantly, watched them morning and night and watered them as necessary. One morning I came out and saw these little mushrooms all over the mulch and root area of the hydrangeas (I am getting chill bumps just thinking about this). I chalked it up to the goo gobs of rain we had been getting, pulled out the mushrooms and went to work. The next day, more mushrooms! Now I am standing outside in the 90 degree heat shaking like a leaf - what is attacking my hydrangeas?! And why are they wilting?

So, I googled "hydrangea and mushrooms" and what did I get? Armillaria root rot. The fun little fungus often hitches a ride to your garden from the greenhouses your plants are grown in. The mushrooms you see above the surface are the visible indication of the mayhem underground. Unlike the slugs I teased out and drowned with beer, armillaria root rot cannot be abated once it takes hold and it is fatal. Though I am devastated, the nursery I purchased from has a 1 year guarantee that they honored cheerfully. I received a full refund.

What I am trying to figure out now is what to do about my wilting hydrangeas and the soil they are in? The mint, basil, rosemary and cherry tomatoes are not showing any signs of root rot, so I don't think it's spreading. However, what steps should I take to safely remove and discard diseased hydrangeas? And how should I ensure the soil is ready to take new plants safely? Do I need to till the soil? Throw away my old gardening gloves? Help!

BEFORE:
Healthy, young hydrangea

AFTER:
Little mushrooms of death

Dinner Tonight: Smug Scallops with Fresh Basil over Pasta and Broccoli

2009-08-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

This recipe derives its smugness from the addition of fresh basil grown in your own yard or pot. It takes a few weeks to prepare, but what you gain in healthy nourishment and self-satisfaction is well-worth the time. Besides, growing basil is easy.

First, start with a few basil seeds, a simple pot (mine is from Target's $1 aisle) and potting soil. Pour the potting soil into the pot, level it with your hand or a trowel and pat a few basil seeds into the top of the soil. Water, pat the seeds once again and place the pot in an area where the sun can reach it. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I never trust that anything will actually grow from seeds and I always sow too many, they all sprout and then I end up having a crowded pot that needs thinning. Basil are hardy and just a few seeds will do nicely. Pretty soon it'll look like this:

And if you keep watering and being kind to it, it'll look like this:

Then you can preen over it and speak loudly in the grocery store about how well your basil is doing and oh, you have so much how can you possibly eat it all, and oooohh, you feel deeply sorry for those people who *buy* basil when it grows so generously from our good sweet earth. Sigh. Back to the recipe.

I love pasta with just a simple olive oil reduction (is that the right word? I heard it on Top Chef) of salt, pepper and garlic. But, since we are cutting back on salt, I decided to try some of my basil as a seasoning. So, I trotted out to the front porch, pinched off several leaves, rinsed them and threw them in the skillet with olive oil, crushed garlic and pepper. You can see the mixture simmering away here. I like lots of garlic.

Then I dry the scallops, roll them in cracked black pepper and throw them on top of the mixture.

While all this is happening, you can boil your pasta until it's al dente and throw a package of broccoli in the microwave (Steamfresh is awesome). First pile lots of broccoli on the plate, then the pasta. Last, spoon the scallops on the pasta and generously pour on the sauce they cooked in.

Et voila! Dinner!

Smug sauteed scallops with pasta served over broccoli. My husband liked it so much that he licked his plate! Yum!

On Personal Growth: Bastard-Covered Bastards

2009-08-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

There are few things I hate more than personal growth. Oh, there are cockroaches. And spiders. Okay, I hate cockroaches, spiders and personal growth - in that order. I went into affordable housing work with a picture in my mind about the noble, hardworking people I'd help and the warm glow that would accompany all of my working hours. Most people I work with are great or bland, but there are always a few that inspire great fury, great growth, and usually both.

In one of my favorite episodes of “Scrubs” Dr. Kelso and Dr. Cox try to convince J.D. that "people are bastard-covered bastards with bastard filling" and it is foolish to expect better. I'm not quite as cynical as they are, but I will say that renting houses is not for people wearing rose-colored glasses. One of your clients will undoubtedly break your glasses and gouge out your eyes with the shards. I'm just saying.

The fact is, the perfect poster child for “deserving fill-in-the-blank” does not walk the earth. What I find infuriating other team members can shrug off. Our different personalities allow us all to find balance. For instance, one particular sale was very difficult with the buyers being so strapped for cash that we had to make a lot of concessions and other changes at the closing table in order to close the deal. As I drove by the house one day to see if they were keeping up the place (because I am very possessive of my houses, even when they aren’t mine anymore) I noticed a beautiful teal-colored Mercedes in the driveway. At 2pm! I called in to the office and poured envy, judgment and unadulterated hateration through the phone as I glared at the house, “Can you believe that these people who didn’t have 2 pennies to rub together at closing have a Mercedes??? And they are at home! I don’t have a Mercedes!And I am working!”

So?” replied my colleague. “They probably got caught up in society’s destructive consumer culture which encourages everyone to spend beyond their means. You saw their bank statements and loan documents. You know they don’t have any money.”

“But, but…a Mercedes…” I whined.

“The Mercedes is just a symbol of why they got into the financial mess they are in.”

I gave up and hung up.

Sometimes in an altruistic rush to help people who somehow “deserve” it, it is easy to forget that all social/philanthropic/humanitarian work seeks to create opportunities for people to improve the outcomes of their lives regardless of what personal foibles or societal circumstances have driven them to the point where they need help. It doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to fraud where it occurs, but it does mean that those of us who do this work are at our best when we are not judging the how or why of our clients” financial situations.

Most importantly, in the event I should ever need help, I hope that whether or not I am a bastard-covered bastard with bastard filling (and I am), someone or some organization will be there to mercifully help me move past my foibles as well and give me a chance to rebuild.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Victory In Our Time!

2009-07-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Blooms! Blooms! Gracious, kind, merciful blooms. Since I first plopped down in the dirt, I have been waiting for color in my garden and last weekend Mother Nature turned her face toward me.

The crape myrtle has begun unfurling its bright pink puffy smiles and it juts into my car every morning and evening to greet me.

The lilies I just planted are showing off orange and yellow hearts.

The gladiolas planted as bulbs that I had completely given up on are starting to show their blooms.

And in a total surprise, the basil plant has begun to sprout the most gentle little white flowers I have ever seen.

These little wins more than make up for 2 azaleas, 1 hydrangea and about 25 mums burned to a crisp on the sundrenched hill in the backyard.

V is for Victory! And Vlooms!

Roman Burglar Bars -- Tres Chic!!

2009-07-23T16:51:00.001-07:00

I've been away for a while taking a brief respite with a trip through Rome and Athens. Today, we revere the ancients for their exquisite architecture which remains standing as a testament to skill, perseverance and to what humans can accomplish with a few hundred thousand slaves.

I digress. The current residents of Rome protect their ancient treasures with window bars that don't detract from the beauty of the buildings themselves. In the neighborhoods where we purchase homes, there are sometimes burglar bars on the windows to deter would-be thieves. However, American burglar bars are unattractive and often make the house look more like it's imprisoning the residents rather than keeping out the miscreants. We always remove the burglar bars from our homes even though that may or may not lead to a break-in right before an open house that results in pilfered bedding and rugs. I admit nothing.

I long for artistic-looking burglar bars that don't scream "crime-infested neighborhood". I saw a few options in Rome, Italy and have included pictures below. Now I'll call my contractor and beg him to get his iron guys on the phone to make custom bars for rock bottom prices. I can hear him screeching now.

Near the Trevi Fountain in downtown Rome:

Also downtown:

Protecting the treasures of the Vatican, with style:

Little Things Mean A Lot

2009-07-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

My company recently received a significant grant to allow us to acquire, rehab and repopulate more houses! Thank goodness! I am ready to break out of the daily grind of the office and get back to the houses.

Still, I haven't just been cooling my heels during this relative downtime. On the weekends, I go to lots of open houses as a form of market research. I can be a rather insufferable house hunting partner. Now that I have done a bit of rehab and I have a better idea of what things cost, it's not unusual for me to walk through new construction with my nose turned up and my mouth turned down, "Why would the developer put a $6.50 light fixture in an $800,000 house? Yuck." However, I will note that none of the new construction has dark walls. All of the houses are staged to look light, airy, open and spacious (surprise).

Even when I am strolling through a house pointing and muttering "punch, punch, punch" some touches stand out. These details give a home character, personality and set it apart from the crowd of empty homes in the market. The pictures below were taken in new homes built by one of my favorite home builders in the metro area.

Warning: These are expensive banisters and expensive ground level flooring, but oh how nice! What if this floor was just in the mudroom? Classy! Classy!

I am generally dismissive trim and doors in bold colors, but done well I think it looks very sophisticated and urbane, no? And I would give up a few years of life for that front door.

Of course these tree trunk outdoor posts aren't going to work on every house, but they are a very nice touch for that "rustic in the city" look.

Don't underestimate the impact of door and cabinet hardware. Hardware can dramatically improve the appearance of inexpensive cabinets. Even new construction customarily uses low grades of wood or "woodish" material. These less-sturdy materials look much more luxurious with upgraded hardware.

Real DIYers

2009-07-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the Independence weekend we just celebrated, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the do-it-yourself spirit of rehabbers.

During a recent weekend trip, I visited some friends in the Northeast. They are serious DIYers. I just give tips on working with people who are going to do the work for you. These people do the work themselves. When they moved into their new home several years ago, they tore up the carpet themselves, re-finished the floors, tore down the existing wallpaper, painted the walls and trim and I'm sure they did lots of other things that people normally only see done on those TV shows when the crew secretly comes in and finishes the job after the real people have conked out for the night over spilled paint and margaritas.

So this weekend, I got to watch them tile a laundry room, carpet a basement and paint touch up places on basement walls at 2 o'clock in the morning. Yes, I watched and did not participate. I OFFERED, but they are too well-bred to actually allow a guest to work in their home.

Anyway, I didn't even know you could DIY carpet without lots of machinery and heartache, but they found carpet squares that are self-stick. And they look good! Check it out:

You can also self-stick a really nice laminate with ceramic porcelain mixed in. Here is one of the homeowners cutting and placing tiles in the laundry room:

This is what the tiles look like from the front and the back:

Apparently you can buy these tiles at Home Depot. Huh. Who knew?

Who Let the Dogs Out?

2009-06-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

No, seriously. Who who who who who is mean enough to take animals into their home and then mistreat them to the point that they leap over fences and bite people? The next-door neighbors of one of my supercute properties dripping with curb appeal own two of the loudest, most intimidating dogs ever. The only barrier between the neighbors and my house is a 1000 year old beaten down fence. The dogs can easily jump over the fence and they have. The pit bull has already leapt the fence once and bit one of the contractors working in the backyard. Each time a team from my company comes by we stand huddled together on the porch while my trembling hands attempt to open the lockbox and I curse myself for the 100th time for not keeping a spare key in the car.

Once the dogs bit the contractor, we called animal control and for a while the dogs were kept in a large shed in the backyard. However, when some workers went back a week ago to clear some debris out of the yard, the dogs were loose and so rambunctious that the workers sat for an hour waiting for them to calm down and just finally left. This upsets me because workers don't just come by and sit for an hour for free. We have to pay for that time. So I called animal control again and they told me that I would need a video of the dogs being aggressive in order for them to do anything. I'm not going over there to get a close-up of those dogs anytime soon, so I'm back at square one.

Any suggestions?

How Does Your Garden Grow: Name that Plant

2009-06-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

When we moved into our house, the developer had already installed lots of bushes and perennial grasses. With the exception of the mondo grass, I have found the developer’s choices to be mostly rude, boorish bushes that take up a lot of space and stubbornly refuse to flower. I want to uproot them to plant Japanese maples, a crape myrtle, red, yellow and white double knock out rose bushes and gardenias. But before I toss out the baby, the bathwater, and the tub, perhaps I should know I have first. Maybe a little knowledge could help me to cure what ails the plants and salvage them. Can anyone identify these?

I think this one is a purple diamond loropetalum. Supposedly it will produce pink spidery flowers. All I have seen is that it attracts green, intricate orb-web-spinning spiders. I just think it is yawn-inducing boring. I have read that it will produce those pink flowers for 2 weeks in March (2 weeks of bloom all year?!) or whenever it’s pruned. I’ll prune it and let you know.

This is a really overgrown unruly bush that produces little burrs that look like they want to be flowers, but just dry up, fall off and litter the driveway. Plus, it looks like it has powdery mildew. I really want to boot this bush for Japanese maple. Does anyone know what it might be? My neighbor says it's a crape myrtle, but these are not in bloom whereas tons of crape myrtles are in bloom all over town.

The Joy of the Punch

2009-06-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

After the construction is done, whether you’re having a house built or a room painted, the client generally has the right to conduct an inspection and identify punch list items. A punch list is a list of repairs or touch-ups that need to be completed to bring a job to a successful conclusion for the client. Ensure that your contractor knows you will create a punch list and that all punch repairs will be completed at no additional cost before you agree to start work.

The type of work will dictate the type of punch you will do. For paint, trim, drywall and tile, buy a roll of that blue painter’s tape (you could be bold and use your contractor’s tape if you have that kind of relationship). It is adhesive and easy to see, but will not mess up the paint or tile underneath. Use a piece of the tape to identify any of the following: thin paint, dripping paint, paint on trim, an unsightly seam in a countertop or wall, lumpy drywall, uneven drywall or crooked tiles. Be liberal with your blue tape because your punch is your only opportunity to get mistakes corrected without incurring an extra fee. The reason the client is usually not charged for punch list items is because the work should have been done properly the first time. Of course, construction workers aren’t perfect, so the client gets an opportunity to have the work delivered as promised.

You cannot be too detailed in your punch. Remember, after this you’ve either got to shell out more cash for repairs or DIY. So get on your hands and knees and inspect paint; flush toilets; try every single electrical outlet with your cell phone charger; open every window and make sure all doors open, close lock and unlock easily. Take a few marbles, stand in the middle of the floor and drop them. If all the marbles roll to one corner, you have an uneven floor. Does that matter? Maybe not, depends on the reason for the unevenness. Ask questions! I have heard stories about buyers actually sliding around on their bellies to test the smoothness of new hardwood floors. That’s too far even for me, but I understand it. Don’t worry about being too hard on your contractor/developer. They expect this from seasoned clients. Since you drew up a scope of work, got bids and made sure a punch list was included in your contract, your contractor will definitely think you are a pro!

As a pro, steer clear of rookie mistakes. Do not confuse a punch list item with a change order. A punch list item is a mistake or oversight that requires correction; a change order is a new request that was not included in the original scope of work. For instance, a bathtub installation with spotty thin caulking is a punch list item. You should have even, uniform caulking that acts as a proper water barrier. A bathtub that you have had installed and now want to have reglazed is a change order. Change orders are usually very expensive because the client is charged a “change order fee”, usually a percentage of the cost of the new work, on top of the charge for the work and materials. Contractors say they charge change order fees because of the cost of rescheduling their crews, not ordering in bulk, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, it’s a whopper of an extra cost for you, so try to think through and negotiate for your entire scope of work at the beginning of a job.

Avoid change orders, punch a like a woman (or a man) possessed, and enjoy your renovation!

THE CARPET IS TOO LIGHT??!!

2009-06-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

The CARPET IS TOO LIGHT???!!! Is that really how it’s going down?! I offer you a 3 bedroom, 1 ½ bath home in a quiet neighborhood down the street from an elementary school, 5 miles from downtown, 1 mile from a big ol’ pretty park and all you can tell me is that the CARPET IS TOO LIGHT?! This is why I am not a real estate agent. I might have gone completely off the deep end and said things that I should regret, but wouldn’t. Here are the details, people:

NEW carpet throughout and vinyl in the kitchen and bathrooms, plus sub-floor remediation

NEW lighting fixtures

NEW cabinet and door hardware

NEW blinds

NEW landscaping

NEW washer-dryer connections

NEW appliances (fridge and stove)

NEW vanity in the main bathroom

NEW closet in the third bedroom

NEW front porch railing, plus soffit and fascia on the front of the house

All for less than market price. And you tell me the carpet is too light. It’s so outrageous that it makes me tired. You be the judge.

Meh, maybe the carpet is too light. The comment is duly noted and I will surely put BLACK carpet in the next house. Grrrr...

You will also note that in this, my 3^rd house, I started agitating for different colors in the kitchen and the rest of the house. I think these colors are Sherwin-Williams Online (#7072) in the common spaces and bedrooms and Sagey (#6175). Again, I’m not on SW’s payroll; I use what I am given. If you want to use any of these colors, good luck. SW seems to rotate colors faster than Tila Tequila changes boy/girlfriends. If you ask them for a color that was in stock literally the day before if they no longer have it the clerk will look at you like you are from another planet. Don’t take that look for an answer. Just take a seat and tell them you’ll be leaving when you get your sample, thank you. They always seem to come up with something that satisfies.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Worrying My Garden Green

2009-06-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

If worries were kisses of perfectly balanced fertilizer on well-drained soil with morning shade and afternoon sun mixed with the ever-elusive 1 inch of rain every three days, I would have the lushest, most verdant garden in the state.

As things stand, worries are just worries, but I do think that I worry my garden green. This year is my first year ever attempting to make things grow from the earth and I have been OBSESSED with the challenge. I check my little plants first thing in the morning while I am brushing my teeth and every evening when I return home. I think about them while I am gone during the work day. I really do worry my garden green.

I started gardening because I thought it would be relatively easy to add some punch and color to my garden and to become THE ENVY OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Yes, I will admit it, my foray into something as grimy and soul-satisfying as gardening has its roots in my insatiable hubris. But, as the wise men say, "Pride goeth before all of your prized baby hydrangeas get rot rot and die." And I have been humbled my friends.

Being the sort of person who refuses to read instruction manuals and jumps into a project with both feet before learning how to do it properly, I just started digging through the unforgiving weave of Bermuda grass that encases my lawn into the heavy, obstinate clay beneath and plopped plants in the ground. I didn't know anything about mulch, pruning or deadheading. I thought "hardy" described people who grow up in the New England countryside and that a soil amendment had to be passed by 3/4 of the garden to be accepted. Now I readily throw around those terms and more: I complain about "spindly, leggy" pansies, rejoice over tomatoes that have "set fruit" and weep bitterly over blooms that I have foolishly allowed to "go to seed." My husband barely recognizes the woman who used to languish in bed on weekends until 1pm now sliding out of bed at 8am to tangle with weeds, juniper bushes, bulbs and that hateful, sneering clay returning hours later cover in bug bites, dirt, sweat and smiles.

My experiences have been thrilling - I love watching new plants emerge from the ground- and heartbreaking - armillaria root rot borne of endless spring deluges and greenhouse issues killed 8 baby hydrangea plants.

Here is what I have to show for my sweat, bug bites, and worries so far (these pictures were taken in late May):

This red gerbera daisy and orange and yellow spider daisy brighten up everyday. For a while I thought the red daisies had died to the ground. Although I was discouraged, a neighbor convinced me not to pull them up in desperation. I'm so glad I listened! The last picture is red salvia. The salvia has been a godsend: it established itself easily, loves the sun and keeps pushing out radiant blooms.

Not so much for the radiance here. On the left are the surviving(?) shoots of cornflowers that I transplanted from a pot that was on my porch. I was sure that I planted too many seeds thinking none would grow, so when they all started sprouting, I tried to give them more space in the yard. Note: those pretty silver pots from Target aren't so much for starting plants that you intend to transplant. Most of the seedlings suffered from torn and damaged roots during the transplanting process. We'll see if they survive.

In the middle are my lantanas. Lantanas are hardy in zone 8 where I am and are considered an invasive pest in Hawaii. I thought they would be pretty little inexpensive plants I could plant around a tree in the front yard. This is what I get for not reading. Lantanas grow into big, spreading bushes. I bought 10 little pots of bushes! My yard is not that big! For a while, I watered the lantanas in their pots while trying to figure out what to do with them. I love those little yellow and orange umbels so I didn't just want them to go to waste. Instead, I potted five in one pot and five in another and sat them on my front porch. They are delightful when they are doing well, but I'm not sure they are getting enough sun. I'll post more pictures of their ups and downs later.

The last picture is an illustration of what happens when you don't deadhead flower (cut off a dying bloom). The flower goes to seed -- which is really the point of a flower but WHATEVER -- and it doesn't bloom again. I now have a thick frothy-looking clump of leaves where my pink daisies were and the flowers will not come back.

These two are pics of my nikko blue (right) and white hydrangea plants. I'll post pics of their sad demise later. This is a happy post.

On the right is a weird little basil plant that looks like a tree that I purchased at Lowe's. The leaves don't really grow big enough to cook with, but it is an interesting and nice-smelling plant. I keep hoping it will produce bigger leaves.

In the middle is a little lavender plant that could. I read that these would spread all over the backyard. Not so much. It stays in its little spot, but it loves the sun and the clay appears to be draining well enough to keep it happy.

The last one is a shot of 2 sunflowers that I planted in a pot from seeds on my porch. I didn't expect these to grow at all since the seeds look exactly like the seeds that you can buy to eat. I never would have believed that a real sunflower could come from "polly seeds", as we called them in LA. I have been proven wrong though, because there they are!

Ah, my little cherry tomato plant. I bought it from Pike Nursery and was sure that it would not make it through the week (or the late season frost that hit the day after I planted it). However, it pushed through and is climbing up the trellis and producing food that we can eat! Tomatoes fresh off the vine are divine; feeding yourself is awesome.

On the left here is my rosemary plant that I picked up at Lowe's. It came in a peat pot or somesuch that is supposed to bio-degrade into the ground. It hasn't bio-degraded yet, but it sure was easy to just plop that pot into the earth! Plus, I made some chicken with this a few days ago. It smells delicious in the ground and tastes perfect in food.

In the middle I planted mint. It's from Pike Nursery and I read it would be a spreader. Meh, no spreading, but it also smells great. The leaves are not quite big enough for the cocktails I had pictured using them for, but the summer is just getting started!

Finally, there is a cute silver Target pot of baby's breath that I started from seeds. I use the Miracle Gro potting soil because it is inexpensive and does the job. My hope is that this will look like a thick head of white baby's breath peeking above the top of the rectangular pot. Now I see that I planted too many seeds (I still can't believe that most of them germinate) and I will probably have to thin them out later on. I can't bear to do it now, though.

So! That is the beginning of my wee foray into gardening. More to come!

Keeping Contractors Honest

2009-06-15T14:37:00.001-07:00

Everyone has heard a horror story about unscrupulous contractors. These marauders belly their way into your home with big promises of how they will beautify and revolutionize your home or terrifying scenarios about how your home is a ticking time bomb whose fiery demise will engulf you and your family in ruin.

I encountered one of the latter types a few years ago. He came to the door of my father’s house posing as someone who had an appointment to check the chimney flue. When he came in I could see his eyes scanning the room for opportunities. He caught sight of the fireplace and with eyes bulging with fear he told me breathlessly about the high level of carbon dioxide in the living room because of the "broken" fireplace. He fell to his hands and knees, crawled into the hearth and pulled out a gadget that he claimed would measure the noxious carbon dioxide. Of course it came up with an outrageously high reading. When he saw me hesitate on the verge of belief, he leaned in, “It’s really dangerous in here,” his eyes still bulging, “can’t you smell the carbon dioxide?” Smell the carbon dioxide?! The reason carbon dioxide is the silent killer is because it’s odorless and colorless. I reeled back from the edge of belief and escorted him out.

It’s not always necessary to be able to factually suss out your contractor; we can’t all be experts in every facet of construction. However, we can all push our contractors to be open and collaborative partners with us. First, being partners with your contractor means you’ll have to actively enter the partnership. You can’t be afraid to get dirty. You’ll have to stop nodding your head vacantly thinking about what you’ll have for dinner while the contractor talks. You’ll have to concentrate because you are learning something new. There is no need to know how to reshingle a roof after your consultation, but you should know how to recognize a shingle or flashing that might become a problem. I have been known to climb out onto a roof and demand that the contractor show me the problem and what precisely he is going to do about it. I’m not a roofer, but that doesn’t mean that a roofer shouldn’t try to make me understand what he is going to do before I part with one cent. This brings me to the next point.

Second, you must ask a lot of questions. There is no shame in peppering your contractor with lots of questions. If he cannot explain to you in plain language what he is going to do and then show you the problem so that you can at least recognize it, move along. This is why you can’t be afraid to get dirty. You may have to go out on the roof, under the sink or into the crawlspace to understand what is happening in your home. When I am working actively on houses, I wear jeans to work just about every day. This practice does raise eyebrows when I breeze into a policy meeting with the metro area's housing glitterati right after inspecting a house, but I sweetly explain that I just emerged from the bowels of a house that we are renovating for sale to a lower income family and all the liberals in the room perk up immediately and forgive my grime.

Now you might be wondering, how will I know that my contractor is answering my questions honestly and completely? Because third, you are going to get multiple bids. None of this, “I know a guy who’s a friend of a friend” or just hiring the first person you interview. You should prepare a detailed list of the work you want done (call it a “scope of work” when you talk to your contractors and they will realize you mean business) and have each contractor bid on the same scope. Then you can compare apples to apples. And it goes without saying that if you are hiring someone to do a lot of work on your house, you will want to be sure the contractor is licensed, bonded and has workers' compensation insurance.

The last tip is to go into these transactions feeling confident and powerful. After all, it’s your money and your house. Taking this simple advice won’t protect you from all scams, but most crooks will run from an involved, informed homeowner who makes clear that he or she has high standards.

More on paint colors

2009-06-11T20:09:00.001-07:00

Well, I have to post on paint again because my last post got me all riled up. For instance, certain people on my team have a taste for darker colors. I think dark colors are really nice in larger houses with fab fixtures or even some smaller houses, when the mood is right. Fab fixtures and dark walls can come off very luxe. However, in my very first house that had 3 bedrooms and one bathroom, dark hardwoods and sat on a hill where it was literally flooded with light, I wanted a brighter color.

I went with Sherwin-Williams Organza (#6637). It is a light peach that dazzles in the sun. I really just wanted the main living spaces to be this color and not the bedrooms, but our contractor made clear that more than one color would cost us and the house was already going to be over budget because of issues we did not suss out during the due diligence period, and it was my first house so I was totally intimidated (this is the one with the latrine laundry) and so I didn’t speak up (DUMB) and the whole house ended up this fresh peach color. It may not be ideal, but it’s not terrible, people, check it out:

Does that look like “affordable housing” to you? That’s what I’m saying! So can I get a little credit?! Okay, I think I now have closure. Thanks for your indulgence.

Trust Your Instincts

2009-06-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

I fell off the map for four months because the real life crush of real estate finance, acquisition, rehab and resale came rushing in and filled every crevice of my life – like caulk. But I’ve come up for air and wanted to share some of my experiences with you.

Most importantly, trust your instincts. When you are as new to this as I am, you will soon find yourself being dragged up a creek without a paddle and with no safe place to put your feet down. It can be incredibly intimidating. Happily, we all have an inner guide of gut instincts that help to guide our paths in the dark. Get comfortable leaning on your inner voice as long as your inner voice does not tell you to egregiously cut corners to save a little money and create an expensive problem that your buyer will have to deal with later. Cheaping out may pocket you a little extra cash upfront, but as my friend griffyslave says, “Karma is a b*tch.” Trust your ethical instincts.

For instance, if everyone is telling you your paint colors are too ugly or too light or too dark and you are selling/leasing houses, just paint the naysayers red – the color of their abundant hateraid. Honestly, regarding wall colors there is a lot of room for difference and no one is absolutely right. I just read in an ultra chic decorator mag that every house should have at least one black wall. Erp?

One of my houses had very dark wall-to-wall paneling in the living and dining room. It also boasted swinging parlor doors(!!) separating the kitchen and hallway from the paneled living areas. Uggers! But, I was roundly hated on by everyone over 45 for wanting to paint those walls and tear down those doors. Well you might know that house SOLD before we were even finished with the renovation AND the real estate agent for the buyer who normally only represents people buying new construction said that she fell in love with the interior wall color. She said it looked fresh and modern. Muchas gracias, haters.

If you stay current with reasonable interior design standards and trends and decorate with a feeling for the house itself including its exterior, its light profile and its flooring, you will be fine. Try to choose colors that are neutral enough that the buyer or renter won’t want to immediately paint the walls. Although painting can be done relatively inexpensively, a buyer gets a feeling for a house based on the mood your paint and fixtures have created. Also, factoring in the need to paint one house against another that does not need painting may put your house out of the preferred position. As an aside, the color I used in the SOLD house was Sherwin-Williams Silver Strand (#7057). I wanted to create a cool, modern look in the house and thought it would come out light gray, but the light in the house made the paint look a very light and airy sage green. We trimmed everything in white and ended up a very Crate & Barrel look.

It's a little difficult to see the sagey color of the walls in this lighting, but trust me, it is purrty.

The one bathroom in the house was very small. And pink. The house was built in 1951 and probably had the trendiest bathroom in town at the time. However, almost 60 years later, those pink tiles with white and gray flecks just weren’t as appealing. I fretted for weeks over whether we should try to live with them and hope someone found them charming or just spend the money to glaze the tiles white. After weeks of worry I gave the go-ahead to glaze the tiles and paint the walls a medium shade of gray, Sherwin-Williams Web Gray (#7075). It converted a small, dated bathroom into a cozy modern space that worked with the Crate & Barrel look in the rest of the house. Trusting my instincts there probably helped to put the sale over the line and saved us from ever having to make a mortgage payment on the house.

See how nice the all white tile looks! And you can kind of get a peek of the gray walls too. The vanity and toilet are new.

As a note, I am not paid by Sherwin-Williams, our contractor uses their colors so that is what I had to choose from.

You’ll make mistakes in home rehab. I have already. But trusting your instincts will help immensely. And you can always shake the haters off.

I got a house!

2009-01-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

And I have been running around like a crazy person ever since.

The first house I have been assigned is one that I fought to purchase. It faces a major street, is close to a bus stop and is immediately adjacent to brand new houses that are all occupied. It had been sitting on the market for a long time, so we got a great deal and immediately we had to make decisions.

First, there was the question of the screened-in porch. Now I love a screened-in porch, but I am trying to sell this house and when I look around at the houses that are being built around the city, they all save the screens for the side or back porch, not the front. So I argued for tearing it down. Our team broke along generational lines. The older members thought the functionality of a screened-in porch was nice. The younger members thought it was ugly and deathly to curb appeal.

Once we moved inside, I wanted to paint the paneling in the kitchen. Nothing dates a house faster than walls of dark wood paneling. I got shouted down about cost and the beauty of the paneling (?!) so I let it go. Later, I learned that the washer-dryer was located in an adjacent shed that could not be accessed from indoors. Now look, I have lived in NYC where a personal washer-dryer would be an immense luxury so you take it wherever it is located. However, I am not in NYC now. In this city, everyone purchasing a house has a washer and a dryer and those connections are accessible from the indoors. When I protested, I got push back from the construction guys: "Oh, it's no big deal...", "It'll be expensive to move the connections....","They can go outside...". It was about 30 degrees on the day these men were tromping through the house bellowing about the ease of going outdoors to wash your clothes. Now I know how often they tend to their own laundry. Internally, I was shocked and furious, but externally I was cowed. This is my first house. It is not supposed to be a luxury renovation and what does the rookie know anyway?

We did the walk-through on a Friday afternoon. All weekend, the dark paneling and the "latrine laundry" gave me heartburn. People on limited incomes know that they can't buy mansions, but they also know money is too precious to spend it on crap. On Monday, I marched into work and announced that I could not stand behind the house with the paneling and the latrine laundry. I was greeted with frowns and muttering, but I got to make my changes. Good. I am not going to be the only person on the team who is unable to sell her house and is forced into a dead-end lease-purchase arrangement because my house suffers from a lackluster rehab.

We have taken on 3 houses so far and 2 more are coming down the pike that will be assigned to me. From this episode, I have learned that I need to speak up quickly and forcefully when we are coming up with our initial scope of work so that we can avoid the back and forth and second-guessing later on.

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

2008-12-18T21:33:00.001-08:00

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'

2008-12-15T17:44:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

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.