UPDATE on the fence: We've found a really reasonable fencer who is throwing in a bunch of freebies, so we've paid him half of the money to order the materials and such.
Now we're just waiting for him to give us a start date. Of course this all-of-a-sudden-it-decides-to-be-winter snowfall isn't helping. Anyway, once we know the start date we can notify the neighbors.
I'm sure there's gonna be some drama.
Especially for our neighbors to the left since a) their backyard is gonna look wee small after the fence is up -- not my fault though -- property lines are propertly lines! and b) some genius put a shed in the backyard on our side of the property that is shared by us and our neighbors to the left -- so us putting up the fence is going to cut off access to it.
Oh well, I say.
We just found out that Jess' house in Waterbury will be vacant by the end of the summer. Which brings us to try to figure what we're gonna do with it.
As per a previous arrangement -- those living there are paying just the mortgage payment so she (now we) isn't/aren't making anything on the ownership of that house.
At this point -- we're trying to figure out whether or not we want to rent it out for a while or fix it up as best we can and sell it.
But the real estate market is in the toilet right now -- which means we'd have to pick up an additional mortage payment on top of the one for the house we live in (thankfully that mortgage payment is half what we pay for ours).
We'd also have to "butch up" and do a lot of work to get it in condition to sell -- perhaps draw on our loverly 'handy' friends and family to help out (which actually sounds like fun to me).
If we did some minor fixing up of it and rented it out we could a) get that mortgage paid without coming out of pocket and b) perhaps even have some extra $'s coming in.
BUT then you gotta deal with renters.
Hmmm, what would Jesus do?
And last but not least -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVA!!
9 comments! Pls comment.:
I think I want to buy the complete DVD set of the "Flip That House" TV show. I think that we can do alot of the work ourselves, but it's gonna take time, money and alot of sweat!
Anyone wanna sign up to help?
I love that pic of the fence with birdhouse fence toppers. Hmmm....
Nothing about how much you gus sweated at the gym yesterday?
Happy Birthday Eva!
gus=guys..freaking keyboard....
whee! it's my birthday! go me! :)
flipping houses takes a lot of time and MONEY... the little things make a lot of difference... like if a buyer walks into a house and sees a sloppy paint job, they automatically start thinking what else was done sloppy...
take your time and do it right...
good luck!
Houses simply aren't selling right now, and since you have to be able to sell a flipped/fixed house quickly in order to make decent money, flipping is just not a very good option any more. Put in some seat equity and fix up the other house enough (patch nail holes, paint, new toilet seats, new blinds or curtains, insure appliances and plumbing works, relamp all lights, THOROUGHLY clean - esp. floors, etc.) to rent it for a decent sum. Since housing sales are in the dumper but folks still have to live somewhere, rentals are up. We own 5 townhouse/condos and couldn't sell one of them for even half of what we financed. However, we can rent them all out and actually make enough for movie money at the end of the month.
"What would Jesus do???!" No you didn't. lol Well, since you asked, I'll tell you: He would fix it up himself just like he would have put the fence up himself and saved a ton of money because he was a carpenter!!! Not to mention switching his car insurance over to Geico. LOL
You couldn't pay me to try to flip a house right now in this market.
Better to hunker down and wait until the market get better and rent. Just my two cents.
When Bing was offered a job in California last fall, one of the things we really worried about was being able to sell our house. It is so hard to get buyers these days.
Ditto to Jami's advice. If you can hang onto it until the market gets better, just think how much more you can make in the long run.
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