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Our House

May 5, 2018

 

WOW isn’t that an ugly house? Yes, but it’s our house. As a real estate investor I come into contact with lots of houses every week. I always think, “This one could be ours”. But NO my wife always tells me. When she saw this one she said, “This is going to be OUR HOUSE”.

It is in my old neighborhood where I grew up and went to high school. Close to downtown where some folks from Suburbia are scared to or have never gone to. This is only because they dont know the area and have only lived in the outer loop 1604. San Antonio has two “loops” that encircle the city. This house is inside both of them just about 4 miles from the heart of downtown. If you bike ride it is about 20 to 30 minutes from downtown. By car it is about 10 minutes away.

When my wife and I got married we each had our own home, but we decided that we live in my home. I am sure that you can imagine the little issues like, “Well this is YOUR house, not mine” that came about. This finally after 8 years of marriage settled it. This is our house.

From the picture you can see that it is not the greatest looking house on the block. But that is how investors buy their houses. You have to get something that needs some work and is the diamond in the rough. This was definitely ROUGH. Our house is pretty close to the Horder House, but it has so much more potential. Also the area is a conservation district. This makes for a few more rules to follow. We experienced some design restrictions but nothing that could not be overcome.

So here we are about 9 months after buying our house. We have figured out what we want to do with the house, we have our plans from our architect, Andres Olmos. Got cleaned out all the junk from the house, two 30 yd dumpsters full of stuff. The house is now gutted, which included taking over an inch of stucco off of the ceilings in a couple of rooms and removing stucco from the walls of the bathroom and completely gutting the kitchen. We even removed a non-load bearing wall seperating the kitchen and dining room(pic in progress). We filled up another 30yd dumpster. We worked with HDRC (historic design & review commission) to get all permissions. We now have our approvals and permits to get started.

This is a bunch more work than I thought for our house. And I do rehabs for a living! Usually my rehabs are much more simple though. I fix some sheetrock, put in a new toilet, maybe some cabinets, paint inside and out. Sometimes my roofer will put in a new roof, maybe a little foundation work. Our house needs all of the above and more.

In the “About Rick” tab, I will add some pics of this house from the beginning and as we do repairs. Go back to that tab every now and then to see the project. We have a 6 month project timeline. This means that by             Halloween we should be moved into our house. I can’t wait to give out candy and the house will actually NOT be spooky like it is now.

I know, I know everyone wants to know the numbers on this beautiful home. It was purchased for 105k. We have put about 6k so far to get rid of all the junk, trim trees and cut down overgrown bushes. Also to gut the house and get the house ready for rehabilitation. I had planned to put about 60k into repairs not including the garage that needs to be rebuilt. We are planning to do the garage in a year or two after we recover from the rehab of the house. Now, after we have gotten into the house more, it looks like the rehab will be closer to about 80k to 85k. Still not bad to be under 200k for a historic home just minutes to downtown as well as the bustling northside.

We used to live near the outer loop of the city 1604. During traffic it would take about 40-45 minutes on the highway for my wife to get to work on the southwest side of town. Now she should be about 20 minutes to work going through the surface streets. That should be great for her gas consumption.

This is not a project for the new rehabber. I have purchased and sold about 80 houses over the years and about half were rehabs. This one is causing me to lose sleep and has caused more than 1 or 2 little disagreements with the Mrs. The crazy thing is that we are just starting the rehab right now. Well I shouldn’t really say just starting. We have pretty much gotten all of the planning out of the way and gotten the demo out of the way. Mostly my wife has decided what goes where and all the details have gotten hammered out. At least that is what I am hoping.

I know there will be some changes because there always are some. I just have to take a deep breath, accept the change and move on with my rehab. Even though this is a big project, my wife and I are both on the same page. She has lived with my craziness for 8 years. She knows every time that we have a plan in place…wait for it…something will happen that will change our plans. BE OK WITH CHANGE. It is the only way that you will stay sane.

I will have a post about every month during the rehab to show you what is going on with our house in addition to a few other posts. Hopefully we can stay married through this rehab! Luckily for us, we have a licensed personal counselor in the family, my sister. Both my wife and I regularly have sessions with her to keep us from killing each other. We call it going out to breakfast or for a drink, but we all know it is for mental health!!

I hope to see you or talk to you soon.

ps If you are in San Antonio on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, please join us for a real estate networking meeting at 166 Babcock Rd. There is never a fee and no reservation is needed. Just show up between 6pm and 7pm for networking and be ready for the meeting at 7pm.

pps You want to go at it alone? Try getting started with Robert Kyosoki’s, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. This is a great book to get your frame of mind straight.