Posts Tagged ‘investors’

Our Resolution is a Revolution

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 29 |09:34
As unlikely as it seems, housing is beginning a renaissance because of the Great Recession and blow up of the housing market. Companies are innovating all aspects of design, construction and product manufacture, trying to stand out, thrive or simply survive.

 

BuilderFish’s mission is teaching and helping people improve their houses into Lifetime Homes, that your house should seamlessly adapt to you as life progresses and changes.

 

What we do can be applied to any style of house in any area of the country whether building new or retrofitting, and includes proactive attention to every detail from the door knobs to home automation. There’s a new dawn for all of it, and your home should include if you want to live comfortably and conveniently no matter what happens to you and your family (even pets!).

 

Our residential housing stock is old, nearly obsolete with a median year built of 1974, and there’s a glut of beat up foreclosures (shadow inventory of well over a million units) not yet on the market. While some perceive housing is newer following our recent construction boom, the demographic fact is most of our nation’s houses were built
in the decades immediately following WWII. So the picture below is typical of the vast majority of our homes. Imagine inside the lay-out, user friendliness and efficiency of that house.

The good news, a bulldozer isn’t the cure. What’s required is modernization, improved air sealing/quality, water proofing, energy efficient systems and interior redesign accentuating ease. We describe as “custom new within old walls” emphasizing BOTH energy and personal effort efficiency. “Green” building gets all the attention but accessibility and easiness are just as important and apply to every area of the property including the yard.

 

As we head into 2012, think about your home and what you could do to make it livable for a lifetime, or where you plan to go if you don’t.
 

Lifetime Home Survey

Todd Hawkins

 

Oct 25 |11:17

 

I was on a mission and took six months developing the Lifetime Home Survey (LTHS), which was born of a single negative comment following a post class, feedback form. Without ever knowing his name, I still picture the disgruntled attendee with arms crossed, an engineering type who frowned the entire presentation.

His comment? “Didn’t give specific measurements!” I purposely avoided getting technical to reduce the likelihood of audience slumber; but, after reading Mr. Unhappy Engineer’s feedback, I vowed, “Metrics you want, measurements thou shall get!”

Call me obsessive compulsive but, with Mr. Unhappy Engineer’s scowl burned into my mind, what began as a simple checklist grew (out of control?) into a whole house assessment. I referenced 17 documents and architect teammate Charles Hendricks proofread the final product, what we believe to be THE most comprehensive Universal Design home assessment resource currently available on the web.

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Flipping for Actual Profit

Todd Hawkins

 

Apr 12 |11:50

(This is the first in a multi-part series over the next few weeks.)

I recommend you stop while you’re monetarily ahead if your attitude about real estate investing is similar to how you felt tumbling down the stairs Christmas morning. Get out now before you blow serious money and time. Like any form of investing, success is contingent on a studious and disciplined approach. I don’t want to begin this series with a negative vibe talking down to you; I merely hope to discourage the dreamers. The Housing Bubble is full of stories of folks who watched a late night infomercial, decided a fortune awaited and ran out the door seeking riches with no-money-down “strategies”. About the only people who made out in those deals were the producers and performers on the infomercials.

So I’ll begin this series about real estate “flipping” by explaining what it is NOT. Flipping is NOT buying a home, holding it and hoping to sell for profit in the future. That’s called speculation or gambling and it’s how a lot of so-called investors lost their shirts during the boom. For those who did actually succeed in making money by “buying low, selling high” banking a net profit as a result of market value appreciation, that’s called good fortune or luck. And many times those same “investors” didn’t actually make as much money as they thought because they didn’t account properly for taxes and holding costs, which is a mistake even seasoned, bona fide real estate investors occasionally make when local market dynamics throw them a curve. (I’ll cover a down market in later posts.)

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