Welcome to the Hardcore Husky Forums. Folks who are well-known in Cyberland and not that dumb.
95% of all Wealth
pawz
Member, Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 21,156 
... is made or held in Real Estate. What is your best RE investment to-date?
Details please. What was the greatest hurdle you overcame or lesson learned? Or does dumb-luck get all the credit?
*Your primary residence counts. Extra points for flips, building, or some type of land or commercial development.
Details please. What was the greatest hurdle you overcame or lesson learned? Or does dumb-luck get all the credit?
*Your primary residence counts. Extra points for flips, building, or some type of land or commercial development.
Tagged:
Comments
Sad!
Lessons learned ... real estate IS an investment and needs to be treated as such, particularly with respect to home residence.
There will be lots of opportunities emerging from COVID and what will almost assuredly be a recession if Biden wins
If I do buy additional locations it will all be in locations where it's more of an AirBnB type of set up.
From a seasonal perspective, the normal spring home buying season was delayed 2 mos due to CV. But that alone doesn't really address your question.
From a national perspective the RE market should be getting hammered. And in my opinion still will. With 25M people permanently out of work and the end of stimulus/unemployment insurance at the end of July, people flat aren't making their rent and/or subsequently their mortgage payments. I've heard from multiple sources foreclosures are stacking up at the banks, however they can't do anything with them yet as there is still a moratorium on foreclosures. Eventually these properties will flood the market.
I'm not sure these antidotes answer your questions either, but they should be pointed out nonetheless.
-The downtown Seattle condo market is crashing. Apartments in Seattle are lucky to have 85% occupancy rates and good luck with that amount of revenue coming in. People are door.ass.out to closed-quarter living.
The Eastside is a Tale of Two Cities. If properties are are priced well, they are FLYING off the page still. There is a huge push for people to buy New Construction OR Waterfront (lulz that there is any waterfront available). It's a couple times per week that I'm amazed by a sale in our market.
For example these two New Construction homes went Pending this past week at record prices for their location and without any view:
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bellevue/10605-SE-22nd-St-98004/home/510599
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bellevue/9841-NE-15th-St-98004/home/506002
The only conclusion I can draw is we? are the beneficiaries of the upper-leg of a "K-shaped" recovery. The push on the Eastside is based on FANG stocks being UP in a post-covid environment. Amazon is up 60-80%? It seems every other week Amazon purchases or leases another 1M sqft of office space. Facebook just bought the REI corporate building in the Spring District. Microsoft is going through the largest expansion of it's campus in decades. Google bought Kirkland Urban for $435M, then promptly bought the dirt next door for another $40M. In short they are ALL still hiring in BIG ways.
Add to that the these FANG execs and employees are fleeing CA and Seattle-proper in droves to get away from the politics and failures of it's governance. I'm not trying to make a political statement here (in spite of my Tug poasting history), it's just something I see and hear from clients/buyers on a daily basis.
Another factor in the post COVID environment is people who can work from home, are chosing to GTFO of the greater Seattle area all together - to the San Juans, Idaho/Sun Valley, Colorado/Vail/Aspen, Montana etc etc etc.
One thing that completely boggles my mind in light of the 25M who are never getting their jobs back, is how many people CAN - and ARE - writing checks for 8-figure residential homes. Every single day it amazes the sheer volume of people who seemingly come out of the woodwork to do it.
Lastly, and from a Macro investment perspective, (I will need to find the graph that supports this) but in the last half-dozen recessions this country has gone through Real Estate stays up or even when the stock market/economy are getting slaughtered. (The notable exception being '08 when it was a real estate bubble that popped.) Thus, you can make the case people with swelling stock portfolios are trying to move their holdings to RE in anticipation of a large impending/inevitable crash.
*I'm sure I'll have more thoughts to add as I ruminate on this poast.
Made a couple mil’ on that deal.
The key is making the necessary renovations when you’re getting ready to sell: caretaker’s house, outdoor pool, the moat...they all really added to the “curb appeal”.
Did you throw in your piss boy or did the new owners need to BYOPB?
Needed that to counterbalance the previous house purchase at close to the height of the bubble
Ever seen the movie The Money Pit? It's a documentary about the happenings since 2008 with my primary investment vehicle. Since our house lost something like 30% of its value in the first year, we were stuck at a somewhat high interest rate and with no ability to sell or refinance. On top of this, almost immediately, this 1925-built house started showing signs that it had had some lipstick slapped on it before being foisted upon the suckers that were myself and Mrs. 1to345466. In the first half dozen years of homeownership, we dumped about $125K cash into the property. The kitchen remodel was optional (in my opinion...), the rest was all just repairs and maintenance: Mandatory city sewer hookup; two re-roofs; replacement of the living room wall because the chimney had no footing under it and was sinking and pulling away from the house, allowing water in; basement bonus room flooded, requiring a complete rebuild after digging and installing a functioning footing drain; foot-through-porch rot situation requiring new porch; and plenty more.
Then, just as we caught up, were in a good place financially, had refinanced to a far lower interest rate, the market had turned, and our investment was looking like an investment again, the garage burned down. Five years later, I have a new garagemahal/man cave, but we're back in debt. So what happens? A simple master bedroom carpet replacement turns into a forensic "how not to build a house" mystery, ending in our bedroom floor being ripped out right down to the crawlspace, the roof being temporarily supported, and the wall of our bedroom laying in a pile in the yard. Luckily, I framed it back in and got it covered a day before this rain hit, but now my back is fucked up and I can't finish the job.
Knowing what I now know about what's in our walls (hint: not any window or door headers, I can tell you that!...) and under the siding, it's easily a six-figure project to get our house where it needs to be, so we're in the process now of yet again borrowing against equity (of which there is plenty for now) to get further into debt. While all of my coworkers (at least the ones who haven't lost half their shit to divorce) are buying second or third properties for investments, I'm about to be broke again from being over $600K into a house I bought for $330K at the peak of a bubble.
On the bright side, it's looking increasingly like our house will be totally badass and desirable in a few years, just in time for the bottom to fall out of the market. I'm available for financial advice at any time, guysm. The line forms on the left.
And when we're done, we'll still be paying less than we would to move somewhere else equivalent. Which is sad. I don't know how it's even possible to be a first time buyer these days unless you're born into a trust fund. Half a million gets you a two-bedroom with an outdoor bathroom in my neighborhood...