As we settle into our house, I will be writing about some of the work we have done. I have already commented on the plumbing work that escalated, now I will talk about the fences. One of the first observations we made when we initially looked at the house was that the fences sucked. Actually two of the three sides of our yard were in pretty bad shape (the back fence is actually OK and serviceable...
While the outside of the house has pretty decent paint, the inside was a bit, uh, hideous. Nothing too awful, but it clearly hadn’t been painted in a long time. The bedrooms had some odd paint colors on some walls, and one was obviously a child’s room with some odd trim. Add to that the awful 70’s vintage “popcorn” ceiling, and you have a mess. Fortunately, our real...
Before moving into our new house, we are having a lot of work done. While the “bones” of the house are in good condition, it is clear that some of the extremities were in need of some massive overhaul. The Kitchen Appliances are one of the worst offenders. As a former professional chef, I am lucky (cursed?) with the ability to make anything “do” around cooking. Old stoves...
A short post today. The hunt is on, and how the game is played here in Silicon Valley is that you pretty much have to hit open houses. How different this was than our experience of selling in Phoenix. There, open houses were drains on the agent’s time. They would come, set out some cookies, and wait. And wait. And wait. In 3 hours (or sometimes 5 hours, as they often started at 11 instead...
One thing the Internet has enabled in a huge way is the investigation of the neighborhood. Since we are placing an offer on a house we like, and we have learnt to not trust the Trulia crime map (it says our apartment is lowest crime, HA!) Fortunately, there are many options. Since we are in San Jose, we can use the SJPD Crime Map website to see what activity is in your area. (I would bet my...
About 7 months ago, we moved to one of the foreclosure hot spots in the country, Phoenix. When I was first looking for houses, I was thought I would be able to pick up one of the many short sales, or foreclosed properties. Clearly, there was a large inventory, and finding a lot of listings in the $150K price range was easy. However, it wasn’t as simple as that. First, it is pretty clear...