Property Ladder - New show on TLC

[Bearcata]

Nothing but repeats, this time of year is agony for us faithful viewers. I want new PL's and FTH's.

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[Bearcata]

Austin, Texas former band manager to real estate broker Laura Croteau. Bought a ranch house for $130,000 has a budget of $40,000 and a timeline of 4 weeks. The house is 1800 sf, 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. She wants to open up the floor plan and have the kitchen, dining room and living room be one big room. There will be 2 master suites. The house has an addition that looks like a former family room that will become the second master suite. She also plans to add a huge wood deck on the back cause Austin has a temperate climate and you can use the deck as an addition room and the backyard has a sloop so it also adds usable space to the back yard.

Laura has been flipping for a while and plans to use the same contractors she has used before and has a good working relationship with. So what went wrong. First the project manager had a horrible time with the subcontractors especially for the kitchen. He called 4 different guys to come and do the electrical and plumbing on the kitchen and none ever showed up after saying they would. He finally got tired of it and started to do the kitchen remodel and make the custom cabinents himself. The kitchen was widened by 4 feet. Several closets were made bigger and the new master bath was also made larger. Also Laura put in a really nice wood front door and it looked so good she started to upgrade other things. I did like some of the slate floors and some of the custom tile work by the front door. She also had the contractor put in glass block inserts over all the bedroom doors to add in extra light. I did like that feature. But some of the colors and carpets she choose were way over the top. 90% or flippers use neutral colors to appeal to the largest possible audience. She went rock and roll with the colors. The main living space, dining area and kitchen were lime green. One of the bedrooms was plum, one was mustard yellow, one bathroom turquoise, one a bright blue. Laura said "all I need was one buyer". The project ended taking 20 weeks instead of 4 weeks. The budget went from $40,000 to $150,000. Still the realtor did access it at $365,000 and if it sold for that Laura would make a profit of $85,000.

I did see some nice features such as the tankless water heater they put in the attic and the bat house. Bats eat 600 insects in a night and they help keep the mosquitos down.

[Bearcata]

Please, some new episodes.

[Bearcata]

Ontario, California 35 miles outside of LA
Flippers" Cindy and Doug. Will do most work by themselves, hiring specialists for the hard stuff.

House: Built in 1928, 1600 sf, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. Price: $250,000. Timeline: 2 months. Budget $35,000.

Walkthru, the guest bathroom has to be totally gutted. All the hardwood floors need to be refinished. The kitchen will be gutted and a big passthru will be added between the living, dining area and a smaller passthru added over the kitchen sink so you can see into the family room addition. Hardwood floors had to be added to the master bedroom. Also all the exterior landscaping had to be redone. After the house was demo'd the couple cleared out the backyard, cut down some overgrown trees and opened up the middle of the yard to sun. The previous owners also had left a lot of stones, and boulders in the yard and the flippers and their daughter created a dry stream bed in the back yard. A nice feature and use of onsite material and practical if case of too much rain. Because it is an older home it needed a lot of updating as far as plumbing, wiring, putting in a new roof, installing AC and that raised the budget to $41,000. The couple did finish in 2 months although when the realtor was there there was some small finish work that needed to be done. Millwork for the baseboards and doorframes of one of the bedrooms, some baseboards in other rooms and covers for the outlets. Outlets in these older homes are in the floor in not in the wall like we are used to. The realtor told the couple that they should put the house on the market for $530,000. Doug was surprised he was expecting $450,000 or $480,000. That gives the couple a projected profit of $139,000. Not bad for 2months workd and this was an older couple in their 50's.

[Bearcata]

new FTH ep on at 9pm in case anyone is dying for some new programing.

[Bearcata]

Highland Park, CA.

Highland Park is considered one on the original LA bedroom communities and was bounded by one of the first highways. It also still has affortable housing that can be flipped. Tina DiGeorge is a musician doing her first flip. Her house was built in 1906, is 920 sf, has 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. She bought the house for $340,000 has a budget of $40,000 and a 3 month deadline. Tina wants hardwood floors throughout and hopes to save the existing floors. She wants to make the old water heater laundry room the new master bath and put on a deck on the front on her house. Fred her contractor suggests french doors in the bedrooms if the budget allows. The demo goes great and amazingly the house has no water damage or termites. But after the first week of demo Fred the contractor has his crew on other projects and no work is being done. By wk 5 Tina is really worried and decides to let go Fred and hire another contractor. Dry wall starts to go up by wk 8. Tina picks some great slate for the bathroom tile and kitchen floor and coordinating glass tile. Its not too matchy matchy. The ktichen floor has 16 in tiles and they are 12 in tiles in the bathrooms and the kitchen slate is a slightly darker grey, the master is a middle grey and the guest bath a lighter grey with coresponding tile. She also had to put in new hardwood floors in a beautiful chocolate brown. I used to not like the really dark hardwood floors but these shows are making me a fan. The floors look great. Tina also puts in a great glass front door and frosted glass doors to the bedrooms to bring in extra light and vaulted the front living room. She ended going $30,000 over budget but even with all the delays finished in 13 wks. Her realtor suggested that she put it on the market for $629,000 for a projected profit of $218,000.

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Manhattan Beach, CA 19 miles south of downtown LA. Meet Dave Gendron, just moved to LA from the East Coast, starting a new job, having a baby in 2 months and flipping a house. Lets add stress and pressure to our overscheduled life shall we. Dave at least seems to have had some common sense and has hired a project manager and interior designer. The property is 2,000 sf, has 5 bedrooms and 2 baths and cost $1,470,000. The budget is $150,000 and the timeline is 2 months. Dave wants the house finished before the baby is born. He wants to replace all the flooring with new hardwood floors made out of bamboo. He also wants to knock the wall between the master bedroom and garage to make a larger master suite. There is another existing garage on the property so this is an ok move. He also wants to knock down the wall between the living room and kitchen to make it one open space. The other bedrooms need only cosmetic changes and the master bath was already updated and has nice tile floors and the bathtub has a real nice slate surround. The vanity and mirrors need to be redone cause the current vanity looks very 80's. The most money will be spent in the kitchen and then the master suite. He is also restaining all the doors, and french doors to refresh them and staining the tile in the courtyard to make it look fresh.

The finished project looks great, Dave put the dark bamboo floors throughout the house and they look great and really unify the look the kitchen was redesigned and the layout is much better. They used a type of granite; for the counters, called Ceaserstone that is 93% crushed quartz. It's black with silvery shiny sparks in it. Contrasts nicely with the white cabinents and stainless steel appliances. While the house is finished the outside is not, and Dave wonders if he should finish it. His realtor tells him to put the house on the market but go ahead and finish the landscaping. Dave did go over budget and ended spending $225,000 instead of $150,000. Still the realtor wants him to put the house on the market for 2.2 million and if he sells the house for that he will have a profit of $500,000.

[Bearcata]

Both FTH were repeats but the second episode had a 2 or 3 minute update done recently which was accually 2 yrs later on what happened after the filming stopped. The house was sold 2 months later, the price was reduced by about 30-40 thousand but the flipper still made $79,000 on it and liked real estate so much she open her own company 'Houses by Kelly' to help other flippers.

[Bearcata]

TLC is running a bit of a marathon. I did read over on the Sell This House thread from the link to the Atlanta Fox news network that one of the posters is being filmed for a Property Lader episode, so new eps are coming. I did watch one show I have not seen before and watching total amateurs get in over their heads in a financial mess is very painful, but most likely what happens in 'real life'. Watching Property Ladder also shows how scripted Sell This House has become. STH implies that contractors are all professional and selling the house is easy as pie PL is more like a poke in the eye. Amazingly is is the greed on Property Ladder that is hard to take. All the flippers want a $100,000 profit for poor craftmanship and crappy redos.

[jguitar]

While reading the Fox Atlanta blog comments about Sam, I saw this guy post about being filmed for Property Ladder, he has written that they just completed filming and his episode should be on sometime in September.

The final day of filming with Kirsten Kemp from TLC’s Property Ladder went well. She is a super nice person off camera but when you get her on camera she is what the film crew call “Snarky”. You can guess what that means. Either way, the show was fun and I cant wait to see the episode.

This is the link to all his PL blogs. Investment Property « David Shanahan