Real estate and other stuff

If you're going to buy, rehab, and flip houses, be sure to pay your contractors and the other members of your team.

The star of the first two seasons of Flip This House, Armando Montelongo, is accused of not paying his appraisal bills for the properties he bought to rehab. Here's the story from San Antonio local newspaper website:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/realestate/stories/MYSA022308.01C.Montelongo.1b79700c.html

I never liked that guy anyway. He came across as a bully to all the "little people" involved who helped make him successful--and a star.

Today, get out your binoculars if necessary and walk around your house. Look up at the eaves and the edge of the roof overhang and the roof itself. See any holes?

You might have a furry little family in your attic. Even if you haven't heard any noises, they may have entered on the other side of the house from your bedroom and you can't hear them. There are two reasons you don't want critters dancing on your ceiling: they might be the kind that chew on wiring (rats and squirrels), and they might start stinking up the place with their droppings (raccoons).

You see, I have a client whose house I'm trying to lease. The former tenants have moved out, but have left a very smelly upstairs, and my handyman has to go seal up their front door in the eaves and trim away the branches. I don't want to show it to any prospective human tenants until I get rid of the odor.

And just last night, our own personal raccoon was discovered noisily clawing away at a small hole in the eaves above our bedroom window, trying to enlarge it so she could move in and raise her family. So my handyman will have another project this week.

I love animals (except crocodiles, big spiders, and sharks, which is why I have elected not to live in Australia), and I am a firm believer in humanely rehoming them or encouraging them to move on, rather than trapping or exterminating them. With all the development in San Antonio and outlying cities like ours, many animals' habitats are being cut down or covered with concrete. However, others have adapted pretty well to living with humans, and in fact, are useful for keeping the bug and fire-ant population down. According to the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, raccoons, possums, and squirrels eat roaches, and armadillos (see my previous post) can even handle fire ants. Some animals carry rabies, such as skunks and bats, but as long as you avoid them and keep your pets indoors at night (which you should be doing anyway), the risk is small.

So if you see a hole in your house or roof, or have heard suspicious noises, follow the recommendations of the TWRC and kindly rehome the family. Please be aware that if it's the time of the year they are having babies, the mother may need time to remove them. If they die in your attic, not only will they make an even worse smell, but you will have Very Bad Karma.

Plus, I will come after you with a crocodile.

Photo: what you do NOT want to see (from gobsmackedagain.blogspot.com)

Texas is one of the few states to be continuing to add jobs, just one of the reasons that the real-estate downturn has not had as much of an effect here as in other states. And two companies headquartered in San Antonio have made it onto Fortune magazine's annual list of top 100 employers. They include Valero Energy, the largest oil refining company in North America that nobody's ever heard of, and Rackspace Managed Hosting, which Microsoft designated Worldwide Hosting Service Provider of the Year in 2007.

Valero's campus is on the northwest part of San Antonio, close to the University of Texas and a little farther from USAA and the Medical Center, two other major employers. The average annual salary for Valero employees is $97,730 and for Rackspace is $55,883.

Rackspace is relocating its headquarters near the Medical Center to the repurposed Windsor Park Mall on the city's northeast side. In the process, it is planning to double its workforce to approximately 3,000 in the next few years. It was just named tenth-best company to work for in Texas by Texas Monthly magazine.

Finally, Boeing, with facilities located at the decommissioned Air Force base now known as Kelly USA and Lackland AFB on the city's fast-growing west side, recently announced that they are doubling their production of 787 Dreamliners. Average salaries are $68,700 companywide, and Boeing will be adding another few hundred jobs to the San Antonio area with the new 787 contracts.

I just received an exciting e-mail from the IRS:

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $480.23. (Goody! Er, does this mean you've been monitoring all my fiscal activity?)

Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to process it. A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. (I'll bet it can.)

For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline. (What deadline? You didn't mention any deadline!)

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here (URL removed; but it pointed to a site in Japan, where I guess the IRS has its headquarters now.)

Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time. Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated. (I'm not sure how I'm supposed to change my IP address, date, or time, but I sure am scared to try now.)

Regards,

Internal Revenue Service

Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved. (Nice touch! I guess I should have gotten permission before posting this....)

I was sick and tired of hearing about what a great guy George Washington was: how honest he was, what an inspiring leader he became in cold weather, how sharp he looked with his wooden teeth--blah, blah, blah.

Well, recently I got the goods on old George. Last week I talked to a lady from my mom's jujitsu class who channels part-time. George was out of town, or whatever the equivalent is Over There, but we were told we could leave a message and he'd get back to us.

Instead, one of George's high-school buddies volunteered to talk to us. The spirit of Clarence (names have not been changed to protect privacy; this guy's been dead for a couple hundred years, for heaven's sake) told me George always insisted on standing up in the front of the boat. He was kicked off the rowing team for just that reason. In fact, for that painting of George crossing Delaware (it was a really small state in those days) the artist had to work fast before George's incensed boat-mates pushed him overboard.  

Next in line to reminisce from beyond the grave about our first president was the lady who lived on the corner, Mrs. Hancock, who revealed that not only did George leave the wash hanging on the line for days on end, but he never chopped down trees, even for firewood. George was totally hopeless with a hatchet (the country had to wait for Abe to come along before a president could be nicknamed "The Rail-splitter"), and he was pretty defensive about it, too. After a storm blew down an overgrown cherry tree next to the privy, George told his father that he'd chopped it down himself. Understandably skeptical, his long-suffering parent merely replied, "Yeah, right, George." Crestfallen, George admitted he could never tell a lie. He would always begin to perspire noticeably.

My mom's friend then tried to get through to George's wife, Martha. After a couple of wrong numbers (Dinah Washington was quite gracious), she managed to channel George's mother instead. We soon tried to change the channel. Mrs. W griped about George's taking off with the new carriage and not filling up the horses before he came home, usually way after his curfew. In addition, he and his friends often trashed the house (of Burgesses) with their keg parties and annoyed the neighbors with loud fiddling music that went on into the wee hours. George's mom said he never did his chores and was always getting grounded.

Then he entered politics.

"I knew he'd never amount to anything," she cackled triumphantly.

We hit the jackpot, though, on the next spirit to be channeled, Alexander Hamilton, recognized on fine sawbucks everywhere. He recalled that George played a major role in starting a rebellion, considered a useful public-relations event ever since the Boston Tea Party, which was a big hit. George's original plan had been to stage the Gin-and-Tonic-with-a-Twist Uprising, a sly dig at the national beverage of Britain, but an untimely cold snap wiped out the citrus crop. The nation was stumped. After brain-storming with his wiseguys one night, George finally saved the situation (he had already won the pot) when his gaze fell on his strangely empty glass.

"Aaron! Alex!" he shouted (they were still friends at the time), "I've got it--we'll have a Whiskey Rebellion!"

The idea went over big. Grabbing their bottles, everybody immediately tore outside to start plucking hapless chickens and heating up tar.

Finally, when Alex started getting emotional and reciting Washington's farewell address (although he got the ZIP code wrong), we decided it was time to disconnect the line to the great beyond.

After crossing the channeler's palm with a book of Elvis stamps (now there's a real American hero), I went home and started to think. The folks who'd known George in his glory days, i.e., when he was still breathing, had described a different person from the one I'd been taught to Revere* . I realized that maybe George was just an average Joe who had somehow managed to land a high-profile job.

He must have had some special talent, though. After all, he is known as the father of our country.

* Don't even get me started on that guy.

These photos speak for themselves, although they're probably not saying what the listing agents wanted them to. They aren't the worst photos attached to the listings, they are the ONLY ones.

A lot for sale--is this the seller? A neighbor? A security guard?

Another lot for sale, with nice dirt and healthy weeds.

I don't mean to be judgmental, but is this really the best they could do? If the property was on the market before, they could even have "borrowed" an old photo from the previous listing. I've seen that done a lot when I look at the History report of a listing. 

Perhaps that explains the date on the following photo. This active listing is from a different MLS, so I don't know the number of days on market.

TGIF!

A couple of weeks ago, I had to kill some time and run a couple of errands in Schertz. (According to the US post office, I live about 200 feet from the boundary line of Schertz, in Cibolo, to the east.)

Since I had my camera with me, I thought I'd try to capture some of the contrasts between the old city of Schertz and just a small portion of the rapid development that has been taking place in the last few years.

Last year, Schertz was ranked one of the best places to live in Texas by Money magazine. So far, it's been good to me. Many people stationed at Randolph Air Force Base live in Schertz or the nearby cities of Universal City, Live Oak, Converse, and Cibolo. I'll be driving around there soon, too.

Click the Details button after viewing the shows for more information.

I had an e-mail from some clients overseas asking about the average price per square foot in ZIP code 78249 to help them decide whether to make an offer on a second home and for how much. They saw the Board of Realtor statistics published from December and were wondering if the average price per square foot would fall to $75 to $78 in this neighborhood. Here's the gist of my reply, recycled for the blog in case it's interesting to others:

The problem with ZIP codes is they are funny shapes and 78249 goes all over the place-I know because I used to live in it and I still have a rental property in it! The two are wildly different. The average price per SF is not a meaningful number, because the ZIP code contains a variety of homes. San Antonio is now the eighth-largest US city, so we are talking about a lot of homes, too.

According to the local Board of Realtors, sales prices are projected to stay level and even rise into the spring and most of the new-home inventory is expected to be sold by the end of the year. Because San Antonio has reasonably priced real estate that has not shot up in value, it is not expected to go down much either. There was a slowdown last fall, in the lower price ranges especially, because of the subprime mortgage industry trouble, but homes in good condition and well priced continued to sell. There is a six-month inventory (last time I checked anyway), which is skewed towards a buyer's market, but nothing like Las Vegas, Miami, San Diego, or Tampa.

When I do a search on the MLS of single-family homes that have sold to date since September 1 in 78249, I get the following results: the lowest priced were 10 homes under $100,000. Two homes sold for over $1.2 and $1 million respectively; followed by three over $500,000 and three in the mid- to high-$400,000s. Of the rest, 44 sold for $200,000 to $300,000; 110 sold for $150,000 to $200,000; and 91 sold for $100,000 to $150,000.

With these figures the average sold price for all of 78249 was $178,057; the median was $159,853; and the average sold price per square foot was $85.

However, the sales price per square foot also varies a lot with the size of the home. There is a certain "base" price per square foot that it takes to build any house. Then as you increase the size, you reach efficiencies of scale. On top of that, of course, you add the features and finish-out: a mansion will obviously cost more per square foot because of the marble floors and gold faucets than a regular tract home. But different-sized tract homes in the same subdivision, by the same builder, even with the same degree of finish-out, will have a different price per square foot. You'd have to know exactly how many homes sold and for what size, and what features they had, for the average price per square foot to be useful in a large area such as a ZIP code.

This concludes the broadcast portion of my message to my clients.

Now I'm a big-picture person myself, and I love to look for trends and patterns, but sometimes you have to zoom in a bit to see the trees in the forest.

Or in this case, zooming in even further to see the daffodils among the trees! This was taken in 2004, and the squirrels have probably eaten all the tasty flowers by now. But if we get some nice new tenants who want to plant some more, I'll buy the bulbs!