DDIY Home Renewal

Have you checked your gutters lately?  The sun may be shining right now in the Lynnwood area, but Spring rains are on their way and you need to make sure your gutters are functioning properly! 

DDIY Home Renewal takes the hassle and risk out of doing it yourself.  Why spend all day climbing a ladder, trying to get to those hard to reach spots when we can do it for you?

Call me direct at 425-232-4811 today to get this great price on getting your gutters cleaned!  You will be glad you did and save yourself a whole lot of time!

Is your Lynnwood or Everett area home not looking up standards for you holiday parties? 

For the month of December, we are offering 15% off interior painting when you get your whole house done!

You want to impress your friends and family don’t you?  Well, all those decorations will look a lot better if the walls around them look clean and crisp, won’t they!

To keep your home healthy and livable, we only use Green Seal Certified paint when we paint the inside of your home.  This keeps you from being exposed to the nasty chemicals you will find in cheaper paints!

The number of slots we have open before the holidays hit is limited, so if you would like to get your home looking fresh and new, call 425-232-4811 now and get on our schedule!

While I am usually loathe to pass along things that show up in my email, this is pretty funny.

*I would give credit to whoever shot this picture but I have no idea who it is!

So before you go hiring the guys standing out in front of Home Depot remember that this is what you might be getting! 

As many of you know, we work not just with home owners, but real estate investors too, helping them maintain or rehab properties.  Recently we have talked with some contacts from years past and they were negative about the possibility of doing flips in today’s market.  This is absolutely not true, and in fact I think the opposite is the case.  You can make deals now that two years ago would have been impossible!

There are some things to keep in mind though when you are wanting to do a flip, and here are 5 of the most essential elements.  If you are just getting started in real estate investing, give me a call at 425-232-4811 and get on my list.  I will be sure to call you when there is a hot deal, or when any good real estate investing seminars are coming up!

5 Essential Aspects of Flipping a House

1. Buy your flip right!

Everyone knows that the money in a real estate transaction is made at the time you buy it.  Sure, you can save some money by hiring the right contractor, being thrifty with the work you have done and materials you buy, but the buy is the one that makes or breaks the deal.  Always go through your checklist before you drop your offer and make sure you have accounted for all the expenses you may hit between the time you buy and the time you sell, and look at what the project will sell for!

2. Have an inspection period on your flip!

No, most sellers of flip properties don’t want to give you an inspection contingency, but you need to build in some time, some how to get your contractor in to fully assess the property.  What may have looked like a great deal on a cosmetic flip, may turn into a nightmare when you find out the plumbing is rusted out galvanized pipes, or the foundation is rotten.   Having a pro come through and inspect your flip will guard against these surprises.  We can’t catch them all of course, but it better to try and find them, than just hope for the best!

3. Don’t try and do the flip work yourself!

It may look like fun on ‘Flip that House’ to get in and tear a house apart and put it back together, but take if from a professional, don’t!  Spend your time marketing, searching for more flips, networking, ect.  Let your professional construction people do the dirty work.  We will do it faster, with better results than you can.  I am not trying to be insulting, but it is just a fact that the professionals work on houses every day and have it down.  Remember, the faster the house is done, the faster it is sold.  You may be able to do the work on the flip, but every week extra it takes is money out of your pocket, and time lost that you could be using to find your next flip!

4. Price your flip to sell!

Again, money loves speed, so don’t price your flip too high!  If you planning on making serious money with flips, then it only makes sense that the more of them you do, the more money you make.  Price your flip firmly 10% or more under market to get offers coming in.  The last thing you want is a flip property, paid for with hard money, sitting on the market for 3-6 months!

5. Use a damn good real estate agent!

Picking the wrong real estate agent will kill your chances of making a profit, as will trying to sell a flip on your own.  Unless you have a buyer lined up for your flip prior to finishing it (or before you buy it) then listing it with a kick-ass real estate agent is the smartest thing you can do.  A good agent will give you solid comps so you can price it right, and will keep deals going once you have a buyer on the line.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen bad agents tank sales.  If you are in the Seattle area I would more than highly recommend Jacqueline Cliff as your expert flip real estate agent.  She will do a fantastic job of marketing and selling your flip.

Obviously this is just an overview of what to do if you want a successful flip.  If you are serious about getting into real estate and doing flips, then give me a call at 425-232-4811.  I can help hook you up with what you need to do flips and other types of real estate investing right! 

(And of course help you put them in market ready shape!)

I see a lot of houses around the Seattle area, and from Everett and Lynnwood to Bellevue, one thing I see that is consistently failing on homes is the paint.  This is especially true for newer homes because the builders were cutting corners anywhere they could.

Why is cheap paint bad?  To use my home in Lynnwood as an example, cheap paint can not withstand the wet-dry-hot-cold fluctuations as well as a better paint.  The reason is that more expensive paint uses more of the polymers that make paint stretchy and able to withstand expanding and contracting.  These polymers break down over time and exposure to the weather and eventually crack.  All paints eventually will fail, cheap paint just does it faster!

If you are in one of the newer homes build in Lynnwood, Everett or one of the surrounding communities, and your home is 3-5 years old, it is time to go take a look at the corners.  Where paint fails first is at the caulked seams.  My home is a dark color, so the white caulk underneath shows through beautifully.  Once this happens, it is a doorway for moisture, and in time, it will break down the bond between the paint and your siding.  This is when it starts flaking off.  Take it from someone that has scraped a good deal of paint off, if it is cracked it is easy to remove.  If it still a solid layer, it is hard to get off!

What is the difference in price?  I would suggest that a $10 a gallon step up to a premium paint is well worth the investment.  If you use 15 gallons of paint on your home, that is an additional $150 dollars or so.  What this gains you is a several years of time before you have to repaint.  Considering that paint jobs on the newer two story homes range from $2,000 on up (unless you get the REALLY cheap guys to do it) that is a significant savings.

My advice, is that if your new construction home is past the 3 year mark, that you start looking for cracks.  If they are starting to show up, it is time to repaint.  I know it sucks, but that is just part of maintaining a home. 

If you would like a professional opinion on the state of your home’s paint job, please give us a call at 425-232-4811.  One of our trained staff will come out, take a look at your home and discuss what is best for you! 

I am on the web a lot.  Between marketing for DDIY, searching for real estate to purchase and just wandering around, I am on the web a lot, especially on CraigsList.   So from time to time I stumble up on posts that get on my nerves.

The one today is entitled "Re: Get A Clue"  and it reads:

I agree. This country is’nt in a 1920’s depression. Just the thought of what people try to pay other people to do labor or skilled crafts is rediculous. Even more rediculous is the fact that there are hacks out there who are willing to work for those prices. Get real, this is "America". How many people do you know can support even themselves on $12 an hour. What a bunch of low ballin, scamming, underpaying, weasels!!!

Now, you must bear in mind that I am a true American capitalist that believes in personal responsibility.  Oh, and I believe in the use of spell checkers. 

That being said, it drives me nuts that people in our country have such an attitude of entitlement.  The fact is that if you only put out $5 an hour in value, there is no reason you should get paid $20. 

Furthermore, our markets are supposed to function on a supply and demand basis.  If you are a low skilled worker, you are in a huge pool of supply that there is diminished demand for right now.  Honestly, if I were in the situation of having no job, I would be happy to be working, doing anything to put food on my table. 

It is true that you can’t feed and house a family for $12 an hour in the Seattle area.  My answer to this is that if you are in that situation you need to improve your skills, partner up with people that are in your same situation and do whatever you can to survive.  That is the American way.

OK, enough rant for today!  I am out of here to go make my client’s properties look great.  Have a spectacular weekend!

If you are following along in the story, you will remember that we are currently remodeling a client’s duplex out just North of Woodenville off Hwy 9.  You may also remember that when we took the kitchen cabinets down, there were some issues with water and mold.  The source of the water was the vent for the kitchen sink.

Since I couldn’t go much further with the kitchen until the water stopped flowing in, I of course went up and fixed the issue. 

The crazy part is that every other pipe and vent on the roof was fine, and sealed up.  This one, at the bottom of the roof just didn’t get one.  This honestly confuses me!

The client told me they did the entire roof in a day and as I started looking closer, it was obvious that they need to slow down a little bit.  After digging a little of the dirty out of the hole, I was honestly amazed that the damage wasn’t worse!

Curious as to what else they did wrong, I got up in the crawl space and found that they not only didn’t flash the vent stack, but when they got to the ducting for the kitchen range and bathroom fans, they didn’t hook them up correctly.

The range had a 7" pipe coming off of it, the they just dropped a vent over, with no real connection.  The bathroom duct was too small for the vent they had on hand, so they split the pipe on the vent, shoved it in and put a screw in it.  Needless to say, both of those were venting substantial amounts of wet air into the crawlspace.

But, the good news is that we caught it before too much damage was done.  We won’t need to tear the roof apart, and the moisture issues should go away once we seal up the vents properly.  I would say that the lesson here is that FAST + CHEAP does not equal QUALITY.

I have been taking the photos off the camera this morning of our latest job and shaking my head at what we are finding.  As we have been doing the demo work on this project in Snohomish (technically, but it is closer to Woodenville) and are finding some great examples of what not to do.

First off is the exhaust for the range hood.  At first blush you might think that it was fine.  But you may notice that it is taped up with paper tape.  That must not have stuck or sealed well enough, so someone went over it with plastic packing tape at some point as well. 

Sure sounds like the materials I want on the inside of a vent pipe that is over a stove.  The reality is that it probably never would have to resist fire, but I wouldn’t want to chance it, and I know for a fact that it wasn’t doing its job of moving all the air up and out!  Plus, to add insult to injury, I am betting it vents straight into the attic space. 

As we pulled the old flooring up I noticed that the threshold for the front door was loose.  That is going away anyway, so I pulled it up to find that all of the wood underneath it was just gone!  Someone had installed the door over particle board with no caulk or flashing, just some tar paper to protect the wood from any water that seeped in underneath the threshold.

Luckily we got to it in time and the floor joists are still pretty well intact.  But we will need to cut the floor back and replace the wood in the entry way.  Which is always a load of fun (please note the sarcasm.)

The lesson here is be careful of who you get to do work on your home.  I would bet that most of this work was done by a previous home owner, but the BIG boo-boo with the roofing that I will cover later this week was done by a professional roofing company.  While the cheap road may sound attractive when you are getting work done, the money saved will be outweighed by the cost of fixing problems like this down the road a few years!

You may not know it, but DDIY Home Renewal, the company you know and trust not only does remodeling and painting, but we can take care of your custom closet needs too!  All across the Seattle area, from Marysville to Lynnwood and even on down into Bellevue, if you need custom closets, we are the ones to call.

Why fight with having to design your own closets online, order them and then spend the weekend assembling them?  As licensed, bonded and insured contractors, we have the tools and skills to get the job done quickly and precisely!

If you would like to get a quote on getting your closets organized, simply give us a call at 425-232-4811 and we will take care of the rest!

SPECIAL NOTE TO BUILDERS:  If you are looking for a way to make your new construction stand out from the competition, consider custom closets!  Custom closets will help make your homes special and be one step up from the other homes that shoppers are seeing.

Image courtesy of Ruth L

I got another call from the Better Business Bureau yesterday with their standard speech how as a business that has a good reputation and a history in the community we are now eligible for membership in the BBB.  Same speech they gave me six months ago and six months before that.  But I am not biting.

So why am I not willing to join the BBB mafia?  Simply put, it means little to nothing.  For the most part, what they really care about is the $500 or so that it costs to join up, at least that is what they were quoting me.  Secondly it really offers consumers no added value.  If a business gets a complaint, they only really have to acknowledge it to have a clean record, not actually come to a satisfactory conclusion to the dispute.  Trust me on this one, I have been there.

At DDIY Home Renewal we stand behind all of our work and strive to never have any issues with our clients.  We don’t need an imaginary badge of honor to provide a quality product at reasonable prices!