SYNRGYdesign

We are finally getting around to sealing the kitchen countertops.  We are very past due on this but other things such as moving in has taken priority.  We had originally covered the countertops with some cardboard to help protect them while we worked.  After taking them off over the week end we saw that the countertops turned out pretty good.  We applied one application of the penetrating sealer and that seemed to go pretty smoothly.  Then we made some paste hoping to match the existing color of the countertops.  Luckily we went with basic charcoal for our color so we were not that worried about trying to mix something that we could not match.  We tried out a few test spots and found that using a straight concrete mix made the batch a little more green then when we used the ready mix bags.  A few trial and errors later we seemed to get a batch that matched pretty good but we will have to wait and see as it does dry differently.  Crossing our fingers that everything goes well. 

Well we have been living in the construction zone for a little over a month now.  It has not been easy but things are slowly getting done.  Our remodeling efforts have not been as fast and furious as it was before the move mainly because we are trying to find a balance between fixing everything up and having some down time.  Doing only the remodel all the time was really starting to wear thin and the kids need to have some breaks from it. We basically have all the bedrooms done and the kids bathroom is now done except for painting.  All the tiles are in but we still have to grout.  We spent the weekend trying to get the concrete countertops sealed and we finally finished staining the hallway.  They are small steps but are big differences. 

There are many foreclosures out there today on MLS.  It is a sign of the times.  Many people are loosing their homes and many banks are having to sell those homes at reduced costs.  It’s great if you are in the market for a house.  You can get a really good deal if you can find one that is to your liking and fits all your needs.  Of course there is a great debate on whether or not this is the right time to buy but that’s for a different day to discuss.  With so many foreclosed homes on the market, you really have to prepare yourself before you go inside of one.  They may not all be in the kind of condition you are used to looking at when it’s a typical home sale.

Foreclosed homes or bank owned homes (REO) tend to lean more on the fixer upper category instead of turn key or move in ready.  Many of them may be missing certain things that you feel should be included with the house such as light fixtures, appliances, doors…yes some of them even have doors missing.  The key that you need to remember when looking at a foreclosed house is that they are typically all sold AS-IS.  That may scare many people but that shouldn’t make you walk away before you even look at the house.  Even though they say AS-IS, many banks may be willing to negotiate on certain things especially if they are required to make the house livable or if they are small enough requests that it wouldn’t affect them too much to do.  Termite work is always a good idea to have done regardless of the AS-IS designation.  If an item is called as missing on the appraisal report, there is a good chance you can ask and probably will get those items.  The other item to remember is that once you are in escrow, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask them to do something even though they said AS-IS.  It never hurts to ask.

Many homes that are foreclosed on these days are homes that have just been neglected.  There are some that are foreclosed because the previous owners took money out for remodeling or repairs and never got around to finishing those repairs.  Some of those homes may need special loans if they are not livable.  What you should be looking for are the bones of the house when looking at a foreclosed home.  Don’t look at the cosmetics or the lack of staging.  Many are empty and have been empty for a while.  If you look beyond the finishes and the dust, ask yourself if the house has a good lay out.  Does it have a sound structure?  Can you take the cosmetic stuff away and have a nice looking house?  Because so many of the homes are being sold at reasonable prices, it wouldn’t hurt to look at a few foreclosed homes and add the cost of fixing it up to your standards and seeing if it fits within your budget.  You might be able to find a home that you can make your own just by looking beyond the paint and dust. 

our home inspection was today.  we use an inspector that we’ve had inspect another house before.  he takes his time which is good.  the house does need a lot of work but it’s mostly updating and upgrading stuff.  it has good bones and there’s a lot of potential.  we didn’t find out anything that would make us NOT purchase the house at this point.  who ever owned the house before just did weird things.

the water heater is missing - which was a surprise to us - but we didn’t really pay much attention when we walk thru the house the first time.  we new it needed a whole new kitchen and baths.  we were surprised to find it had some nice hardwood floors under the badly stained carpet.  hopefully the stains didn’t go all the way thru.  the house just wasn’t maintained or taken care of.  there’s a lot of holes in the walls, around the windows that they just stuffed tissue paper in.  it’s just weird.  they spent money on a tankless water heater - that they obviously took and a new garage door, but put paper to cover up the whole in the front door.  it makes you wonder who lived there.

As a potential home buyer in a buyers market, I always wonder why it has to be such a process.  I’ve only bought 2 other homes in the past 8 years so I don’t have as much experience.  Our first home purchase was pretty easy.  I really don’t remember it being such a process.  We put in an offer right before our wedding.  Escrow started just days before our wedding and with us leaving for our honeymoon.  We scrambled to do the home inspection before we left.  I remember we cam back and signed the papers and somehow, somewhere, we got the keys to the house.  Our first house was a fixer.  It used to be a rental and it still had everything original from when it first was built.  Ironically it was the same age as Jon.  I don’t remember even turning on the utilities.  I remember the first night we had the keys, we went to the house to change the locks and take a look at it.  I remember almost getting locked in the garage but that’s about it.  The whole process of buying the house seemed relatively simple.

Fast forward 8 years and 2 kids later, the process isn’t quite so simple.  Just looking at houses now is very different.  We have 2 kids to think about.  8 years ago we weren’t thinking about school district or lot size.  We just wanted to get a house so we could be out on our own.  There was something about being married and having a house that seemed to fit together.  Now I’ve spent months researching schools and school districts.  I’ve tried to figure out the school boundaries and looked through dozens of forums to try to find out which school is good and which neighborhoods feed into those schools.  Something I didn’t do 8 years ago.

A year ago, we bought a house with my parents, in a really nice neighborhood and good schools.  After having spent probably 6 months of looking at houses on the internet and in different cities, it was nice to finally settle down.  Of course I should have known better.  Things happened, people changed, needless to say, we had to move again after 7 months.  I was back to looking at schools, neighborhoods, and packing up.  I was starting to get the hang of the packing, but the actual moving part wasn’t easy.  So we decided to find a place near work so that we wouldn’t be too far from the kids when they’re at school.  The housing markets in our favor and since we didn’t want to rush into anything, we decided to rent.

Since we are temporarily renting a house now to get a feel for the area, I’ve sort of had a dry run when it comes to setting up utilities and such.  It’s not always the easiest thing to do as one might think.  Also, since we had to move to the rental, I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to move with 2 kids.  Definitely not easy but can be accomplished with some help.  But all of that is just the prep work for the whole house buying saga.  We’ve been looking now for 6 months and the whole process hasn’t even started.  We’ve barely gotten our foot in the doors.  So I guess that’s where the house buying saga continues…

When buying a house, many people look at different things.  The most common parts of a house that people look at when they tour a house are the finishes, the carpet, the kitchen, the appliances, the layout, and how it’s currently staged.  As anyone who’s watched HGTV, you know that staging plays a big role in how a home is presented and how fast it can “hook” a buyer.  Since it’s a buyers market right now, with many more short sales and bank owned homes on the market, not many homes are being staged.  Most bank owned homes are in disrepair, many having been cleaned out by the previous owner who more then likely has been evicted from the house.  So if a house isn’t staged, what’s left to “hook” a buyer?  A lot of bank owned houses tend to scare many home buyers away - especially if they aren’t interested in doing a lot of fixing or remodeling.  But the best deals out there are the bank owned houses and if you can get past the old countertops and bad carpet, you might just find a diamond in the rough.  So what should you look at?  Here are a few things to keep in mind when walking through a house.

1. Location - you’ve all heard this before - Location, Location, Location.  You can’t change the houses location unless you buy another piece of property somewhere and then decide to move the house to that new lot (which won’t be cheap!)  Concentrate on the area you want to live in.  Drive around the neighborhood at different times during the day and week.  See what it’s like going to work in the morning from their and coming home at night.  Check out the neighborhood during the weekends and if you can during the holidays - halloween, christmas, etc.  See if this is a place you can feel comfortable in during all seasons of the year not just the day that you look at it.

2. Size of Lot - land will always be in limited supply and unless you can buy your neighbor’s house, the extra piece of land will be hard to come by.

3. Location of house on the lot - it’s not cheap to move a house and if the house you are looking at is too far towards the back, as many older homes are, and you don’t want a huge front yard, then a house with a big front yard probably isn’t for you; unless you plan on adding on towards the front of the house and the city/county codes and ordinances will allow for it.

4. Layout of rooms - especially the public versus private spaces.  Many older homes didn’t have the open concept floor plan that many people like today.  Look to see if the rooms have a good separation, if the bedrooms are all on one side and the public spaces (kitchen, living room, family room) are on the other side.  Try to imagine how you could open up the rooms while still keeping a nice separation between the public and the private.

5. Character / Style of the house - unless you plan on total demolishing the house, you have to like how it looks on the outside.  Even if you plan on remodeling later or adding on, you should keep in the style of the original house.  Curb appeal is important but the house may not have it at the time when you walk thru especially if it’s been neglected.  Drive around and see other homes in the neighborhood that look similar and see what other people have done.  You want to keep in the style of the house and also the neighborhood.

Many bank owned homes may not have the curb appeal or be staged to “hook” you as the buyer when you walk thru the house.  What you need to look at is the Potential of the house.  Imagine what it can be once you get thru with it.  Fixers can be expensive.  You can  end up spending a lot of money trying to fix the house as opposed to just buying something that is already done.  But you get the satisfaction of fixing it to meet your needs and your liking instead of living with something someone else has done and wishing they had done it differently.  The beauty with bank owned homes is the price tag usually will allow you to do the fixes without feeling like your putting more money into it then you should have.  And remember while your fixing it up, you can also make it more of a green house then it was before which will help you save money and add value to your house later should you decide to sell it.

Now that we are in the buying process of real estate; I always wonder what it is that other people look at in a house, what are they looking for and what are their opinions when they walk thru a house.  I’ve never sold a house.  I helped my parents sell their house last year and tried to “fix” it up so that it was presentable.  It was always a fixer but something that was still move-in ready.  The appliance where 15 years old, there was hard wood floors, but the walls probably needed new paint.  It was priced right for the time and the area.  There where a lot of things that could have been “fixed” or upgraded to make the price hight but they also wanted to sell right away and didn’t want to put the effort into upgrading things.  The people who bought it where able to just move right in.

So when we go look at houses now, we kind of classify things as - fixer but need work right away, fixer but move in ready, work to be done as we live there, and total turn key - nothing needs to be done at all.  Now I think most people want the latter, a total turn key that they don’t need to do a thing too.  Sometimes I think I want that too.  But in reality, what we like are the fixers.  I know what we see when we look at a house, but I always wonder what other people see.

As the housing market slows down and there becomes an inventory for buyers too choose from.  It’s evident that buyers are taking there time and really looking at homes more closely.  Also, there are a lot of short sales and foreclosure/bank owned homes on the market.   Now more then ever, there are homes that fall in the fixer categories.  As buyers look at these fixers, the question for many as they walk thru is “is it even worth it to fix this house up?”.  Now as an architect, we don’t look at some of the typical things most home buyers look at when walking thru a house the first time.  From talking to many people, it seems that presentation, finishes, size and layout are the biggest things.  If you watch a lot of HGTV, you know that presentation and staging are what hook a lot of buyers.  

But we don’t look at those things when we walk a house.  We look at the size, the layout, the roof, the walls, the neighborhood, and most importantly the “potential” the house has.  We don’t really have must have list like most people.  There are certain things we require - minimum 3 bedrooms, good layout, as big a lot as possible, good school district and most importantly PRICE.  We don’t really look at the floor finish or the paint.  If the kitchen is out of date, so much the better.  All those things can be changed.  The thing we look at, besides the price, are things you really can’t change.  You can’t change the lot size.  Land isn’t  going to get cheaper.  You can’t change the school district.  You could probably add on another bedroom if you needed it but you would have to have the lot size to do it.  You can’t change the layout of the house that much unless you want to totally knock it down.  Price is negotiable now a days, more so then ever, but you can’t negotiate a million dollar home down to $500K.  Carpet, paint, appliances, even the doors and windows can all be changed.  You can do them right away or gradually.

The first house we bought was a fixer.  It was move in condition but everything was still original to the house.  It took us 8 years but we did eventually change most of the things in the house.  The only thing left to do to it would be the windows and the guest bathroom - and even that would probably only require a new tub.  As a home buyer in todays market, you shouldn’t feel turned off by some of these foreclosures that seem like “a lot of work.”  The potential of a house is what is often over looked by many.  If you can see the potential, there may be a lot more homes on your list then you think.

Most home owners probably aren’t familiar with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).  LEED is under the umbrella of the U.S Green Building Council, which is a non-profit organization committed to expanding sustainable building practices.  LEED is a certification program  and a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.  As an architect, I’ve known about LEED since the beginning.  To be LEED accredited is big now.  Everyone wants to have their buildings be LEED certified.  But it hasn’t really hit main stream residential projects yet.  There are a few custom homes that are LEED certified.  As the push for more sustainable design and construction becomes a standard instead of a wish list, LEED will more toward the forefront and become more main stream.  As an architect, I like that.  I want everyone to build to LEED standard.  I want all buildings to be high performance green buildings.  But I have to wonder, what will happen once everything is LEED?  To be a Silver or Gold LEED certified building was a great accomplishment.  Everyone in the construction and building industry looked in awe at the buildings that were LEED certified in the beginning because it was such a great accomplishment.  Now the question is, can your house be LEED certified?  The answer is YES.  There is a LEED rating system for homes.  It is to promote the design and construction of high performance green homes.  Green homes are very big selling points in real estate now which is a plus in this down market.  But unfortunately it’s only for new construction.  If you are building a new house, LEED certification is the way to go at the very least to use as a check list of things you should look into during the design process.  If you are remodeling, you can’t get LEED certification for your remodeling project, but it’s still a good idea to use that check list as a guide of things you could do to the house to help make it more “green”.  I would encourage all home owners to look into the LEED rating system and see how you can make you house more of a high performance green home .

About 2 weeks ago we were complaining because we we’re having halloween in 80 degree weather.  Now it’s getting colder and I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about how to gear up for winter.  As you start pulling out your winter clothes and start making your skiing plans, one thing to think about is gearing up your house for winter as well.  You might think that you don’t have to get your house ready for the cold but by doing a few little things to get ready for those cold winter months you could be saving yourself some time and money in the long run.  Here are a few thing to look at that will hopefully become routine as the years go by.

1. Change out your furnace filter.  We change this out every year around this time.  It’s something that a lot of people forget to do.  If your filter is dirty and old because you haven’t replaced it in a while, think about all the heat your loosing because the filter is dirty.  Not only that, think about the dust your breathing in because your furnace cant’ get clean air!

2. Clean your duct work.  You might not need to do this every year, but if you haven’t done it in a while, you really should get it cleaned.  You will be amazed about the amount of dust and dirt that can get trapped there and then you furnace is essentially blowing it out every time it turns on.  Not a good thing to be breathing especially if you have little kids.

3. Change the battery on your smoke detectors.  Of course you probably are saying the smoke detector will tell you if the battery is dead but it’s always a good idea to check it and replace it every year.  If you smoke detector is over 10 years old you should really replace it. They aren’t that expensive when you consider what could happen if you don’t have a working one.

4. Check doors and windows for leaks.  Leaks in doors and windows can drive up your heating bill.  If you have a leak, caulk it.  If it’s really bad, replace the window or door.  If you can’t afford to do that, find a way to seal it.  We use those draft stops on my daughters window because it was just so cold all the time and we couldn’t afford to replace the window.  If all else fails, install curtains.  They help to keep the cold air out.

5. Close vents and doors in rooms that won’t be occupied during the night.  If you have a guest room or an office that you aren’t going to be in during the night when it’s the coldest, close the vent in there and the door so the heater won’t be kicking on trying to heat a room that no one is in.  Save all the heat for the bedrooms where people are sleeping.

Hope these tips help a few people.  They can save you some money during those cold winter months and they also help keep your house in good shape so that you can enjoy it for the years to come.

As new construction seems to be slowing down due to the economy, remodeling has slowed also but not as much.  Most people are looking to remodeling as an option since selling a house now a days isn’t the best thing to do if you can still afford to stay in your home.  As people look to remodeling, some questions of being able to “go green” come to mind.  Many people may think that remodeling limits how and where you can implement “green” ideas.  But as an architect, I think remodeling is a great way to implement “green” ideas that weren’t originally done when the house was designed.  Now not many “tract” homes lend itself to being able to do some things that would have been great if they were done when the house was built.  One problem many people encounter is the fact that there house doesn’t have insulation in the walls.  If you have an older home, you probably have a house that doesn’t have insulation in the walls.  Now unless you plan on tearing out the dry wall in all your rooms, you don’t have much choice but to leave it alone.  Many people have added insulation to their attic space which helps.  One could add rigid insulation to the outside and re-stucco the house, thereby adding insulation and thickness to the house.  But this would require you changing your windows at the same time as well.  Now if you are only planning to do a “small” remodel - maybe not add any square footage to your house but just want to update it, here’s a few things you might want to look into.

1. Flooring - bamboo flooring has gotten really big the last few year.  It is renewable because of it’s fast growth and it’s very hardy.  We used it in our old house and loved it.  Another alternative to look into is cork flooring.  One thing I really like is being able to re-use other things for a new purpose.  Many people are now looking into re-using old railroad ties that are being converted into hardwood flooring. I think anything that will keep a material out of the landfill and given a new life is worth it.

2. Appliances - many people want to change out their appliances because they’ve gotten old.  The good thing about that is that many of the new appliances are more energy efficient.  If you spend a little time you will discover that even just meeting the new energy efficient codes is not enough.  Some manufacturers go even a step further.  You can get rebates for some of your appliances.  Southern California Edison will even pay you $50 to get your old working refrigerator out of your house.  

3. Landscaping - zero landscaping has gotten some notice lately especially here in Southern California.  I think the more appropriate term should be native landscaping.  Southern California is a desert by nature.  The landscaping of the housing around here should be that of a desert.  It would save on watering costs, electricity, and on man power.  Imagine how much time you could save if you didn’t have to mow the lawn every other weekend?  Planting native plants to your area will not only help the local environment, but it will also bring back some of the natural beauty of the landscape that has been lost from imported planting.

These are just a few things to start looking into when you start thinking about remodeling.  Of course there are many other things you can do even in a “small” remodeling job that will help you “go green”.