According to the notice, 11 states — including Virginia — offer this program. For more information, visit www.realtor.org/government_affairs.

If anyone out there has used, or tried to use, this option, please comment or write us so we can share your experience.

I’m not an accountant, mortgage broker, attorney or any other type of financial advisor. I just saw this info and wanted to share it. If you want to take advantage of this option, you should get professional help–maybe start by asking your mortgage broker.

Here is an example of how easy it is to entangle yourself in all the many elements of a renovation. These are all changes we’ve made to one of our current properties. No doubt the future buyer will be ecstatic about all of the lovely changes and updates we’ve made…but before you buy a fixer upper, ask yourself whether this is something you can handle on your own. If so, more power to ya! If not, why don’t you give us a call to see what already-renovated properties we might have available.

We added a sliding door at the back of the house where the windows used to be located, because we got rid of the original rear door. We got rid of the original rear door so we could put in a new shower for the new luxurious master bathroom in the new master suite, which we created from a large unusable existing room. The renovation of this room required raising up the floor level to match the rest of the house, which caused us to re-design the structural posts and piers supporting the floor joist system. We had to run the plumbing through this joist system and create an access to it from the crawl space, causing more structural issues to deal with before getting the framing inspection approval. Oh, and to make the master suite nice, we cut through the brick walls to add two windows in the bedroom and one in the bathroom to make the space light and airy for the new buyers.  And I’m not even going to get into the cost of all these changes…

Now do you have an appreciation for renovation cause and effect?

After our personal experiences dealing with elderly family members, we decided to go the extra mile to make the whole suite handicapped accessible. We created a shower that has no step-over threshold. In the event a buyer or family member is in a wheelchair or requires a walker, they won’t have to worry about rolling or stepping over the threshold to get into the shower. For future needs, there is wood blocking installed in the framing of the walls for hand rails and a shower seat.

Having wheeled many a stretcher into homes during my long career in the fire department, we decided to install 36-inch wide doors to the master bedroom and bath in the event the suite will be used for an elderly or infirm resident. You’ve got to start thinking about these things as you get older, or reach the age when you find yourself caring for aging parents.

This foresight adds a bit more time and effort up front of course, but we know how much of a difference it can make to someone’s quality of life in the future, which makes it a no-brainer!

I have a little more to share about a challenge we faced during one of our current renovations. Whether you are looking to buy a home or you are renovating an older home yourself, you are likely to run into something like this.

The Oddities of Prior Renovations

Many houses are renovated little by little over the years–an addition here, closing in a porch there, knocking out walls to combine rooms or building walls to divide them, another addition years later…often resulting in an odd, higgeldy-piggeldy layout. We ran into just such a challenge with this renovation, and it nearly had me pulling out what is left of my hair! Hopefully you can benefit from our experience.

The home had an original carport that had been enclosed many years ago. Unfortunately, when they built the floor at that time, they dropped it lower than the rest of the house’s floor level.

We wanted to tackle that challenge in order to provide our new buyers with the convenience and safety of an even floor throughout the first level. When we opened up the floor, the piers supporting the floor joists were very substantial–the floor joists themselves, however, were not, and we had to rip everything out to make way for the new joists.

We decided to use a TJI floor joist system to raise the floor level and span the room most efficiently. That process was simple enough, especially with the TJI manufacturer assisting with the engineering.

But wait a minute–you’d better talk to the building inspectors and an engineer first and get real architectural plans made up to avoid having to jump through too many hoops. We had to jump through some, but hey, we learned a lot about the new codes and have a ton of experience with drawings and calculations about live loads. Took a little time but it really turned out right.

When you start planning major changes on a property that you know make sense, be prepared to go through a couple of reviews of the design, and review those plans in detail. Again, it is always cheaper to do it right the first time, even if you have to take a little extra time. Or as my good buddy always says: “plan the work and work the plan.”

Recently we’ve invested in three properties that need various amounts of renovation. The one I want to speak  about now is our Fredericksburg single family home on one acre. This place was owned by a man who had many difficulties keeping the place up. After he passed away, his son inherited the property and realized that he had neither the time, the resources, nor the energy to tackle the renovation needed to either live in the property or to sell it conventionally. And this guy is even in the building trades, so you can imagine the amount of work we were up against when we got the call to consider purchasing the property!

A careful assessment was completed and a renovation budget was prepared. The potential of this property is awesome, but we knew we would have to roll up our sleeves to tackle this baby! Even with our many years of experience, this one posed a couple of challenges:

#1) There was a full unfinished basement with a drive-in garage under the house, lending itself to a terrific amount of additional living space, and we had to re-design the finished basement with today’s active family in mind. A powder room was decided upon to complement the huge family recreation room, the newly separated garage, and the large laundry/storage/utility room entering from the outside. The advice we got from our team was to make the floorplan open, but with some separation for multiple activities. With some work, we created a media room that opens to a recreation area. They are separate enough for dual activities, but the new owner can easily encompass both areas if needed.

#2) We were caught off guard by the number of floor cuts we had to make in order to meet today’s new codes for the laundry room drain and the utility floor drain. These were in addition to the new powder room piping we installed. For our guys, it was no problem that a major concrete saw and a jack hammer couldn’t deal with. Of course, don’t forget the good old fashioned shovel needed to dig down to the under-slab piping. The inspections process wasn’t so bad, after we got help from the inspections and code officials.

Even if you know the business as well as we do, seek out any and all help. You won’t regret the time you spent to get it done right the first time. We know from experience that it is a heck of a lot cheaper to do it right and pay for it once than to tear it out and do it a second time.

She then said the words that will stick with me for the rest of my life: “Thanks for selling me your property. I looked at a lot of houses before finding yours. Every one I saw had too much wrong with it for me to handle with my situation of available cash, approved mortgage amount, and housing need. You gave me the chance to put the housing part of my life back on track with no major worries.”

Wow.

All I did was buy a property right from the bank, fix it up like I would have if my family would be living there (within reason), and sell it for a reasonable market price. Since that experience I’ve continued to march on, looking for rough bank-owned properties to fix and sell to good folks like Jan. With my skills and experience and good crews, we can make a living and make a difference in the lives of home buyers. I guess that is a good thing.

This blog isn’t really about me though. From my 35 years in the trades and the real estate renovation, repair, and investing  business, I’ve picked up a few bits of knowledge. The previous story was my wake-up call to reach out and help those who don’t have the resources I do — to help them determine if a property is really a good deal and how to make it a nice home. Even for those folks who do have the skills and resources, if I can give them one tidbit of info that saves them a few bucks or a lot of aggravation, that’s cool with me.

So until the next time we converse, be an educated, savvy, fully-aware home buyer. Realize that the banks are trying to clean up the mess they made and don’t really care much about your situation. And remember, most agents are motivated by commission and will not be there for the almost-certain problems you will run into with buying a run-down property.

Don’t get so caught up in the hype of getting a “deal” that you get the shaft. Know what you are really buying. Remember that the banks and their agents don’t put all of that “as-is” language, etc. in the listing and contracts because they love you. BUYER BEWARE!!!

While out looking for homes one day, they stumbled across my street sign and website. When the parents came by the house and it was still under construction, they immediately called Jan and told her “We found your house.” They called me and asked what seemed like a million questions about all the renovation work we planned to do. They were good questions, particularly from people not in the construction business. They told me their story of seeing so many properties, and the poor condition the banks were trying to sell them in.

Once Jan and I talked, we struck a deal for a little less than what the neighborhood homes were currently selling for by owner-occupants. She even paid me more than the negotiated price in order to get the appliances upgraded to exactly what she wanted. With all the work we did, it was still an older home. But, the place was in true move-in condition and fixed up just as she wanted.

Jan, as a single owner with no renovation experience, did not have to worry about plumbing issues, appliances, windows, bathrooms, flooring, the hot water heater or heat pump…the list goes on. The house was a true deal for her, unlike all of those other nasty foreclosures she saw. Since it was already well-renovated, she was able to get over the first year of so of being “house poor” before deciding whether or not to change other things in the house — which would then be optional and not major repairs.

Check back on Monday for Part 3 of Jan’s buying a foreclosure experience: The Closing