All Forum Posts by: Kari Atwood

Hi Mike, my son is a sophomore Aggie. So, while we've always been about y'all, we're a little more frequent on the howdy and a lot more frequent on the maroon. Thanks for the advice! I appreciate it.

I'm looking at a house that is considerably larger than most of the other houses in the neighborhood.  The whole area is a total mixed bag--building years from 1959-1983 and square footage anywhere from 1000-1900. The house I'm considering was built in 1975 with 2900 sqft on a corner lot... In all the markets we've bought and sold houses, I've never quite seen that variety of building years and sizes in the same area before, so this is unfamiliar to me. The house needs some major cosmetic rehabbing--and seemingly more than most of the surrounding neighbors, so who knows about the unseen.  I'm in the internet trolling phase--I haven't asked for comps yet, but I will if it gets to the tour with a realtor phase. This is just the research and asking for wisdom while I'm shopping.

I've been told it's better to buy the smallest house in the neighborhood for investment purposes. I'm wondering how significant this is overall regarding resale, and whether I should adjust the MAO to be lower than 70% to accommodate the location--or expect a lower ROI at sale. Thoughts?

We've always been shy of real estate investments beyond normal home-ownership because we don't know how to make them work, and we've seen more examples than not of people failing (sadly). I'm here for two reasons. First, I want to learn about this because I'm seeing people in my periphery try it with dismal results. Nobody has told them the truth to save them from failure. I need solid information beyond my gut feelings. Secondly we are about to move, and I'm considering a house that would need a more major rehab than we have ever undertaken in the normal course of life. I want to do the upgrades with resale in mind. I'm not a flipper, and I'm not one to think I can watch 3 years of HGTV and pull it off...I'm still under the impression that ALL tv is make-believe. My husband has been a project manager for major commercial construction (hospitals and medical office complexes), so he knows how to run construction projects. What we need to know is wisdom regarding real estate, how to manage the money and which projects to spend the cash reserved for rehabs on...