All Forum Posts by: Steve K.

@Stephen Shelton Actually you’re not responsible for any of the things you mentioned (trees falling, dogs biting, old people slipping) unless somebody can prove you negligent, just like the utility is daring you to try and find them negligent here. A retainer will cost you more than making the repairs, and you’ll probably lose. I remember hearing lots of nasty lawyer jokes growing up and wondered why everyone gave lawyers such a hard time. This is one example why (no offense to any lawyers reading this, I’m sure some of you are fine people) ;).

@Jimmy Lieu 2019 is probably going to be a better time to invest than 2029. They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the next best time is right now. To be fair, it is kind of hard to find good deals right now. So the answer, like the answer to so many questions in real estate, is it depends. It depends on the individual deal, it depends on the individual market, it depends on the individual strategy. If you’re looking to fix and flip in an extremely hot location, and you’re working with a tight budget that requires hard money, it may be challenging to find a property plus a bit risky on the exit as we will probably have fluctuation in the market soon. If you’re looking for a buy and hold that you plan to sit on for several market cycles, and you have the cash reserves to weather a few storms, I say go for it. If you have access to a deal that cash flows and/or meets your personal criteria, definitely go for it.

Another consideration (sorry to pile on the bad news), is that the market here is very hot anything sub $700k going up to about $1M, because that's still considered entry level. Once you get into luxury range, which for here starts just below where you're talking about with your ARV being $1.45M, it's not nearly as strong a seller's market. To fetch $1.45M you'd have to have extremely top-end finishes, at least 3-4 beds, garage, flatiron views, good location (which "The Hill" is definitely not, you do not want to be there with a family unless farther over on the Chataqua side or over Rose Hill way, anything 1 block from CU will be student housing). To compete in the $1.45M range you're talking $300-350/ft2 construction cost, not exaggerating. You need to be looking more in the Whittier/Newlands/North Boulder area for your plan, but you likely won't find anything near that price in those areas unless its a total scrape. You will probably need to go more distal like Gunbarrel (maybe, also getting expensive) or out east to the L towns Lafayette or Longmont (Louisville already too expensive).

 Mindy is not exaggerating on 1,000 years to get a permit (okay, she's slightly exaggerating). Rentals are required to comply with the rental housing license program which means inspections which means you can't just make a porch into a bedroom without approval (you may be able to get away with it for a while but the enforcement division is real and the fines are too). Popping the top or adding anything beyond 500ft2 means going through the dreaded "site plan review" process which is based on the LEED points program/ IGCC (green construction code) and you'll end up spending a fortune on insulation, solar, high E windows and appliances, etc. You may have to comply with the new "smartregs" program which means many of these same efficiency upgrades just to get your rental license. Boulder is a great place but you've got to be on your A game here. I guess they figure since we have the highest percentage of residents with PHDs in the country we all must have the requisite PHD required in order to navigate the maze of regulations. 

Longmont is really up and coming; the SW side closest to Boulder is really nice and has good schools, quick access to trails, etc. Longmont has many of the advantages that Boulder has but property is still relatively reasonable by comparison. Lots of good stuff planned for Longmont so long term I think there's a lot of potential. Demographic is shifting with a lot of young families ending up there; bike paths going in, breweries galore, more and more good restaurants opening, etc. plus Boulder is only 15-20min away. Just avoid the NE end of town, generally speaking of course. It will likely be "transitional"/stabby up that way for a while, although there are some nice pockets up that direction which are totally fine right now. Lafayette is also up and coming, Erie too. 

I think you should abandon this plan because the location is not right for what you want to do. Comps in that area do not support an ARV of $1.45M. Also there's no way a 1.3 acre lot exists near where you're talking at that price, so it must be 0.13 acres. A 1.3 acre lot that close to CU and downtown would be closer to $5M.

Keep looking around. You mentioned Denver was an option, and you'll have a lot more to choose from down that way (I like Golden a lot regarding Denver suburbs). Good luck!  

I've had good success ordering from Lowe's (vinyl Pellas, much less expensive than something like Anderson at Home Depot). I always negotiate and usually end up getting 30-50% off, or wait for a sale. If it's just a few windows or if I'm concerned about rotten wood around the opening or additional insulating etc. I'll do it myself but if it's straight forward and there are a lot of windows or I don't have time I have a guy who does it for $125-150/window. I would let him measure if he's doing it, but I take his measurements and order and deliver the windows. Using the installers at the box stores is generally a bad idea. My guy used to work directly with Lowe's and explained to me how they squeeze their installers so much they end up not being able to keep good installers. I've followed Home Depot guys on job sites before, not saying they're all bad but in my experience some of the worst quality work I've seen, as in it all had to get redone. As far as just replacing the glass, that's definitely the least expensive way to go if the frames are in good shape, glass is cheap and glazing is easy.  

 Chris you're absolutely right. Earlier in the thread we discussed how it was really a shifting of cost more than an additional cost. 

CA payback period for solar 2019= 5.5-7.4 years (https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/ca/), or it could be cooked into the mortgage for new construction, estimated $40 per month on average, offsetting $80 in electricity, so net $40/mo. savings. Most people are financing solar these days, because $0 down low interest loans are available and payments are often less than the bill they're replacing. $0 down with savings day one is the name of the game. 

 Bill I think your question “Why do you believe people get so dogmatic in their approaches to solving the problem?" speaks to a very serous issue we’re facing as a nation, which is flow of information. It’s ironic that we’re living in the age of information yet although we’re basically drinking info from a fire hose, we're not necessarily more informed. Many of us get our news from social media, which is influenced by who we friend and unfriend so we’re essentially living in an echo chamber where we only reinforce our existing beliefs. Online news is heavily influenced by cookies and advertising which reduces it to “click bait” type stories. Quality unbiased journalism is nearly impossible to find. The degradation of responsible journalism in general combined with intentional manipulation by our enemies, increasingly sophisticated propagandists infiltrating the news... It’s hard to know what info to trust. I think there is a big need for unbiased news and our country is in an existential crisis regarding flow if information. Thanks Zuck.

It’s increasingly rare to have conversations like we’re having here where we may disagree civilly and in the process gain access to info we wouldn't come across normally and alter our thinking because of it. For example you’ve brought up some good points on nuclear and I will be more open minded about new nuclear tech moving forward. I’ll be watching TerraPower and I hope they succeed. I’ll also make an effort to come across less dogmatic about renewables, although I still believe they’re the best solution we have and that we can make our grid more flexible and improve storage technology and solve all of the issues renewables currently have. As Andrew has pointed out Germany is a great example of achieving an energy system powered largely by renewables, and they’re doing it now. We can too, and we will. 

So I will try to be more open-minded about nuclear power based on this conversation, you’ve made me realize I’m a little outdated on my nuclear info just like I was getting frustrated with others about being totally clueless about solar. Point taken, thank you for that. 

 We’ve been spending many trillions of dollars on nuclear for half a century and whether or not we’re better off from it is questionable at best. We have a big mess on our hands with the 99 aging reactors we now have to decommission which will cost about another trillion dollars or so plus we still have the waste issue. If we put the amount of money into renewables that we’ve spent on nuclear, or even a fraction of it, I bet we can solve the storage problem in quick order and have a clean efficient grid with no risk of accidents that effect millions of people.

Let’s use some of what you said in your post as an example of how the age of information can actually make us less informed. You mentioned the navy has never had a nuclear accident. I didn’t know that, so I entered into my search engine, “The navy has never had a nuclear accident”. The top result is this article about a speech given by John McCain in 2008 where he confirms that the navy has been floating around with nuclear reactors on board ships and submarines for 60 years with nary an accident: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/09/john-mccain/navys-record-unblemished/

Great, I found what I wanted and confirmed my pre-existing beliefs; the navy has an unblemished record with nuclear. Civilians just screwed nuclear up for everybody because they don't run a tight ship like the navy does. Pretty legit sounding article and John McCain (RIP) was a no b.s. kinda guy, so check that off the list, right? Not so fast. If I had instead entered “The navy HAS had a nuclear accident”, because I prefer to find that truth, the first result is this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_navy, which informs me that two U.S. nuclear subs sank and were not able to be recovered, the USS Thresher in 1963 and the USS Scorpion in 1968. Both sank for reasons unrelated to their reactor plants and still lie on the Atlantic sea floor. They’re not currently leaking radiation, according to the navy, so not technically a nuclear accident at this point. But certainly a nuclear accident waiting to happen. Those subs will eventually degrade and release the radiation contained within into the environment and the food chain. Or a hostile nation could find a way to recover them and use the uranium/plutonium on board to make a dirty bomb and use it against us (was that a Tom Clancy novel?). So now I’m unsure if the navy actually has a clean nuclear record, because two nuclear subs on the bottom of the ocean seems like a pretty big deal to me. Perhaps only navy dogma can justify dropping the Thresher and Scorpion into “not technically a nuclear accident” category, whereas an unbiased view would be that the navy has a pretty major blemish on it’s record regarding those two sunken nuclear subs. So on the internet we find what we look for and we look for what we find. Adds pop up on the side based on our browser history and cookies lead us along and we’re pushed further into whatever we already believe.

My next search was “US military nuclear disaster”, and holy cow that was a scary reveal: https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=US+military+nuclear+disasterThe list of military nuclear disasters is very long: nuclear weapons lost from plane crashes or jettisoned from planes and not recovered, nuclear reactors catching fire, spilling of radiated water, plutonium fires. It’s a treasure trove of really scary stuff.

Rocky Flats is on that list, the site where triggers for nuclear bombs were made up until it caught on fire and released plutonium into the air and then got raided and shut down by the FBI. It’s right down the street from me (next to NREL). Last summer they wanted to open it up as a wildlife refuge, and make mountain bike trails there. It’s actually on the route to one of my rentals so I’m always driving by there, and I usually have my mountain bike along and ride on the way home. So I’d like to check it out (if it ever opens, I think theres a lawsuit holding it back because an independent study found unsafe levels of plutonium despite the government saying it was safe). I’m not sure I will ever ride there because I honestly don't know what to believe about the site being safe or not. If I google one thing, I’m told it’s perfectly safe. If I google something else, I can't sleep at night. I have a solar customer who was in charge of the cleanup and made a fortune on the project. He spent a decade on site and now his house is a mile downwind. He swears it’s safe. But, he was diagnosed with a rare thyroid cancer associated with exposure to plutonium. He swears it’s unrelated and he’s an intelligent person and an expert in nuclear cleanups. I’m not sure what to believe about that place. We live in the age of info, but what has that done to the quality of our info? I think that’s what makes us increasingly dogmatic and polarized in our beliefs. 

@Bill F.

First of all thanks for providing legitimate counter-points and advancing this conversation beyond,“Solar is bad! No it’s not!”

Mathematicians at the Max Planck Institute calculated that nuclear events as bad or worse than Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima will occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors which was 440 at the time (2012), we have 447 now with 150 or so more currently being built)):

https://phys.org/news/2012-05-probability-contamin...

I’m sure these findings have been argued against by those that want us to believe nuclear is 100% safe. We don’t know when another nuclear disaster is coming, but we know one is coming. It's a mathematical certainty because we've already had over thirty accidents. What’s to stop it from happening again? The same people who told us it was safe back then? The AP1000? South Carolina spent $9B on those for nothing.

For the number of nuke plants it would take to power the earth (800-12,000 depending on who you ask), combined with the time the waste remains deadly (1,000 to 1,000,000 years depending on who you ask), it seems probable things could go wrong considering we've already had over 30 accidents with only about 400 plants. I don't consider myself a mathematician or an authority on splitting atoms, nor should anyone reading this, but I do know a little. I know insurance companies rate nuke plants uninsurable. I know I wouldn't buy a building I couldn’t insure. I know in real estate if there’s a possibility something can wrong it eventually will.

Nuclear was poised to meet the world’s energy needs… then Chernobyl and Three Mile Island happened. Hundreds of shovel-ready projects cancelled. France kept going, Japan and a few others but everybody took a step back. It took four decades before the “Nuclear Renaissance” kicked off around 2010, which of course brings us to Fukushima and that was the end of the Renaissance. Low priced Natural Gas also severely undercut nuclear at this time, with 12 nuke plants prematurely closed in the US. Fukushima has cost $160B and is still going, so that has got people seriously worried.

An eye opener is that leading up to Fukushima, Japan was completely sold on nuclear. As an island nation with few natural resources, they depended on it. Then Fukushima came and they closed down all forty-eight plants to take a closer look at safety. Eight years later only five plants have resumed. Hundreds of nuclear projects around the world were cancelled after Fukushima. Many existing plants were scheduled to be phased out. Even France moved away from nuclear. Nuclear was dead.

Or was it? China is building new plants as well as Saudi Arabia, Russia, some Eastern European countries, mostly totalitarian regimes with no regard for human life or the future of the planet and wait... what? Japan?! Japan is building more nuclear?

Enter Bill Gates. Maybe he’s on to something. It’s possible he’s avoiding the battery space because it’s rapidly becoming overcrowded, and he sees nuclear as being overlooked. I personally hope he’s right and we find a way to make nuclear work. I have a customer who works at a company in Denver that is working on a small, modular reactor that could be deployed quickly in remote sites. That sounds cool. The nuclear of today is much different than it was in the 60's, it's just the risk factor holding us back. 

Waste remains the world’s biggest game of hot potato. Shooting it into space is cost prohibitive (plus, what if the launch fails?). Dumping it in the ocean is tempting and from 1946 until 1993 a dozen or so countries did, especially France, until Jacques Cousteau realized what a terrible idea that was, and decided to dedicate his life to defending the oceans because nuclear waste being dumped in the oceans frightened him so much. We still have no idea what to do with it. The best idea seems to be simply burying it. 

Which brings us to Yucca mountain. Yucca started before I was born so I haven't been following it the whole time. I’ve been following since the late nineties when I lived in Northern AZ. $15 Billion taxpayer dollars have been spent on Yucca so far, and we’re still in the planning stages. Nevada is against it whole-heartedly. It became Harry Reed’s personal crusade. Yucca is an old volcano on Western Shoshone/Southern Paiute land with a fault line underneath. Proponents swear it's a great place to dump nuclear waste, but most Nevadans disagree. They still harbor a lot of mistrust for government, due to history. Our first nuclear waste dump was near Yucca in the 60’s (Beatty). The government assured Nevadans it was completely safe but then it leaked and had to be shut down and much later after changing hands a bunch of times caught fire and it remains a very expensive unsolvable problem that nobody wants to pay for like all nuclear waste. The feds also assured Nevadans they would be completely safe when their state became a nuclear bombing range (more nuclear bombs were dropped on Nevada than anywhere else in the world, about 100 above ground and 800 below ground tests were conducted there and the landscape is now riddled with craters you can see using google earth). The people living nearby these sites are now known as "downwinders". 85% of Nevada is federal but many Nevadans (understandably) resent and mistrust the government (Sagebrush Rebellion). So it’s an issue of states rights and Native American rights, which aren't small issues.

Currently Yucca is a zombie project with not much hope of moving forward. Nevada has filed many lawsuits over the years, using different ways to deter the project like preventing the government from using their roads to transport the waste (Flagstaff followed suit), and also suing for funding to conduct their own independent study to determine if the site is actually safe. Nevada even has a state agency tasked with warding off nuclear waste. One argument against it is that Nevada doesn't even have any nuclear power plants in the state, so why would they take the waste? It seems unlikely Yucca will be a solution any time soon, and my understanding is that the build-out phase is expected to take decades to complete, so even if it becomes an option it’s not an immediate solution. It's the most studied and expensive piece of real estate ever, and may end up being the most expensive liability on the planet. 

I’ve heard a few Scandinavian countries are working on geologic storage by drilling deep down into granite bedrock, and that sounds promising. Nice little gift for some poor sucker in 5,000 years. 

Don't get me wrong, I hope nuclear works out. If it does I’ll start selling it. I'd love to close a deal worth $50Billion. I'm not under the impression renewables can go from 2% of the grid to 100% overnight, with no storage solution and no pain felt such as a couple Californians being required to install solar that they probably would have installed anyway. Solar and wind technology is pretty good and nobody is dying from it, so I see no reason not to push that 2% from renewables up as high as possible until we figure something better out. 

@Jay Hinrichs

@Andrew Smith

@Bill F.

@Bill F. Here are my thoughts on the Bill Gates letter (interesting read by the way):

 I'm all for R&D of any kind. We're going to have to figure something out, because demand for energy is expected to triple by 2050.  

Nuclear would be ideal if not for these glaring issues: waste, possibility of proliferation, and potential mathematical certainty of disaster. If Bill Gates can solve these problems, he'll be the richest man in the world (again). 

It's a tall order though. To begin with, nuclear is incredibly expensive, even for Gates. That aside, we still have no permanent waste facility anywhere on earth. A portion of the waste remains dangerously radioactive for many, many thousands of years (longer than human civilization has existed). Not all of it, to be fair, as most of it returns to the radiation level of the original ore in less than a century and can be safely released, but a portion of it has a negative impact for many, many future generations which is a pretty crappy legacy. The waste issue has always been extremely contentious. Gates will have to create a way to generate nuclear power with zero waste, or solve the waste problem too. 

As far as nuclear thus far, it's biting us in the ***. The 99 aging reactors left in the US (and an olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive waste from each one of them sitting around in temporary storage with nowhere to go) may just be our country's biggest liability.  

As of right now, renewables are a completely viable option. NREL has determined that solar and wind generation (technology we have today at a much larger scale), plus some sort of storage, combined with a more flexible energy system including a mix of decentralized small-scale power-heat cogeneration units, biomass, greater savings in energy usage, increased electricity grid optimization and better trimming of loads on the grid is more than adequate to supply 80% of our power from renewables by 2050. But only if we start right now, and go pedal to the metal, which is a great segue into the larger issue: transportation. Electricity production is only responsible for 25-30% of greenhouse gas emissions, while the rest is mostly transportation and heating. Transitioning to electric transportation methods and using electricity (provided by renewables of course) or other carbon free sources for heat will also be necessary to have a carbon free energy system. 

Storage remains the holy grail of renewables, much like waste is for nuclear. As of now the best ideas for storage are massive battery banks (lithium ion, graphene, etc.), thermal batteries, molten salt batteries, pumping water up to a reservoir during the day and releasing it through hydro turbines at night, solar panels that are so sensitive they work at night... if anybody has a better idea DM me with it ;). 

Will it be nuclear, renewables, or all of the above? I can't say, but I'm glad Bill Gates is working on it.

@Andrew Smith

@Jay Hinrichs

Thanks @Bill F., I hate to be the guy correcting people on here, and I’ve tried to avoid getting into back and forths, and I would go insane without @Andrew Smith. But a lot of the things people have said in this thread about solar, presented as fact, are so far from the truth it would be the equivalent of writing “Interest rates are currently 35%, real estate investing doesn’t work”. Correct me if I’m wrong Andrew but I don’t think that’s even an exaggeration. If somebody wrote that on here, I would hope a qualified mortgage lender would pipe up and correct them, so that everybody doesn’t think interest rates are 35%. Cooking dinner now but I will read that article tonight, thanks for sharing. 

 Yes thanks for clarifying, in our office we calculated the tariff as a 5-10% increase on total system cost, while the tax credit reduces it 30%, just trying to avoid getting too granular with this crowd ;)