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Back in 2006-2007, I was very active in the real estate market.. I was one of those guys you’d see on A&E, buying a “ugly” homes, bringing in a crew to remodel it, and then sell it for a tidy profit. Then the mortgage crisis started. All of a sudden, there were a million foreclosures and short sales, but it was impossible to sell when the renovations were completed.

If I had huge sums of cash, I would have bought up a ton of homes at a third of their actual price, sit on them until the market corrected, and then sold them for a huge profit.

I did in fact do this with two properties, but neither by choice. The market collapsed just as my first house was finished, and I ended up renting it out for the past 2 years. The market down there hasn’t improved, so it’ll remain a rental property until things get better.

The other house needed a TON of work, and there was no reason to get started while market prices were in the dumps. But now I’m ready to unload this house, so I started on a massive renovation. It’s been awhile since I’ve been involved with this, and I forgot what a headache it can be. Demo started yesterday morning, and 2 hours into it, I get a call from my contractor telling me they’ve found termite damage when they removed some sheetrock!

So today, I meet with a termite company, get a $1400 bill for treatment, and they start work next Wednesday. Thankfully, it’s mainly surface damage, and I don’t need to do any interior work. Otherwise, I would have been screwed!

A bunch of stuff needs to be moved in order for the treatment to be done. My contractors want $25/hr to do this, and I’m already over budget as it is. So I’ll be headed over there tonight to do it myself.

I should have taken some before pictures, but I’m going to try to capture some in-progress video tonight with my new iPhone, and will post final pictures when everything’s completed.. ETA is 4 weeks, but you never can tell what might come up..