Aaaaaahh… there’s something so gratifying about blistered hands and sore muscles.  That can only mean one thing: something got accomplished over the weekend!  My husband and I spent the weekend in Tucson painting one of our preconstruction homes.  We closed and got the keys to it on Thursday, after a build out time of about 6 months.  We’re putting it up for sale and want to give it that extra edge that will make ours sell faster and for more than the others in the community.

I can hear the echos now - a seasoned real estate investor painting her house? That’s proof positive that she’s an amatuer!  Pros leave the dirty work to contractors while they spend their time fast-talking more deals.  I basically have one thing to say to that: my ego does not stand in the way of me making money!  I’m not afraid of a little elbow grease.  Some investors like the feeling of power when bossing around contractors with their cell phone to their ear, no, wait, they’ve got the cool Blue Tooth wireless getup.  Convenience and the ability to make things happen with their voice outweighs the smaller profit I guess.  Not a big deal for me.  I was recently standing in a rehab house with another investor and we were looking at the gross toilet.  He was paying his contractor to buy a new one and coordinate a plumber to change it out, among other things.  I could have had that thing looking brand new in 15 minutes.  A pair of rubber gloves, a pumice stone, and some soap is all it would take.

On our last house, we hired a paint crew to paint the interior.  You see, these new construction houses all come finished with a dull coat of white paint.  The paint is watered down like skim milk and it’s one small step above drywall mud.  You see every dirty fingerprint left behind by the electricians as they put their outlet covers on and the light fixtures in the ceiling.  In Arizona, there is so much bright sun that you’re almost blinded walking into your white house.  There’s no character and it looks, well, unfinished.  We really believe in differentiating our houses from all the other investor homes by putting in certain upgrades, paint, and a couple other niceties.

Last time we hired a painter.  We called his references, we met with him at the house, we defined exactly what we meant by straight lines, no paint on the cabinets, we wanted the outlet covers removed then put back on, etc. etc.  We could not have been more clear and we were promised perfection with a smile.  Well, $1,600 later and it still took a full day to fix and finish and clean up the shoddy work we were left with.  There are still paint speckles all over our wood blinds, the tile, and every door knob in the place.  So given the fact that we don’t live in Tucson, we weighed out the time necessary to find another painter, call his references, negotiate his price, coordinate giving him access and trusting him and his crew with the keys, then the almost guaranteed cleanup and fixing we’d have to do behind him… and we decided to do it ourselves this time.

We got to spend a weekend in our new house in Tucson!  We forgot our CD player, so it was 48 hours of quiet, quality time together with our dog.  We had time to think, to strategize, to walk the neighborhood and look in the windows of other houses.  Aside from the time and money we’re saving, there’s additional personal hidden value I can’t overlook.  And we completely changed the look of this house with $100 in paint (unbelievable!) and one $100 light fixture.  It’s a different house!  There’s not another house for sale in the entire community with paint.  They’re all stark white with the same brass chandelier hanging in the kitchen.  I’ve never gone with the cheapest paint I could find before, but I have to say this paint went on easy and it covered great.  I can now recommend Glidden Evermore paint from Home Depot.  A 5-gallon bucket of Bonjour Beige was only $80.

We bought this house for about $50k under market back when the builder offered an incredible incentive and even allowed some investors in.  I offered it out to my subscribers first, I had no takers, so we bought it.  We have $15k into it, 2 months before we need to make our first payment, and it’s going up for sale now.  I love this business!

Would I want to spend every weekend painting?  No.  Do I like cleaning toilets?  Not especially.  But when all that’s standing between me and profit is a little bit of work, sometimes I’ll do it.  I still get a real charge out of being able to affect the value of a piece of property this way.  Sometimes good help is hard to find and chasing it down is more of a hassle than just buckling down and doing it yourself.  Because I don’t work at a job and I have the time, I guess the choice is mine.