Episode 22: Fix and Flip with David Thomas #2

Scott Williams: Sweet Home Santa Barbara, where the skies are so blue, Sweet Home Santa Barbara, what’s worked for me, can work for you. 

Jonathan Robinson: Welcome back friends to Sweet Home Santa Barbara with practical tips for selling and buying homes. I’m your co-host, Jonathan Robinson with my co-host.

Scott Williams: Scott Williams, and today we get to continue along Jonathan with Dave Thomas. We’re going to have a conversation today about some of the things that he’s run into and fixing up homes. If you recall, if you’ve seen him previously or heard him on the podcast, he has bought and sold personally, 185 homes in the Santa Barbara area over the years. And that’s the real master in my mind of the person who really knows what to do with a house when he wants to fix it up. We’re here with Dave. 

Jonathan: Welcome back, Dave. Obviously, you have all the knowledge, and we have a lot of questions so let’s get started. I somebody’s buying a home or about to sell their home and they want to fix up the home quickly, easily, make some money. What do you think of it as maybe the key things that they should do if they don’t have a lot of time and money?

Dave Thomason: Probably, the best thing to do would be to declutter the house and get a lot of personal things out of it. If they have the money to paint and painting today is expensive but if they have the money to paint, if they have the money to have the house staged, it generally shows better and sells quicker. But sometimes people don’t realize their house looks as bad as it does and when you broach the subject, you got to be careful, you don’t have someone and say your house really like sterile, it’s never going to sell. So, you got to be careful about it. But if someone asks you, Scott, for example, what do I need to do to get as much as I can without rebuilding the whole place? 

I think you’d probably make those simple suggestions if that might mean you have to move out of the house while you’re selling it. But today, at least in this market, things are selling quickly. Someone better have a plan on whether to go before they put their house on the  market or else, you’re going to be homeless. Hopefully, that will all work out, but I would just try to make it as clean as possible and lighten it up as much as you can. Most people like a light airy house. If it’s dark, you can get rid of old drapes and window shades. Just things to make it a little more inviting when you step in. Solar tubes are really easy to add if you’ve got a dark hallway or something, they’re not really expensive, and you can pop a few of those in. Things like that I think can make a difference. Old cupboards, paint them light, something that makes remarkable pleasure. 

Scott: I think you’ve mentioned something there that is relatively new to the marketplace. In previous years, people would always stay in a house when it was going to be sold. We now have many more sellers that it’s a, I’m moving out of here, bring the stagers in, get the coat of paint on the place. It’ll look so much better. We’re going to sell it that way. That’s new. 

Dave: Yes. That is an interesting change, but I think it pays dividends and for someone Scott, that I know listens to you. You have a whole network of people that you can bring in to prepare a property and I know they’re sellers do much better if they listen to you and do them and we have a great track record.

Scott:  Thank you. Let’s talk about color for a second. Color can certainly highly

influence the outcome of a property. And I remember years ago, you had several different colors that you used in home after home and I thought, wow, those colors look great in those houses. How did you come across that and what do you think what’s going on with color with you these days or how it used to be? 

Dave: It’s funny. I probably still sticking to some similar things that I just generally like. Like on the condominium we’re buying. We’ll do the walls in a really light Ivory because the condominium is a little bit on the dark side and I think that’ll give it a little blush of light and then the ceilings are redwood and we can either drywall them out or we could try to paint them, it could be simpler to paint them. So, we’re going to go over the redwood and do all the doors and windows and trim and white with the ivory and it makes for kind of a nice airy combination. And the ceiling, I think we’ll probably do just with a matte finish, so it’s not just flat painted wood which tends to look a little cheap, I think. I think the metal just gives it a little bit of a glow without highlighting any imperfections in the ceiling. That’s probably what we’re going to do. In the kitchen, we’re going to paint the cupboards white, change the surfaces, and put in high-end appliances because of that sort of the first things people see. I think in that marketplace, we’ll do a wine cooler and a bertazzoni or wolf range, a really good-looking hood. The bathrooms will get upgraded. But I think that’s basically what we’re going to get rid of the shag, of course. That went out in the 70s. It has a solid wood staircase where it’s plastered all the way up to the handrail, which darkens the place a little further. We’re going to strip the drywall off and do a horizontal wood railing, which looks a little more contemporary and that’ll open up the stairway enlightening. Some simple tricks like that, but I think it might be. 

Scott: Favors for front doors?

Dave: We’ve painted a lot of front doors red. One combination I’ve always liked is white with black shutters that are red front doors. We’ve also done light-gray blues with darker shutters. And if you do, our daughter spotted a property that she painted, it’s a rambling old ranch-style house. She painted white its board and batten and the shutters are in a really black green, and it’s real attractive and showy and with her white rail fences and horses in the pasture. It’s a pretty inviting place now. It was not when they bought it, to say the least. I’ve been over there for the last four or five months, full-time helping them coordinate this thing, but they’re right up against the Trump branch and can ride right in with their horses and we’re glad to have these neighbors so it was all worth it.

Jonathan: I hear a lot about brightness and making something look more inviting that way. I have a specific question. I have a kitchen, which is has all the dark cabinets like probably 1970s, luckily our place doesn’t have shag carpeting, and I ask Scott about this, and he said to fix up these cabinets, to paint them or to do something is going to cost like fifteen or twenty thousand dollars and I was like, you got to be kidding me. Is there any cheaper way to make lousy-looking cabinets look better? 

Dave: We had a friend who just bought a place up in the valley and she was on a real budget. And the covers in the kitchen were old and original, she just took the doors off and did open shelving in her kitchen. It’s kind of informal, but she’s got some mean things this way. And I really think it’ll give it a little bit of a hip look; without we’re making the wheel. Painting is expensive, it is. But it sounds like at least you weren’t offended by the suggest. Way to go, and Scott, you were tactful it sounds like, but you got your point across. But it’s shocking if you’re paying somebody thirty or forty dollars an hour with a little piece of sandpaper, it can really add up, there’s no getting around it. I understand your reluctance, but Scott could probably tell you what the differential would be if you spend the twenty, you might get forty back. And in that case, you better spend the twenty.

Scott: It’s less expensive to paint than to put in a new kitchen. 

Dave: It certainly yes.

Scott: Well, you have had to deal with sort of the tricks of the trade of how painting instead of putting in a kitchen, think about other parts of a house where you might do things to really improve a house. Do you have any of your favorite things to do?

Dave: I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to polish the one-carat diamond, it was we used to say. In other words, you get a smaller property, you reconfigure the whole thing, and you don’t add a square inch to the place. You juggle things around, someone walks in and goes, you know what, I think I’d really rather have the sink. Don’t you think it looks nicer if maybe it was across the room? And they look at the bathroom and go, I think I’d really rather have it over here. They get into all these huge changes, but they haven’t added any real value to the property, and they wonder why they break even or lose money. So, if I’m going into a situation, I look for the most creative way I can work with what I’ve got. Moving to plumb and reconfiguring a property isn’t probably going to pay dividends. If you could convert a garage, pick up 400 square feet of house, and add a carport for twenty thousand, you probably will get your money back on that. If there are easy ways to expand something. 

I remember one time we brought an old property by, or part and it had a huge attic. It was just waiting for a staircase in a master suite upstairs and it wound up, not being that involved to do because the space was already there. I remember, going down to a salvage company in Los Angeles, and I walked in and said, I’m looking for a staircase from a 1920s house because that’s what I’ve got in Santa Barbara, they said we’ve got just the thing. I picked it up, brought it home, threw it in and the place looked completely original. When we added the staircase, it looked like it had always been there. I think we double the value of the house when we sold it because we had added something to it. But you really want to try to work with what you have. Knocking on a ceiling, vaulting the ceiling. Maybe removing the wall it’s not a bearing wall can really have a lot of value to a property. 

I know some people, I just checked their house the day before yesterday, they bought a tract house in Goleta, and they are reconfiguring the house on the same footprint and they’re spending a lot of money and in my opinion, they’re not going to get much for it. What they did, you walk in the front door, there’s a living room and then behind it. Behind a wall is a family room and then the kitchen is compartmentalized off to the left and I’m thinking why don’t you just take out this wall and vault the ceiling that open the kitchen to the family room? And then when you step on the front door, you’re looking right through the house, right straight through the garden. 

You have volume, you open the kitchen up, it’s what everybody wants. Do that. They will spend more money doing the wrong things in my opinion and then wonder why they don’t like the house. But I keep my opinions to myself unless someone asks, I probably wouldn’t volunteer. There are things like that, but I try to approach it as creatively as I can. Spend the least amount that I can because the bottom line is still something you better keep focused on. And I think that’s the best way to get it together. In kitchens, often, I will use prefab cabinets, all go down to HD supply in Oxnard and you can buy them right off the shelf. All I have is molding on the side, we can add crown molding on the top of the cupboards. We can cut holes in a couple of the doors and put glass in. But we can work with something that’s easy to buy and inexpensive. 

I have some friends who just bought a place that they’re redoing in the valley, and they went to a cabinet maker and spent a fortune having white coverage made that look exactly like the cupboards I just bought. And I know they spent five times as much as I did. I thought you they’re not going to get that back. I think wherever you can cut corners like that, you’re going to still have a quality covered, you’re going to spend a fraction of it with some of who’s spent if they go and have them professionally made. They won’t look indifferent.

Jonathan: I hear you be smart with your money and do things that will actually get your money back. We have more questions for you in terms of specific things that people can do, but we’re going to leave that for another podcast. How can people learn more about what you do, Scott, and your association with Dave, and you’re fixing up and selling houses? 

Scott: Well, I’m Scott at scottwilliams.com. It’s best to get hold of me through email. And if you’d like to talk to Dave about maybe buying a project that you’d like to sell to him and have him fix it up, contact me, and we’ll get you in contact with Dave. 

Jonathan: Thank you for listening and we’re going to have another episode where we ask Dave more questions and he can give us his expertise on how to buy fix up and sell houses. Till then thank you for listening to Sweet Home Santa Barbara.

Scott Williams: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit ScottWilliams.com to contact me and download the two free E-booklets. “Is My House Saleable Now?” And “How Not To Buy A Money Pit?” Thank you for listening.