Deals On Fixers Or At Auction?

Parts two and three of King 5's housing report focus on creative ways of making your money stretch that don't include option-ARMs or other "creative" financing options. However, the reports aren't directed at people buying a house to live in, but rather they're written as how-to guides for real estate investing.

If you're handy with tools and don't mind working hard in your spare time, you might consider investing in a "fixer-upper" and making a little extra cash in a booming local housing market.

In part two of our "Red Hot Real Estate" series, we’re looking at the opportunities, challenges and pitfalls of this type of real estate investing.

There is certainly an opportunity to make money this way, especially when property values go up as we've seen them go up in the last year, 20 percent and more in some areas of western Washington.

But be careful. The experts say it may be a harder, riskier, more complicated business than you think.

I'd just like to say... wait for it... wait for it... Duh. Okay, moving on.

It's a sidewalk property auction featuring trustee sales of foreclosed real estate and it happens every Friday morning.

And at the end of the day, the highest bidder owns the home... as is.

The crowd at the auction is a mix of real estate regulars, like Dean Street, and newcomers, like Carl Thompson and Dante Hill, drawn by a hot market and the possibility of sweet deals.

"This is the American dream, to come down here and strike it rich," said Thompson.

Harlan Moore, of Key Foreclosures, agrees.

"It's the stock market," he said, "just like the 90's, everybody wants in. Property is the new Yahoo stock."

What an amusing comparison for someone happily investing in real estate to make. Yahoo stock price (adjusted) in February 1999: $38/share. December 1999: $108/share. Today: ~$38/share. Now that sounds like a piece of action I want in on.

In other news, King 5 News really needs to find a better copy editor. The original articles are littered with grammatical errors, typos, and missing words. They forgot to capitalize Washington, for goodness' sake.

(Allen Schauffler, King 5 News (part 3), 11.15.2005)