Eastside Deal of the Week

Each week I’m picking out the Deal of the Week out of my Eastside Value Buyer’s List.  I’m looking for a house that is already discounted to fair market value at the list price and is in good repair.  I visit the house, take 60+ photos, and record a video of my impressions.  Read on about my property analysis and bidding strategy:

Eastside Deal of the Week

Eastside Deal of the Week

Eastside Value Buyer’s List

Today I launched a weekly series of MLS searches to discover the best prospects on the Eastside for investors and handy owner occupiers to buy houses at a discount.  This is an amalgamated list of bank owned homes that already appear to be fairly priced, estate sales, out of state owners, listings with data entry errors, houses sitting unsold for an excessively long time – a whole variety of searches I use to find situations with distressed owners.

Learn more here:

Eastside Value Buyer's List

Bellevue View Home

Nearby to where I live in the hills of South Bellevue, I recently came across this Bellevue view home with these top features:

• A fine view of towering trees and verdant greenery with the Cascade Mountains in the distance.
• A huge master suite with with room for TV/entertainment area or large office besides the conventional bedroom furniture.
• A well-constructed, near new, many-tiered deck for parties in the back yard.

And much else besides: new kitchen appliances, upgraded windows, and so on.  Overall the house is in very fine condition.  It is currently set up for three bedrooms with office and workshop space, but could be converted to five.

Learn more about this Bellevue View Home (see full photo album with 122 images).

Low Maintenance Back Yard in Bellevue

Bellevue Houses

Here I’ve searched out the cheapest houses in Bellevue in terms of price per square foot.  This isn’t a search the general public can easily accomplish.  The NWMLS gives better search tools to real estate agents.

BELLEVUE best values under $160/SF (updated 7/2/2011)

I’m keeping a list of similar searches in the area here:

SAVED REAL ESTATE SEARCHES

Sisters Antiques

I discovered Sisters Antiques while shopping on Craigslist for cheap furniture. Patty Green of Sisters Antiques manages estate sales for families whose elderly parents have passed on. These homes are often stuffed full of belongings and furnishings accumulated over decades. You’ll find great bargains and great selection on the first day of any sale. The prices drop on the 2nd and 3rd day of a sale, but you risk missing the best items.

PATTY’S MOTTO
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life…

Professionally restored chandelier

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE BUSINESS?
I’ve always loved garage sales, and started when I was really young. I started as a “picker” – selling garage sale items to dealers – in 1990 after moving here from California. I was in a little antique shop in Issaquah on a Monday after a weekend of shopping. I told the shop owner that I recognized something that was at a sale that past Saturday. She remembered me from the sale, I remembered her from the sale, and so I started buying for her. Next, I became an antique dealer in 1992. Incorporated in 1995. Opened SISTERS ANTIQUES in Issaquah in 1997. I started doing estate sales before 2000 and with the downturn in the economy, I have done more and more over the years.

Lots of Silver!

WHAT DO YOU MOST ENJOY ABOUT THE BUSINESS?
I would say that most of the time the satisfaction I get from helping someone who has no idea where to turn… is the real reward!

ADVICE FOR FAMILIES
Every sale has its own story and if I could impart any bit of wisdom to a family before they start going through things, I would say NOT TO THROW ANYTHING AWAY UNTIL WE GET THERE. It’s really sad to see what family deems is trash and what they think is the good stuff! We just finished a very dirty “digger” sale and the family was thrilled with the results. We’ve also done sales where absolutely everything was pristine. And a whole lot in between.

SISTER ANTIQUES (Antique Shop and Estate Sales)
Proprietor Patty Green
615 NW Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, WA 98027
(425) 392-7373
www.sistersantiques.com

Love Among the Ruins

Ben Echevarria

Last week I was fortunate to join up with two student/investors and their real estate mentor, Ben Echevarria.  These investors had attended Ben’s three day real estate training seminar, where he teaches his system for flipping single family houses and takes students out into the field to see actual projects underway.  Ben has flipped 400 properties in the Boise, Idaho market.

Click through for the full story:

http://investorpowersearch.com/2011/02/17/fixer-property-tour-with-a-pro-ben-echevarria

The Bellevue School District hosts one of the longest running language immersion programs in Washington state: its K-12 Spanish Immersion program since 1984.  Language immersion starts on day 1 in Kindergarten, when the teacher conducts the class fully in Spanish.  It’s amazing how quickly the kids pick up on the language.  English is introduced a few years into the program to catch the kids up on English grammar and reading by 4th grade.  The kids learn the same Bellevue SD approved curriculum translated into Spanish by the teachers themselves.  The teachers are of very high quality – recruited from all over the country and very desirous of teaching in a language immersion program.  At the middle and high school levels, kids take two courses in Spanish per day: social studies and Spanish grammar/literature, losing one elective in the process.

Some benefits of the program include:

• Research shows – a lot of it from Canadian French immersion programs – that language immersion improves school performance overall.
• The Spanish Immersion parents are a self-selected group who are the most enthusiastic in the district.  Volunteers are readily available.  Parent meetings are well attended (by tenfold over a regular school).  The kids are exposed to extra-curricular activities these parents organize.
• Two foreign teaching assistants are brought into the district each year to assist in the Spanish program, providing a foreign student homestay opportunity for families in the program.
• The 8th grade parents organize a class trip to a Spanish speaking country.
• Fluency in a second language broadens once world outlook and enhances job prospects.

Bellevue School District Spanish Immersion K-12 Program

Participating schools:

• Puesta del Sol Elementary
• Tillicum Middle School
• Newport High School

Regarding enrollment, the Puesta del Sol Elementary website currently says:

Puesta del Sol Elementary  will host a Spanish Immersion Information Night on January 19, 2011, for parents of potential 2011-12 kindergartners. The meeting starts at 6:30pm and will be held in the school gym.

The program is very popular and a lottery system is used to choose among in-district applicants.

Bellevue Spanish Immersion 2011 Enrollment Procedure

Top 10 Reasons to Relocate to Bellevue

Light fixer in Bellevue

Investors are invited to check out InvestorPowerSearch.com and also contribute: promote your business, blog about real estate, post your wholesale deals.  Content should be coming soon from wholesalers, flippers, mobile home investors, and a business credit expert.