Douglas Mandell's Blog

Just thought I’d try out the WordPress iPhone app for posting to my blog (using my iPod Touch, or iPhoneless). Pretty nifty!

Nothing much to say, except that escrow is opened on the East Palo Alto house and preliminary title search looks good. Next week I will be going down to the building department to check on the permit history. Stay tuned…

After only a little backing and forthing, I reached an agreement with the sellers of the house in East Palo Alto and I now have a signed purchase agreement. Escrow is open and I’m waiting for the preliminary title report.  We’ll see how things look in the title department shortly.

One interesting thing I discovered in my preliminary inspection: the garage was converted to an additional bedroom and a laundry room— both useful things for increasing the sales value when I’m done.  Now I just have to go down to the city building department and pull the permit history to see if this was done with permits (probably not) and find out about legalizing it (if not.)

Today I went down the Peninsula to East Palo Alto to check out a house that I’m looking into making an offer on.  It was built in 1949 and has had relatively little done to it since then in terms of interior updates.  The roof and foundation look to be in good shape, though.  Now I just need to work up the repair estimate and figure out what to offer.  This one definitely has potential.  If I end up rehabbing it I’ll keep you posted on the progress.