As a Denver area Realtor, my answer for most problems is to buy a house.  As an attorney friend of mine once told me, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

More and more people are thinking about buying investment property.  The initial desire always seems to be fix and flips.  But frankly, if you can’t afford to go after homes well above $200,000, it’s tough to make much money on fix and flips.  The cheaper properties are in short supply and, usually, leave little margins on the flip.  More expensive properties bring greater reward, but with greater risk and the need for a bigger initial investment.

An alternative to getting into investment properties, particularly at the lower end of the spectrum, is either a fix and hold, or to purchase a home that doesn’t need work but that can be a solid rental.  Areas around colleges, hospitals, downtown, the airport, and large business centers can be great areas for rental property.  Experienced investors will tell you that accumulating property is a proven and generally reliable to amass wealth.  Over the long haul, investment property will usually appreciate, as well as bring in a monthly positive cash flow.

One way to get into purchasing investment property is with a self-directed IRA.  With that, you can roll over retirement funds into a managed account that can be used to buy real estate.  It’s a tricky way to access money to buy property.  It’s not that complicated to do and several area banks can handle managing the account.

But, like with most things, you need to figure out if this is a good fit for you.  Being a landlord comes with lots of challenges.  Of course, if you don’t mind giving up some profit, you can always turn your rentals over to a property manager.  That way, they can answer the phone in the middle of the night when the pipe breaks.

You might want to check out this article about being a landlord.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/02/04/are-ready-to-be-landlord/

Many homes around town use a furnace for hot (and cold) air throughout their homes.  What started a long time ago as a simple gravity fed and coal fired monster that resembled a cross between an iron lung and an octopus has evolved into a computer controlled, high efficiency piece of modern technology.

I remember when my company Main Street Theatres was operating the old Oriental Theatre over on 44th and Tennyson.  The theatre was heated by a boiler that was the size of a locomotive.  When that beast fired up, one glance inside and you knew that the Public Service bill was going to hefty.  I’m pretty sure it would have been cheaper (and probably more efficient) to burn dollar bills.

I recently switch my home furnace over to a high efficiency unit.  It cost close to $5000 to upgrade my furnace.  This furnace uses a DC motor that runs all of the time, constantly moving air through the house .  Oddly enough, this is the recommended setting.  I knew exactly when my old 1970’s furnace was starting up.  It would kind of rumble and in a few minutes warm air would blast out of my ducts like a hair dryer set on high.  Now, it just happens seamlessly… with no drama.  I forget that it’s even working, but my house is warm.  So, something must be happening.  I still haven’t figured out if I’m saving money.

If you’re interested in  an excellent explanation of modern furnaces, spend a moment with this article from Green Building Advisor.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/all-about-furnaces-and-duct-systems?utm_source=email&utm_medium=eletter&utm_content=fhb_eletter&utm_campaign=fine-homebuilding-eletter

A few years ago, I restored a home in Kansas City, Kansas.  It was built in 1920 and was lost by its previous owners to a HUD foreclosure.  One of the problems we faced with the old house was the wiring.  It had the classic knob and tube wiring to go with it’s classic architecture.  We didn’t have a giant budget for the home, so we had to leave some of the knob and tube in place.  With plaster over lathe walls, if you’re going to rewire, you have to contend with how to handle the wiring without making a royal mess of the walls.  If the walls are shot, that’s great, you’re going down to the studs anyway. But, if you’re going to save your walls then you need to find another way to rewire, unless you don’t mind a lot of patching of your plasterwork.  I don’t know about most people, but when I fix a plastered wall, you know it’s not original equipment.

While we were remodeling the KC house, we considered using chains to drop wiring through the attic into the stud bays on the second floor.  We could have also fished wiring up from the basement into the lower level walls. But with limited time and limited budget, we decided to leave the old wiring that was working fine intact and only address the wiring in the newer portions of the house that we were drastically remodeled. I must say the building codes KCK at the time seemed to be a rather “liberal” and the inspectors never brought up. While we did the remodeling several years ago, I must admit that leaving the knob and tube wiring in place has often crossed my mind. I find myself asking was a good decision?

At the time were remodeling the house, I often consulted  books on old houses including, George Nash’s Renovating Old Houses (a great book, by the way).  There are a variety of different opinions on knob and tube wiring, however several people said if it works, it works.  Of course, the problem is it’s virtually impossible to track down a short in knob and tube wiring since the hot and common leads don’t run together.  But in our old house, the old wiring was fine and functional,  and the new wiring that was handling the greater loads was all up to modern standards.  Hopefully the house hasn’t burned down in the meantime.

As an old house enthusiast and a dedicated do it yourselfer, I still rely on books and websites to help me improve my skills. One of the websites I follow is Fine Homebuilding.  And, I subscribed to their daily e-mail tips. Recently I received a tip that addresses the problems of rewiring an old house without disturbing the plasterwork.  It’s actually a simple concept that is similar to Cove Mould wiring, although it’s not visible outside the walls.

It’s actually a clever idea that hides the wiring behind the baseboard and protects it underneath a metal covering so can’t be accidentally penetrated by a finishing nail (or the cable Guy). With this tip, he simply runs the wiring below the finish plaster in a gap that sits behind the baseboard and in the corners he puts a fairly severe bend in the wire to accommodate the change of direction.  It seems like a good idea to me.  While, I’m no expert I can recognize a good idea when I see one.  Here’s the link to the tip from Fine Homebuilding. Good luck with your old house.

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/tips/rewiring-vintage-house.aspx