Nearly 11 years ago I was getting back into surfing. At the time I was mostly selling bank owned properties for a management company out of Texas. One of my friend/colleagues at Bradley Real Estate was a Realtor/Fixer and Flipper, and he made an offer on 46 Porto Bello in San Rafael for $315,000. He told me if the bank accepted the offer he’d buy a custom made board. I really had no pull with the bank, their expectations on the property were already set and the offer came in at our asking price so the bank accepted it and I got a new Tim Stamps surfboard! It’s funny the board was like the icing on the cake of the sale and I could have bought 8 of the same boards with what I made on the deal: but I wouldn’t have. My buddy probably knew it because at the time I was riding a couple of boards I found at Terra Linda garage sales, real hidden gems. With what he made on the after the fix and flip he probably could have bought at least 150 new boards!
That’s the thing about real estate investing, you can really make a lot of money if you do it right and if you aren’t overly ambitious. I’ve seen people make bank, and I’ve seen the same people get in over their heads and break bank. It’s the ultimate high risk, high reward business. And wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got one such property coming on the market at the end of this month!
404 Nova Albion in Terra Linda is a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom Eichler backing up to an ‘open area’. We aren’t supposed to say open space anymore. It’s got a ton of potential and rather than just throwing it on the market we are trying to make it attractive to a family that might want to do some updating themselves. Generally families will pay more than investors. So we are putting on a new roof, the inside and out are being painted and we’re getting new flooring. Landscaping and staging will be the last things we do, and we’ll be priced at $1,100,000. It might sound like a lot of money for a house that will sorely need updating, but the next house down was beautifully redone and hauled in $1,525,000 in July 2019. There’s obviously some sweat equity awaiting the right buyer on Nova Albion. Who knows, it may be a competitive situation when we put the house on the market. Sorry to break the news to you, in the event of a multiple offer situation a surfboard will not tip the scales in a buyer’s favor.
Recently a really nice, down to earth couple I’ve gotten to know quite well let me borrow their daughter’s surfboard. It’s an 8’0, made in Hawaii in the early 90’s for the wife by a board shaper who wanted to impress her. The relationship went nowhere, but the board has followed her around all these years. It’s been gathering cobwebs in her Terra Linda basement, just waiting for someone like me to come along and breathe new life into it.
They let me borrow the board and it will go to their adult daughter whenever she wants it. In the meantime I repaired several ancient dings and got a session in at Cronkite. It’s a fun board, very user friendly. Last week I highjacked my brother from work at WTB in Mill Valley the day after his birthday and took him out to Bolinas for a session. Fred doesn’t surf much these days, but he was getting up and riding that Hawaiian board with gusto in some fun waves. There was a red tide running and my friend Nick was getting out of the water as we were getting in. He told us he was weary of the toxic algae bloom, which ended up staining my rash guard with red blotches. It was kind of gross. Added to which Nick asked me the next day if I saw that thing in the water.
“What thing?” I replied, wondering what I missed.
“It looked like a sealion with a couple chunks taken out of it. It was floating beyond the surfline. But I wasn’t 100% sure so I didn’t say anything.”
I GUESS I’m happy he didn’t mention it at the time?