In support of our friends at Covenant House, Fat Property will be participating in the annual “Sleep Out”.  From their site:

For millions of homeless kids, basic needs like a hearty meal, warm bed, and safe shelter are true luxuries. Instead of knowing the joys of childhood, every day these kids face the life-or-death dangers of living on the streets.

Covenant House was founded over 40 years ago with the mission to help these young people. Today, Covenant House is the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas providing food, shelter, immediate crisis care, and essential services to homeless youth in 21 cities throughout the United States, Canada and Latin America.

Covenant House doesn’t stop at offering an immediate safe harbor. We strive to move each young person forward down the path to an independent adulthood, free from the risk of future homelessness. We touched the lives of over 50,000 young people last year alone.

We cannot make such an impact without the help of dedicated individuals sleeping out in solidarity with homeless youth to show them they are not alone.

If you’d like to contribute, you can do so directly to our own campaign or right to Covenant House.

 

Now that the 20 unit (“Big Trux”) is about finished, we’ve started working on the 8 unit next door.  It’ll get the same exterior face-lift (new siding, paint, windows) and interior upgrades.  This, along with a host of other “under the hood” upgrades like a replacement of the main plumbing line, leveling the properties, as well as a slew of interior upgrades (updated kitchens, central air, refinish the original hardwood floors, etc).

We’re big fans of the 3rd ward and are happy we can do our part to save some of these buildings that would have no doubt been blow up (as the properties next to them were, which are now empty lots)

(closest I have to a “before” shot.  We started very quickly so even my ‘before’ shot has the property with some of the old windows out, and new windows going in. We’re excited to save some of these old from fourplexes the wrecking ball. And if the city is reading this – yes – we have all our permits 🙂

 

Fat Property has continued to expand to the more Eastern part of the inner loop. Although this isn’t our first property east of Montrose/Midtown (we have properties in 5th ward and even a few in 3rd ward by U of H), this is our largest. It will also be our most extensive remodel to date.

This 20 unit building will have all it’s exterior siding removed, it’ll have new insulation installed along with new plywood sheeting.  We’ll re-wrap the property and put up new hardi siding along with a modern paint job.

Inside, each unit will have new windows, new central air, refinished hardwood floors (upstairs) or ceramic tile (downstairs).  Additionally, each unit will have new paint, calling fans, light fixtures, window blinds, and a host of other upgrades.

Rents will start at $650/month for a 2 bedroom.

Before picture of the exterior (as the before picture of the interiors are too scary to post 🙂

You can follow the upgrade process on our Truxillo property page

Fat Property is proud to join and support the Museum District Business Alliance.  Our goal as a company is to better the community we live and invest in.  This goal is shared by the MDBA

“Our Mission: To promote enterprise and the arts, making the Montrose/Museum District more attractive for businesses, residents, and investors by improving the public enjoyment of the area and combating community deterioration.”

If you’re a business owner in the area, we would strongly suggest joining this great group.

 

 

We’ve been getting a lot of inquires about our multifamily and single family properties for sale.  As our multifamily properties tend to stay full, and even our single family properties for sale are all rented, doing showings is difficult. We respect our tenants privacy and enjoyment of their home, as such our policies for showing might be a bit more than most buyers are accustomed to.

Before setting up a showing, we try to make sure that everything someone might need or want to know about the property has been supplied.  Financials, photos, descriptions  and answers to any questions.  But with all that, we’re often left with the question “When can I view the unit/home?”

So rather than say the same thing every time over the phone or via e-mail, we’ve typed up a page that talks about our policy when it comes to showing occupied units.  We call them “LWO” – “Listed While Occupied”.

So if you’re curious how you see the inside of our properties for sale, check out our LWO site

What are bitcoins?  Well, that’s not what this post is about.  If you’ve never heard of them, you (likely) well.

Fat Property is proud to announce a partnership with Houston Bits to start accepting rental payments using bitcoins.  More information will follow so stay tuned!

No one is going to accuse us of being professionals when it comes to staging (what’s that?), photographing our properties/units (done with cell phone cameras), or advertising in general (thankfully we’re in Montrose).

At our 56 unit Holman property, one of the units was used as our on-site office.  Of the 30+ units we’ve upgraded for new tenants, the office was not one of them.  This created a problem for prospective tenants that wanted to see what a ‘finished’ unit looks like.  When someone comes by, normally any finished units have people in them so they’re hard to show.  The other empty units are all being worked on so we end up showing someone a “UIP” (Unit in Progress).

So solve the issue, we decided to actually upgrade the office unit.  That was easy enough as our guys have done over 30 of these same units so far.  However, this time we decided to have it staged.  We got the guys at Showcase Staging to help us.  We’re happy with their work.  Not only does our on-site team have a nice place to work in, but we now have a unit we can always (and easily) show prospective tenants who want to see what an upcoming unit will look like.

Check out our Holman property page for more info.  A few of the ‘after shots’ are below.

      

     

We’ve recently bought our first property in Spring Branch.  A 46 unit mix of studios, 1 bedrooms, and 2 bedrooms.  While not the greatest looking building at the moment, this property is well running and almost full.  We plan on making mostly cosmetic improvements in the short term. Below is a picture we found online (and not exactly flattering).  As the property is improved, we’ll be sure to take some good ‘after’ photos.

Units start as low as $300 a month for studios, $400 for 1 bedrooms, and $500 for 2 bedrooms.

Spring Branch is starting to become more and more popular due to all the energy activity and it’s proximity to downtown Houston.  While we are still giant fans of inner loop locations such as Montrose, midtown, and Heights, we also realize that those locations are getting harder and harder to buy into due to limited supply of properties and increased demand from buyers.

We’re sad to announce our sale of 4315 Jack St.  This property was purchased mid last year (2012).  It was a mess and we had a great time fixing it up.  Even though we had it less than a year, we were able to repaint the exterior, upgrade (heavily) 9 of the 10 units, clear out massive amounts of trash, demo the old shed and parking roof, and stabilize the income — raising it by 45% (to renters that rent increase sounds like a bad thing, but it’s the stabilized market rent that allows for upgrades and repairs to the property. The previous rent was a large factor in why the property was distressed and ultimately sold to us).

Our job there is now done and it’s time for a new owner to take it to the next level. The new owner is an experienced operator in the area and we’re sure she’ll do great.

So why are we sad, and why did we sell?  We’re first and foremost a company interested in growth and adding more units to our holdings.  However, the reality of financing in today’s market dictates much of what we do.  By selling the property on Jack, we are able to fund the growth of much larger properties (which may be sold at some point to fund even more).  A more complicated answer involves a moment towards additional leverage as there was a lot of equity in the property. A less complicated answer is that if financing were easy, we’d likely never sell anything.

At the same time, we’re happy to announce that we’ve now officially purchased the Wipprecht property.  We had been managing it for a few weeks in preparation of buying, but the ink is now dry and it’s a done deal.  We’re VERY excited to get this place cleaned up.  Stay tuned for some interesting before and after pictures!

According to this interesting story, yes.  When people ask us why we invest so much in Houston, it’s stories like these that help us answer that question.