House Doctors featured in Washington Examiner

House Doctors was recently featured in an article in The Washington Examiner entitled, “There are still a lot of properties available to rehabilitate – but finding them can be a challenge.” The article discusses the difficulty of finding a “fixer-upper” to live in or fix up and then resell, and gives advice to first-time home buyers looking to avoid bad investments. Hugh Sutherland weighs in as owner/operator of House Doctors in Northern Virginia and an investor in rehab properties, explaining that foreclosures and short sales need love and attention in order to become liveable for families on a budget. He explains the drop in house-flippers and investors like himself, and says that instead, families are moving into these homes. This article will provide some great exposure for House Doctors in metro DC, and should generate some local interest in fixing up homes, and who to call when one wants to take on these kinds of projects. A portion of the article is included below and it can be read in its entirety by clicking here.

There are still a lot of properties available to rehabilitate – but finding them can be a challenge
By: Deborah Huso

Finding a fixer-upper to flip, or to live in for a time and then resell later for a profit, is not as easy as scanning the real estate listings.

“Some properties may fit fixer-upper categories in the buyer’s eye, but not be listed that way by the seller,” said Jonathan Hill, president of RealEstate Business Intelligence in Rockville, a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems.

The seller or the seller’s agent may want to avoid what they perceive as a negative moniker.

That said, it is not surprising there are more of these properties on the market in the D.C. metro area these days — and that more of them are selling. RBI’s figures from April to September this year show 997 fixer homes sold in the District and surrounding areas, including the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland. That’s a jump from the 650 to 750 sold during the same periods from 2005 to 2008.

(Read More)