Handy(wo)men specials

    No one can predict how deep prices will fall in the housing market, or in which markets.  We would never recommend trying to time the stock market, and the same holds true for the housing market.  But the more we read, the more we see that some people have figured out how to play the current market doldrums.  One way is to buy distressed properties at deep discounts, fix them up and sell them at a tidy profit.  In short, we admire those handy men and women who never met a rehab project they didn't like.
    We read with interest a piece on the Wall Street Journal's web site about a couple in Raleigh, NC, who purchase mostly homes in foreclosure that are in need of updating or repair.  The couple has experience with such fixer-uppers; they buy a house at a low price and know how to keep costs low to get the house in shape for a relatively quick sale.  Their purchase that was featured in the Journal is a duplex that cost the couple roughly $210,000 - purchase price and rehabilitation costs -- and is likely to fetch about $340,000.  The house is near North Carolina State University; purchasing and improving a home in a college town is one of the safer bets in a tough market.  College towns are drawing more and more baby boomers, and if you have the stomach for renting to students, you will never run out of a market.
    Foreclosures are happening at all levels of the market.  Tom Pace, a sales director at Glenmore outside Charlottesville, VA, says a home in that handsome golfing community is in foreclosure now and listed at $899,000.  Tom says it would fetch $1 million if it were in better condition.