Since the OP stated he/she was looking at ~$600K homes last spring and determined that they needed too much work to place an offer on, I decided to look around at current existing one-story SFR inventory in C-bad and came across this flipper ~six blocks from the beach:
Purchased on 8/31/15 for $641K, it has the exact same floating floor, even down to its color (called “wood tile” in the listing) in the main living areas that I saw at Lowes at closing last night for 99 cents per sf! They had 36 boxes left … enough to do a much bigger house than this. The bdrms in this listing either still have the old carpet (cleaned) in them or the flippers “sprung” for new carpet (cheap, of course). They apparently put a roof on, sod in the front yard and possibly resealed the pool. They replaced the appls and possibly the A/C (or just had it repaired) and installed bullet lighting (currently on clearance at HD – endcap at the center of the electrical aisles). They also possibly repaired/replaced the pool pump and/or filter. The glass tile they used in the kitchen and glass mosaic tile they used in the bathroom is ALSO on clearance at Lowes (12×24′ sheets in boxes) piled in pallets in the middle of the store 8′ high! They didn’t even put 67-cent covers (I just bought some last night, lol) on the outlets in the kitchen before taking the listing photos. They just left the wires hanging!
I’m putting this “plain jane,” lipstick-on-a-pig beach listing out there just to illustrate that there IS money to be made by buying the “ugly” fixer which this OP may have very well “passed up” back in Spring 2015 due to the amount of work it needed. Even if the “profit” is only a paper gain (due to lifetime residency after rehab) a buyer in this OP’s demographic would be better off buying a fixer, imho. These flippers only “worked” rehabbing this listing for four months (Sept, Oct, Nov and Dec) and may have even finished before the holidays. It was listed approx 1/3/16.
OP, you can’t do this by buying new construction. All you will do (at your age) is sign yourself up to a lifetime (however long that may turn out to be) of indentured servitude if you buy into the vast majority of new construction subdivisions in CA.
These flippers are asking $914,900 and its been on the market for 2 weeks. Not sure they’ll get that, due to it being slightly more than spitting distance from the train tracks, but they may very well get into the high 800’s. I predict these flippers will recover between $210K and $260K in profit after costs of improvement and costs of sale are factored in!
