New Member from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

[Wendy Hoechstetter]

Hi, I'm Wendy Hoechstetter, recently transplanted back to my hometown from Mill Valley, CA (San Francisco Bay Area) after spending much more of my adult life there than here.  I moved back in no small part due to the accelerating real estate market here, where prices are still affordable.  My family has been here for multiple generations and has always been very involved in the area, including on the real estate front, so I have deep roots in and love for the place, and come by my interest in real estate honestly :-)

Professionally, I'm an interior designer specializing in high end residential design for successful, busy professionals, and aging-in-place/universal/accessible design, for those who either need it now or (preferably) want to plan ahead, just in case, knowing that at least 68% of us will be disabled in some way eventually, or who know they have some health issues for which they know they will eventually need to make some modifications to their homes if they want to continue to live there.  I also make jewelry, which I will also eventually be selling, along with selling vintage and other fun statement pieces.

Real estate-wise, I've bought and sold one house, my own residence in Mill Valley, and was fortunate enough to do quite well with it even after several remodels, selling it well above asking price, for all cash, in less than a week on the market, with five viable backup offers, also all above asking.  Staging well and adopting the mindset that it is no longer your home but a commodity to be marketed really help!

I have, of course, also been involved in some extensive and less extensive remodels of other people's homes, including some model homes.  One of the projects I assisted with in my last job working for a prominent San Francisco designer was a gut remodel that won some major kitchen design awards.  We were also tapped by a prominent local architect to design the complete interiors for 6 very large model homes in a multi-billion dollar luxury golf resort development in Korea, the smallest of which was 2,000 square feet.  We had 5 weeks to do the job, and wowed the developers.  Their plan was to sell the 400 homes fully furnished - with our designs.  It was an unbelievable undertaking, but we pulled it off.

Investment-wise, as far as real estate goes, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on, researching the local market, and trying to decide where to start.  I was thinking fix and flip for cash in some of our more up and coming neighborhoods until I started to learn about private money, and am now contemplating whether or not I should consider rentals instead, or at least at first while I continue to educate myself about the much lower end design than I'm used to that is obviously needed to make a profit in this market.  

I'm also trying to pin down where I want to start location-wise, figure out the legalities, and am of course networking to meet others with similar and complementary interests, particularly contractors and subs of all sorts (both high end and lower end), private money lenders, and other successful investors who might be willing to mentor me or at least share information with me.  I'm also interested in commercial real estate, but don't know that it's a viable place for me just yet.  What I've read about it sounds quite interesting, though, so we shall see.

I'm looking forward to meeting many of you and learning a lot here - and hopefully being able to contribute something as well.