Orange Realty - T. Trabucco
Connect Via:
  • Home
  • Home Search
    • Featured Listings
    • Rental Listings
    • Park Orleans Condos
    • Mortgage Calculator
  • Sellers
  • Vendors
    • All Trades / Vendors
    • Building Contractors
    • Electricians
    • Flooring Contractors
    • HVAC Contractors
    • Locksmiths
    • Painters
    • Pest Control
    • Plumbers
    • Roofers
    • Termite Remediation
    • Woodworkers
  • Links
  • Testimonials
  • About
    • Contact Tony T.
  • News
    • Market Stats - Old Towne
    • Market Stats - City of Orange
    • Market Stats - Orange County
    • Land Use Planning Applications - Orange
  • Blog

Roofing, Roofers, and Potential Hazards of Being a Roofer

5/31/2019

3 Comments

 
When I was in high school, and throughout the first 3 years of college (during summers, and winter break) I worked for a roofing company. The crew that I was on installed mostly large hot-asphalt roofs (aka hot-tar) which included tearing off the old roof and installing a new roof to replace it. As hot-asphalt can't be applied when it's wet out, when it rained we would stock under-construction houses with drywall, install insulation, stock shingles on roofs, and install composition shingles -- not any fun, but it kept us busy.  We couldn't run asphalt in the rain as the asphalt was about 650 degrees (Farenheit) in the kettle -- (that big, black, noisy, loud, hot piece of machinery you see on the ground that has a pipe up to the roof) -- as it would vaporize and boil when the slightest bit of moisture touched it -- 650 degrees is just slightly more than 3X the temperature of boiling water - so it's hot!.

There was no OSHA at the time (or if there was, we were so far off of the beaten path in a small town in Oregon that my employer wasn't concerned with it) - so few, if any, safety measures were in place. We often worked with no shirts on, no protective gear other than gloves and boots, and never any safety harnesses -- not a big deal on hot-asphalt roofs, as they're generally fairly flat, but on the steeped pitched roofs of the old Victorian homes on which we worked, safety harnesses would have been a good idea! I worked on a small pitched roof on the side of a grain elevator once - about 7 stories up (74 ft), and the guy with whom I was working, a very experienced roofer, scrambled after a piece of equipment that started to slide and he almost went with it (see photo below) -- not very smart and could have cost him his life -- no harnesses that day either. Note that the building on the left is about 100 yards closer than the grain elevator on the right, so the scale appears distorted -- it was way up there! When I was about 17 years old, I once packed a 30-ft ladder on my shoulder, up the side of that same grain elevator, via a built-in vertical ladder embedded in the side of the building. Again, no safety equipment -- lucky I'm still alive!
Picture
In any event, what prompted this post was an email that I received from a group in Massachusetts that is working to educate the roofing public regarding the dangers of older roofing materials that may have contained asbestos, and could be a contributing factor to roofer contracting mesothelioma. I don't know anything about this organization or the information above/beyond what is contained on this website (link below), but if you know a roofer that might be affected/afflicted, they may want to avail themselves of this information:

Click Here for Additional Information
3 Comments

VA Loans and Veterans Buying Homes...(or at least trying to!)

5/8/2019

0 Comments

 
​It seems that whenever one reads a news article or scans a headline regarding U.S. Military Veterans, a common theme is that "Americans love Veterans!" -- which seems to be mostly true except, apparently, when it comes to selling them their home!

While most enlisted military personnel don't make a lot of money, VA benefits are often touted as an offset -- "Buy a house with 0% down!". Of course that's not entirely true -- closing costs (approximately 1.5% - 2% of the purchase price) and the 2.15% - 3.30% VA Funding Fee can result in a need to have anywhere from approximately 2% of the purchase price (if the fees are rolled into the loan) to 4.15% of the purchase price - in Southern California, on a $700K home that's anywhere from $14K to $29K -- out of reach for many young Veterans -- which is why VA loans/deals are so rare. That, and the large quantities of cash that more affluent buyers are often able to bring to the table so their deal looks "better" -- so sadly, the Veterans that we as Americans love are rarely given an opportunity to participate, even if they can afford the monthly payments. I've had a bank (house in foreclosure) accept a Veteran's offer (when there were other higher offers), accepted an offer -- on behalf of my seller client -- on a short sale for a Veteran, and assisted a Veteran buyer who had a larger down payment from the sale of another house purchase a home. All went very smoothly, closed on time, and without any drama.

Sellers, Veterans are simply asking for a chance at purchasing your beautiful home. When it closes, the net to you is the same as an all-cash offer at the same purchase price - and it gives a young Veteran and his or her family an opportunity to begin building their own memories.

​So if you're selling your home, and you receive an offer from a Veteran, with our without a large down payment, please consider it -- show them that Americans do truly love their Veterans -- and not just when we need them!

Picture
Anthony P Trabucco - USAF
Picture
Nicholas T Trabucco - USMC
0 Comments

    Author

    Tony Trabucco is a real estate Broker who lives in Old Towne Orange, CA

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Chapman University
    Drought
    Finance
    Miscellaneous
    Old Towne Orange
    Real Estate

    Archives

    October 2022
    October 2021
    November 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    RSS Feed

Tony Trabucco
Orange Realty, Inc.
1537 East Chapman Ave
Orange, CA 92866
714.288.9369
Tony@OrangeRealty.com
​
CA DRE Lic #: 0982321
Number of Pages Viewed
On This Site - Last 12 Months
​