151 Bowdoin St, Historic Rehab

January 21, 2011 by 19 Comments

151 Bowdoin St Before

Our historic beauty at 151 Bowdoin is complete. All thats left is cleaning and staging the home.

This was an epic project. When we bought the house we knew we were in for a challenge.It looked like a big old purple haunted house!

The house was basically stripped when we got it…. nothing was left in the kitchen, there was no plumbing or heating systems, and the exterior was in deplorable condition.

In the end I think it came out real nice.

Have a look at the unstaged photos: (you can see all the before pics HERE and the before video HERE)

House for Sale Springfield MA

151 Bowdoin St Springfield MA

Historic House for Sale Springfield MA

151 Bowdoin Springfield MA Historic House

Nice Garage Doors!!!

Living Room

Dining Room

151 Bowdoin St Kitchen

Stainless Steel Appliances / Tile Backsplash

Kitchen w/ Breakfast Bar

Bathroom with Claw Foot Tub

Master Bedroom w/ Fireplace

Bowdoin St Bedroom

Second Floor Bath

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So it came out pretty awesome. We kept the historic appeal of the exterior and brought the interior up to date with modern upgrades and finishes.

I’ll post the new pictures when we get it staged.

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Tips for Selling a Home in the Winter

January 19, 2011 by 7 Comments

Buy Home Springfield MA

While the winter time is a bit slower when it comes to selling houses, there are still buyers out there looking.

The winter weather in the northern states presents a whole new set of challenges when it comes to house flipping, here are some tips I found when it comes to selling your homes during the winter months;

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=13108472

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The winter weather hasn’t been too kind to us here lately in Massachusetts. We got a huge snowstorm last week and have had snow and ice all this week.

Heres my car after almost 2 feet of snow fell:

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You folks in the warmer climates don’t really have to worry too much about the snow and ice, but I’m sure the heat brings about it’s own set of challenges.

Leave a comment below if you have any good tips for selling houses during these cold, dark winter months.

Filed Under: Rehabbing Tips

Market Updates and New Rehab Projects

January 12, 2011 by 2 Comments

The new year is well underway and we are seeing activity picking up already. All the buyers and agents have recovered from their holiday hangovers and they are out looking at properties again.

Just this week we’ve accepted offers on two of our houses that we had for sale. One is a three family home that we are wholesaling and the other is a rehabbed two family that we just finished up the work on. The 2 family home sold the first day on the market to the first showing…. that is always a beautiful thing!!!

On the subject of 2 family homes, I usually shy away from these as rehab projects because they tend to be in tougher rental neighborhoods where I would never consider doing a single family rehab. However we have bought and rehabbed 4 of them, usually they’re just deals that we stumble upon, the numbers work so we say “what the hell” and we go ahead and buy them. Of the 4; one we sold before we even had to put it on the market (37 Mansfield St), one we sold after only 3 days on the market (93 White St), and the other two we have under agreement to sell right now.

This leads me to believe that there is a pretty decent market for nice clean rehabbed and vacant 2 family homes.

Most of the 2 families on the market are either shitty bank owned houses with stolen plumbing and missing kitchen cabinets or they are rentals that haven’t been updated or maintained for years.

I think we are going to have to look into buying and rehabbing a few more of these 2 family homes!!!

Alright, that’s my rant about 2 families…. I hope you learned something by reading this!

Onto our current projects:

We purchased a nice rehab project located at 2004 Wilbraham Rd in Springfield. This was an REO deal that came to us through a good relationship that we have with the REO agent.

This house is a big colonial, over 2,000 square feet, located in a great area of the city.  It has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths.

It is an atypical renovation for us as it doesn’t need a complete overhaul. The plumbing is good, the heating system is good, the electric is good, the house is already sided, half the roof has been reshingled, the windows are done…. as I’m typing this I’m wondering if we even have to rehab this house at all??

Well yeah… it does need some work. We have to remove a bunch of overgrown trees and bushes from around the house, we need to fix the garage, reposition and redo the driveway, shingle the other half of the roof, redo the kitchen and bathrooms, paint everything, do new flooring, etc….

Here is a video we made of the house after a few days of work:

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Here are some before pictures for your viewing pleasure:

2004 Wilbraham Rd Springfield

Can You Find the House Hidden in all those Trees?

Rear of Wilbraham Rd

Kitchen

Half Bath

Living Room

Center Hall Stairway

Full Bathroom

Second Full Bath

Third Floor Bedroom / Bonus Room

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So that’s it. This one should be finished up in no time flat and we will have it back on the market for some lucky new homeowner!!

Filed Under: 2004 Wilbraham Rd Springfield

New Year brings New Deals

January 5, 2011 by 6 Comments

Happy New year Y’all!!!

2010 was a good year for us here at Hampden Homebuyers. We bought somewhere between 24-27 properties…. I kind of lost track and can’t remember the exact number!!!

We have pretty high goals for 2011 and look to come out of the gate running here in January.

Did you set your goals for the New Year? If not you better get cracking on that… don’t wait another day cause before you know it it will be June and you’ll be wondering where half the year went!

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In my previous post I talked about a few new deals that we recently picked up towards the end of 2010. We made videos of all of them and I need to put up some pics….. so here goes;

First up is 61 Eton St Springfield.

This is a large 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath home that has over 2,000 square feet.

The exterior needed a lot of attention, mainly the roof, siding and windows. Inside the house was very dated…. this was grandma’s house so there was a ton of wallpaper, ugly carpeting, and a general 1950’s-1960’s feel to the interior.

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We made a little video of some of the progress over at Eton St…. check it out below;

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Here are some before pics for you to marvel at;

61 Eton St Springfield

Side of the House

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This style of house has a real long roof line, and the roof shows very prominent from the street. We call these colonials or bungalows around here, but they look a lot like the craftsman style that you see in other areas of the country.

The house was filled with tons of trash and clutter inside. They even left a gorgeous yellow piano…. check it out;

Yellow Piano

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If any of you guys want this let me know, otherwise it’s probably going in the dumpster!!

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Kitchen Hallway

Foyer - aka Waste of Space

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Full Bath

Pink Tub!!!!!!!!!!!

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So there it is… another Gem!!! Man I don’t know where we find some of these places? Look at all that trash!! Looks like that TV show hoarders!

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We have quite a few new projects underway that I’ll be posting about shortly, so keep your eyes peeled for those new posts!!

Filed Under: 61 Eton St

Rehab Update – Fernleaf Ave Longmeadow

December 21, 2010 by 1 Comment

Wow… the blog posts have been few and far between lately. I think I’ve been swept up in the hoilday rush and have been too busy to type.

We’ve bought four new properties over the last couple weeks, none of which I have made a post about…. however we did make videos of 3 of them so those will be coming shortly.

We sold our 64 Fullerton St rehab last week, that deal went very smoothly with no real hiccups.

Things are moving along at our big Fernleaf Ave rehab in Longmeadow.

Heres a look at the exterior all cleaned up and painted;

Fernleaf Ave Longmeadow

We did make a sweet video of some of the work thats been done, check it out below;

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And here are some pics of the interior work.

Front Entry/Foyer Open into Living Room

Looking Back at Front Door with Wall Removed from Living Room

View from Living Room into Kitchen with Walls Removed

New Breakfast Bar in Kitchen

Second Floor Bathroom Gutted

Second Floor Hallway

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Well thats all I’ve got for now.

Happy Holidays to everyone and Happy Flipping!!!!

Filed Under: Fernleaf Ave Longmeadow

Granger St Rehab Video Recap

December 9, 2010 by 2 Comments

Granger St Springfield MA

Here’s a little video recap we did of our rehab at 107 Granger St in Springfield.

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Happy Thanksgiving and Foundation Work

November 29, 2010 by 2 Comments

First off I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you enjoyed your turkey…. or if you’re like my partner Dominic, I hope you enjoyed your steak (yes Dominic eats Filet Mignon on Thanksgiving, what a snob!!)

We tackled the foundation repair at Bruce St over the last week.

Our first step was to jack the house up and tear out the bad walls. Here’s what it looked like;

Foundation Gone

A View from the Inside

Once this was complete we laid a new footing and rebuilt the wall.

Here’s a video with an update of the progress:

 

We’ve been using a new video man to film and put our movies together. I think they are coming out real nice….. alot better than those old movies I was putting together in Windows Movie Maker!!

Well that’s all I got for now. We’ve got a couple new purchases in the works…. and are selling some of our finished properties. The market has slowed down for the winter and holidays, but there are still a good amount of buyers out there actively looking for new homes!!

Filed Under: 38 Bruce St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , ,

More Bruce St Demo

November 12, 2010 by 4 Comments

Wow, this demo stuff is fun!!!! Check out the little video we made from the first day of demo at our Bruce St project.

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We now have the new roof built up, it is all framed, has new plywood and is shingled.

New Roof is on, Plwood Being Loaded

Inside View, Jason Deep in Thought

We have also stripped all the old siding off the house and have it ready for our awesome new Tan siding.

38 Bruce St

New Roof is on

Rear View of House

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If you look closely at the pictures above you can see we have dug out all along the foundation wall on the right side of the house. This is the wall that we are going to be tearing out and replacing. It is cracking right in the middle and has a real nasty bow to it.

Here are some pics of the bad foundation, look closely and you can see the way it bows in right in the middle:

Bruce St Foundation

Its Leaning in a Little Bit!!!

I'm Holding the Camera Straight... See that Lean

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So thats our next big fix at this house. Right now the house is all jacked up off the foundation and the bad wall will be torn out and rebuilt.

– Happy Flipping

P.S.

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