151 Bowdoin Staged – House Flip Update

Here are a few updated photos of our Bowdoin St home with some of the staging done.

We normally do some light staging of the kitchens and baths, however I have been looking into doing some full staging of a few of our properties. I just need to figure out the costs and find the right people to do it.

Here is Bowdoin St with some staging done:

Springfield MA Historic House for Sale

151 Bowdoin St - House For Sale

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Kitchen Breakfast Bar

151 Bowdoin Kitchen Side View

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Lots of Cabinets. Cookbook hides the Corner

Living Room/ Fireplace Staged

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View of Dining Room looking into Living Room

151 Bowdoin Full Bath Staged

Third Floor Bath Staged, Nice Clawfoot Tub

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So there you have it…. the staging really softens it up and adds some more color and visual appeal to the rooms.

I think this home would look amazing fully staged with furniture, but we’ll have to wait for another property to do that!!

151 Bowdoin St, Historic Rehab

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)

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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.

151 Bowdoin St Update – Historic House Rehab

151 Bowdoin Before

Our historic house on Bowdoin St is a few weeks out from completion.

The outside is mostly done and it looks really amazing!!! I’m liking the color combination that we chose. We went with a sage green for the main body, an off white creamy kinda color for the trim, and a burgundy for all the accents. Check it out; (you can see all the before pictures HERE)

151 Bowdoin St Springfield MA

151 Bowdoin Rear View

151 Bowdoin St Front

The lighting wasn’t the best when I took these pics, but it still looks good!!

Your going to have to wait for interior photos because I haven’t taken any of those yet.

House Flip Update; Historic Home Rehab

I realized this morning that I haven’t done any new updates on the rehab of our historic house since the news story aired on CBS 3.

Right now it has a new roof, we cleared the yard, filled in the pool, tore off the half-assed addition and cleaned everything up, all the new windows are in, the interior plumbing and electric is all roughed in, all the sheetrock is up and the guys are starting to paint the interior. Our contractor said that he picked up 90 gallons of paint at Sherwin Williams for the interior. Also the exterior is primed and we are starting the finish coats on that.

Here are some photos I have of the work in progress. You can see the before pictures HERE, the before video HERE and the CBS news story of the house HERE;

Filling in the Pool

View of Illegal Addition and Pool

Tearing off the Addition

Addition Gone, Pool Filled In

Side View all Cleaned Up

I don’t have any new pictures of the interior or of the exterior painted, so I will have to get some of those to show you what it is looking like now.

We should be finishing this one up soon. Once the sheetrock goes up and everything is painted it’s a race to the finish line!

House Flipping News Story Update

Our story aired on Thursday night during both the 6PM and 11PM news and it really came out great. Jen Thome with CBS 3 did an awesome job of putting it all together and putting a good, positive, spin on the story. I wasn’t sure just how long it was going to be, but it turned out to be over two and a half minutes.

Heres the link to the story that aired: (just click on it to open)

Local Company Flips Historic Homes

And here it is on Yutube:

On top of our company being on TV, Jen invited us to the CBS 3 studio so we could check out the newsroom and help anchor the 11 PM news.

Here are the photos of Dominic and I in action

Hampden Homebuyers on the news

Matt and Dom covering the Days Top Stories

Dom covering Sports

Matt Giving a Weather Update

Matt, Jen and Dom discussing all the latest Trends in Flipping Houses

We’re officially Famous….. so if you want an autograph just leave a request in the comments section below!!! LOL

Hampden Homebuyers in the News

You’ve seen us on Youtube, now it’s time to catch us on the Primetime News…Our story will be airing tommorrow (Thursday) night on the 6 PM and 11 PM news on CBS 3 here in Springfield. Next stop is A&E’s Flip This House!!

I received an email from the news anchor Jen Thome that read….  “Just wanted to let you know our promotions director put together a promo for the story.  It’s running on CBS now until Thursday.  It will definitely run during the news but should run other times too.”

Heres a look at the promo that has been running on CBS:

Pretty Cool!!

Crazy Times in Real Estate + We’re on the News!!

So it’s been a very hectic 7-10 days. With the expiration of the first time buyer tax credit looming on the horizon, buyers have been out in droves trying to snatch up a home. We put quite a few finished properties on the market in anticipation of this rush and there’s been no shortage of action. Dominic’s phone has been ringing off the hook with agents wanting to set up showings, buyers wanting to see houses, and offers coming in. Heck, it looks like we may even be selling an REO we just bought last week, that isn’t even halfway done, to a first time buyer determined to buy one of our finished homes…….

Which brings me to an interesting phenomenon that we have noticed lately. Several buyers have come to us and said they want to buy one of our finished homes, and no one else’s. Typically they will look at one of our properties or see some pictures online, they will instantly fall in love with the finish work and they will have an epiphany… they say to themselves “These guys houses are head and shoulders above the rest of the rehabbed junk that’s on the market…. and I only want to buy from them.” At least that’s what I think they say 🙂

In other news, we bought another house today. A short sale in Chicopee MA that is going to be a pretty sweet deal. It wasn’t with Bank of America so it didn’t take over a year to get done. It actually was pretty quick, maybe about four months, which is good for a short sale. I’ll post more details about this property in a separate post.

Now on to the most exciting news of the day. We’re going to be on the News!!! We met with the very talented Jennifer Thome today of CBS 3 Springfield, she is doing a story on Hampden Homebuyers and the renovation we are doing of the Historic Home on Bowdoin St. We spent several hours at Bowdoin St today with Jen, doing interviews and walking through the property. She even interviewed our contractor Jason, here are the pictures;

Smile for the Camera!!!!

Jason's a natural with the Microphone

Notice how he’s sitting down during the interview, what’s up with that?? I think he’s getting a little lazy on us 🙂

So anyway, the story is suppose to air next Thursday on the 6 PM and 11 PM news here in Springfield on CBS. I don’t know how long it will be, maybe only 30 seconds.. maybe a couple minutes…. but it is good publicity for the house and our company. Plus we can use it as a credibility builder going forward, when we meet with sellers, lenders, other media outlets, etc…… I don’t usually watch the news because it’s usually filled with negative stories and doom and gloom, but I’ll have to make an exception here.

Well that’s it for tonight, we’ve got a lot of new properties I need to write about, but that will have to wait for another day.

Flip This House Update-Historic Home Rehab

Dominic met with the historic society last night and we got all our final approvals to go ahead with our renovation of the historic house on Bowdoin St.

Heres a video of the way it looked just after we closed on it.