Crazy Week + 37 Mansfield St Final Video

February 21, 2010 by 3 Comments

The week started and ended very good with us getting two more offers accepted, one on Monday and the other on Friday. The first deal is an estate property that was brought to us by one of the bigger REO agents in our city. The house is in a little rougher neighborhood than I like, but this will be the third property we’ve purchased from this particular agent in the last couple months so I’m viewing it as a way to further solidify our relationship.

The second deal is a short sale that we received an approval letter for on Friday. This should be a pretty sweet deal but we’ve got to clear up a few little title issues before we can close on it.

In other news, after only owning the house on Ravenwood St for a little over two weeks, we’ve got the rehab finished and our new buyer is already moving in!!!  I’ll have pictures and videos of this property coming up in the next week or so.

OK… to wrap it up I want to post our final walkthrough of the fire damaged multi family home we did at 37 Mansfield St in Springfield. You can see all the before pictures here, and our initial walk through video here.

Check it out;

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37 Mansfield St – Final Pictures

December 7, 2009 by 6 Comments

37 Mansfield Before

The renovation work is totally complete at 37 Mansfield St. The property came out awesome and we found a buyer without even having to put it on the MLS. This property had alot going against it; it was condemned, it was fire damaged, the porches were falling down, and it had some serious structural problems… but we fixed all that and turned it into a real gem!! With over 3,700 square feet, 10+ bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms this was by far the biggest property that we have rehabbed. We started renovation of the home in June and work was completed at the end of September. We ended up converting this property from a three family to a two family. This was a total gut down to the studs; we did new electric, plumbing, heating systems, roof, siding, windows, kitchens, baths, sheetrock, etc…..   

You can see more of the before pictures here and some video here.

Heres a look at the finished product:

37 Mansfield St- After

37 Mansfield After

Kitchen Unit 1

Kitchen Unit 1

Bathroom Unit 1

Bedroom Unit 1

Living Room Unit 1

Bedroom Unit 2

Third Floor Living Room Unit 2

 

I was amazed out how nice the hardwoods came out. When we first started work I didn’t think we were going to be able to save any of the floors but our hardwood refinisher was able to work some real magic on those old floors!!

So have another look at the before pictures here and let me know what you think….

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37 Mansfield St and New Deal Updates

October 18, 2009 by 2 Comments

Things are still moving fast and furious! We’ve had six closings over the last few weeks with one more scheduled for Monday. In total we sold four of our properties and bought two new rehabs, with a third new rehab set to close Monday. 

We spent today touring some of our projects with a couple of our private lenders from the Boston area. While we were out walking the properties we got two more offers accepted!! One is a MLS listed property that we offered on Thursday. The second is a private owner that we met with on Friday and presented them with an offer. Both are looking to close ASAP so we’re gonna be busy getting everything together for these purchases.  These two properties are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. The MLS property is in terrible condition and will be a full gut. It’s real nasty and kinda spooky…. just like Bessemer and the Ware House were. The second property is a very light rehab; condition wise it’s probably one of the better houses we’ve purchased. It will need paint and light kitchen and bath updates.

 

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I’ve fallen behind with the updates on the fire damaged multi family on Mansfield St. We’re almost done with this one and should be able to get it to the market next week. Heres a pictorial timeline;

Insualted Walls

All the walls were insulated throughout the house.

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The sheetrock was delivered and put on all three floors.

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All the sheetrock was hung…. it finally looks like a house again!

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Sheetrock gets taped and mudded (is that a word??) 

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Vandals break in and completely TRASH all our new walls 🙁

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Just kidding…. thats a picture from when we were doing the Demo…. just making sure you’re still paying attention!
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All our new walls are painted in our beautiful TAN

 

These pictures are from a few weeks ago. Right now all the hardwoods have been refinished, all the doors have been hung, everything has been trimmed out, the bathrooms are in and we are finishing up the kitchens. I’ll have some more current pictures/videos pretty soon. 

 Stay Tuned………

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37 Mansfield St– Fire Damaged Multi Rehab Update

August 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

We’ve made some slight changes over at the fire damage three family…. mainly we decided that it was no longer going to be a three family, we are converting it to a two family. The main reason behind this is because the city wanted us to do too many life/safety upgrades to the property that would have killed our budget. They were requiring us to either put a sprinkler system in, or install a fire alarm system complete with pull boxes, strobe lights, illuminated exit signs, beacons, and a fire panel that wirelessly called directly into the fire department. These are things you would generally find in a large office building or a 50-100 unit apartment complex…. not a dinky little three family located on a side road in Forest Park.

 The changes are actually going to work out pretty good. We had planned on holding this property as a rental, but now since it is only two units we are going to retail it. The value of the property actually doesn’t change that much, a two family is worth about the same as a three family, mainly due to the ease in which an owner occupant can buy a two family. A three family is much more difficult for an owner occupant to finance and an investor purchasing usually needs 20%-30% down thus limiting the pool of buyers and bringing the price of a three unit down.

It is now a very large two family with the second unit taking up two floors, kind of like a townhouse unit. The second floor unit will now be 6 bedrooms and 2 full baths…. it’s gonna be huge!

We’ve finished up the majority of the work on the outside. The inside is being sheetrocked. Heres a look;

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All the siding is complete along with the roof and the windows. The front porch was rebuilt and the side porch was taken down. Heres what it looked like before;

 

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  So the outside is looking real sharp. Now it’s just a matter of finishing up the sheetrock, painting, and completing all the finish work inside. Before you know it we’ll have this one on the market and under agreement!!!

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Video Update at the Fire Damaged Multi Family

July 30, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Heres a video update from the fire damaged multi family that we are working on.  The outside is almost complete, inside all the rough is in so we are just waiting on inspections. Once inspections are complete we will begin insulating and than sheetrock. 

We’ve got a couple more rehabs under contract that we will be closing on in the coming weeks so be ready for some more great updates!!

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Video Archives

July 21, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I was digging through our video vault when I found this gem. It’s a video we put together a little over a month ago at the fire damaged three family we are working on.  It’s from the first day of work and you can see the property in more detail.

We’ve hit some snags at this property that has slowed us down a bit. First there was the stop work order, now the three building inspectors that have visited the site can’t seem to agree on the proper fire alarm/life safety system that we need. We can’t sheetrock and close up the walls till we know what type of fire alarm system we need to install. This all should be straightened out shortly and we will be ready for rough inspections and sheetrock!

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Stop Work Order

June 1, 2009 by 1 Comment

We’ve hit a few snags at the fire damaged three family. The next door neighbor isn’t happy about the dust from the demo so she called the cops on our contractor for working on a holiday (memorial day) and then she called the building inspector the next day… apparently she thought we were working without permits. No big deal, the inspector stopped by and everything looks good. Then on Thursday we got an unexpected visit from the Environmental Protection Agency…. seems someone called in an anonymous tip alleging that we were removing the asbestos boilers from the property on our own, instead of hiring the overpriced asbestos abatment companies. We’ve had four abatement guys over to look at the job in the last two weeks…. I’m not sure which one took the liberty of  dropping a dime on us.  I guess it’s their way of insuring they get work, call in the EPA so we don’t even consider removing it ourselves (which we never did).  So the EPA guy says that there is a slight chance that their may be asbestos in the sheetrock we are removing and he gives us a Stop Work order until we get some samples tested. $450 bucks later the samples come back clean and we should be able to start work again on Tuesday. Here’s a look at the progress so far:

102_5375    Not too much action on the exterior

102_5374   Nice Banner

102_4988   This porch is ready to come down on its own!!

102_5009  Heres how the third floor looked a week ago

102_5377  And the third floor now

102_5380   Here’s where the fire burnt through the roof

 

We’ll probably lose four days because of this little hiccup. It wasn’t too bad because it gave our contractor a chance to get back over to Bessemer and do some painting.

 

We bought another house on Wednesday. It’s on Brooks St in Springfield. The good thing is that this one has already been rehabbed by the previous owner, not to our standard… but it’ll do. Heres a look at the house;

102_4569    We bought this from a hard money lender out of CT who is also a pretty well known TV star on A&E’s Flip This House .  Theres a few repairs we need to make to this house, nothing major though.  Once thats done we’ll stage it and get it on the market.

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Let the Fun Begin

May 22, 2009 by 2 Comments

We finally purchased the fire damaged three family this week and work is underway. This is a huge project, we are going to be gutting all three units to the studs and going back in with all new electrical, plumbing and heating systems. Outside the roof will be repaired and reshingled, we’ll do new vinyl siding, new windows (45 of them), demo the side porch and repair the front porch.  This house is 3,720 square feet, it’s huge. When we’re done we’ll have three very big four bedroom apartments that should rent easily because everything is brand spankin new. Heres some photos of the demo work;   

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We’ve got four dumpsters on order just for the demo, but I’m thinking we may need more. The timeline for this job is 12 weeks. The first step will be to gut the house. Once all the walls are open the electrician and plumber can begin running all their rough plumbing and wiring. While their doing their thing inside the outside work will be getting done. This ones gonna be fun.

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