Buying Houses, Selling Houses, and Quick Flips

August 16, 2011 by 2 Comments

Well it’s been another busy summer and a rather eventful past few weeks.

We closed on our last purchase in July. This is a short sale deal that doesn’t need too much work. It’s a nice 4 bedroom 2 bath Cape in need of mainly cosmetics. We were able to get it at a real good price because the people living there were very dirty. They had junk all over the floors, dirty dishes and empty food containers all over the kitchen, trash bags spread throughout the house and the house stunk pretty bad. I was pleased to find out that they didn’t pick anything up when it came time for the appraisal, so the house showed really poorly thus helping us get the discount we needed.

After we closed on the short sale house we didn’t have anything new set up in the pipeline. Every once in awhile we hit a little dry spell when we don’t have any deals lined up…… it’s very rare but it seems to happen like once a year…. don’t get me wrong, we are still working on several rehabs, and have a bunch of finished deals and wholesales lined up to sell, but we didn’t have any new purchases set up.

So I cranked up the marketing and sent my vibe out to the world that I was looking for deals…. kind of like in The Secret; you know, the law of attraction and all that metaphysical stuff.

Next thing I know, 2 weeks later, we are working on 5 new purchases….. and I still have a handful of leads to follow up on that could be deals too!!!

So now Dominic is busy working on the paperwork for all these new properties as well as getting the funds together.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, we are selling quite a few properties as well.

One that closed Friday was a nice wholesale deal. Now usually wholesales are suppose to be turned real quick for some fast cash…. not the case on this particular one. We picked this deal up as part of a “cherry pick” of a bulk REO package. It was a multi family property with some slight fire damage. It had been vacant for quite some time and the looters got in there and stole all the plumbing and heating systems. Our deal with the bank on this one was that we had to front the whole purchase price while they processed the foreclosure deed, this was back in December. We were told it should take 30-60 days for the deed to be processed, but could take as long as 180 days….. No problem we originally thought, that will give us plenty of time to sell it.

Well we found a buyer willing to pay full price in less than 30 days using my Craigslist posting methods …. unfortunately the bank was a little off with their 30-60 day time frame.  I guess with all the robo-signing nonsense and lawsuits going on the banks are being even slower in processing all their paperwork and getting the deeds out.

So after about 7 months we finally got word that the foreclosure deed was in. Our buyer stuck around the whole time because he knew he was getting a great deal. We closed last Friday and finally put an end to our “quick” flip!

I’ll get some pictures up of some of these latest deals, as well as our current rehabs, as we go along.

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Filed Under: Deal Updates Tagged With: , ,

Rehabbing (almost) New Construction

July 25, 2010 by 8 Comments

It’s been another productive week and a half. We put 3 more houses under contract to purchase; one short sale, one REO, and one estate property. That’s a pretty good mix of deals.

I’ve found that if we want to be consistently buying properties we need to have multiple channels to source new deals. What I mean by that is we don’t rely on just one thing to bring us deals, we have alot of lines in the water. Most new investors start off and work just one lead source, and when that doesn’t pan out right away they get frustrated. If you want to be consistently doing deals you need alot of leads. In order to get alot of leads you need to have multiple channels to fill your pipeline.

Well OK, on to one of our latest deals:

We bought a really nice contemporary ranch a few weeks back that is almost brand new. We got the inside scoop on this deal because we know one of the board of directors at the local bank that foreclosed on it. We actually bought an estate property from her; she represented the estate as the Executrix. She liked the way we did business and recommended that the bank work with us on their foreclosures. We ended up purchasing this house directly from the bank after they took it back at auction. The bank didn’t want to list the house with a realtor and didn’t want to evict the occupants, they just wanted it sold and off their books and they were willing to give it to us at a good price.

We made an agreement with the bank and immediately approached the occupants and offered them a good sum of money to move. We figured if all the big banks were doing “Cash for Keys” why couldn’t we. Our biggest concern was not having to go through an eviction. In MA evictions can drag out for 6 months or more, and this would have cost us alot in time and money. Well, with the money we were offering them they probably felt like they were winning the lottery, so they agreed to be out in 3 weeks.

Two and a half weeks later they were out and this is what we got:

Modern Ranch

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Dining Area

Living Room

Master Bathroom

Bathroom 2

Bathroom 2

Basement

You can see that even though the house was completed in 2009, there is still some work that needs to be done. We plan on painting the whole interior, doing some new hardwoods, installing a new kitchen countertop and backsplash, upgrading both bathrooms, and possibly adding central A/C.

This should be a quick/easy job and we may even already have a buyer lined up for it!!

Filed Under: 9 Juliette St Chicopee MA, Deal Updates Tagged With: , , , ,

Real Estate Bootcamps and Business Updates

June 28, 2010 by 5 Comments

 

Wow, I haven’t posted in quite awhile…. I apologize as I’ve been in Seminar Land. 

I spent the last 5 days attending Than Merrills Marketing and Wholesaling bootcamp in Boston. I learned a ton of new info and met some great people. This is the fourth time I’ve attended this bootcamp and I always pick up new things each time. It seems like every year I go back our business is at a different point and I learn alot of new things that I hadn’t picked up on before.

I first took this bootcamp back in the summer of 2007 and really credit Than and his seminars in helping me put all the pieces together to get our business rocking and rolling!! I’m not sure when he’s going to be holding it again…. but if you’d like more info you can check it out HERE . 

Business Update

Even though we took some time off to attend the seminar we still managed to purchase 6 properties over the last two weeks! That’s pretty crazy!!!

We closed on three houses last week and three houses the week before. All six are rehabs so we now have our plate full with properties. I am way behind on the property updates. We’ve got quite a few houses now that I haven’t even posted on. I’m going to work to get some photos and videos together of all these projects.

While at the seminar I had some time to sit back and look at what we’ve accomplished in 2010. So far this year we have purchased 15 properties, we’ve sold 5, and have another 5 under agreement to sell in the coming weeks. Those are some pretty sweet numbers, and puts us ahead of our target of doing 2 houses per month. I think it’s time to up the goal to 3 houses per month!!

I hope all of you are reaching your goals for 2010. If your not email us with your challenges (info@hampdenhomebuyers.com), or post them in the comment section and we’ll try to help!!!

Filed Under: Deal Updates, Than Merrill Bootcamp Tagged With: , , , , ,

Buying and Selling – House Flip Updates

May 25, 2010 by 5 Comments

Well it has been a very eventful couple of weeks. Ever since the end of April we have been cranking full speed ahead.

The expiration of the first time buyers tax credit kept us very busy in April. We put 6 of our finished rehabs on the market and 5 went under contract to sell by April 30th.  Those properties are 53 Fullerton St, 143 Lloyd Ave, 209 Gifford St, 42 Wexford St, and 8 Bosworth St.

Gifford St and Lloyd Ave are suppose to close this week, and the other three will close over the next couple weeks.

Although the first time buyer credit is now gone, and everyone thinks the market is gonna crash, we have still been quite active on the buying front. We just bought two properties today; an estate property and a bank REO…. and we should be buying three more by the weeks end. We’ll see how this strategy plays out over the next couple months…. things are definitely a bit slower now but I’ve found there are still a good amount of buyers out looking.

The three purchases coming up at the end of the week are pretty interesting.

One is a short sale that has given us all sorts of trouble. The bank gave us a verbal approval at a very good price. A day before the bank was to issue the approval letter we find out the sellers ex-husband filed for bankruptcy, whom I thought was no longer on the loan anymore, but obviously he still was. 

We got everything squared away with the bankruptcy court and are ready to close…. when all the sudden we find out there is also a second mortgage on the property and two judgement liens, which we had no clue about.

OK, so we gotta put the first on ice while we try to take care of these new liens. The second is with TD Banknorth and these fools decide they are not going to take anything less than a full payoff. I’m not sure what their thought process is here… the first is taking a $50,000+ haircut, we sent them the appraisal showing the house is worth nowhere near the debt owed, and they still won’t budge. I guess they don’t realize if it goes to foreclosure they will get wiped out and receive nothing!!!!

So we may have to bite the bullet and pay the second in full, which I don’t want to do, but there is enough room in this deal that we can do that and still make it work.

I guess the moral of the story is to do a good title rundown prior to doing your short sales.  

Well that’s it for tonight. We’ll be getting some more pictures and videos together as these deals unfold.

Filed Under: Deal Updates, Short Sales Tagged With: , , , , , , ,