Flipping Houses and the Value of Education

When it comes to Flipping Houses one of the best investments that you can make is in your own education. Whether you are an experienced pro or brand new to the business, your ROI on dollars spent for good, solid education is always high.

One thing I’ve learned from meeting many of the top people in our industry is that they all have spent tens of thousands, and in many cases hundreds of thousands of dollars on education and training. This education comes in many forms, from books and CD’s, to seminars, bootcamps and coaching programs.

If you are an experienced investor this education can help sharpen your skills and help you take your business to the next level. If you are brand new, investing in your education can help you greatly shorten your learning curve and help you avoid many costly mistakes.

When I first became interested in Real Estate Investing I attended a couple multi-day real estate investing conferences. These events brought together many different speakers that spoke about a variety of different real estate investment strategies. On top of the great speakers, I had the opportunity to network with 100’s of like minded investors of all skill levels from all over the country that were also attending the conference. I often credit my experiences at these conferences as giving me the knowledge and beliefs needed to succeed at flipping houses.

One such event is coming up that I think you all should check out. You are probably familiar with the website Biggerpockets.com. Josh Dorkin, the owner of Biggerpockets, featured our Blog FlippingSmart.com, as one of the Top 20 Real Estate Investing Blogs on the web….. so he definitely knows what he is talking about!! 🙂

Well, Biggerpockets is holding it’s inaugural live conference and trade show; The Biggerpockets Real Estate Investing Summit, happening March 23-24 2012 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. The conference is going to be chock full of knowlegdable speakers who are actively buying and selling properties every day of the week. Along with the  great speakers there will be endless networking opportunities with the other attendees. Many times the networking is the best part of these events.

Here’s what Josh had to say about the event:

This is going to be a ground-breaking event for the real estate industry — a conference designed for a national crowd of investors with no upsell, no back of the room nonsense, no “guru” BS!

As most of you probably know already, one of the reasons I founded BiggerPockets is that I wanted a place where I could discuss real estate without worrying that some self-anointed “guru” was going to constantly sell me their “secrets.” We’ve built an incredible community that is unmatched in the space, and which is run under the same founding principles today. This Summit is designed to do for live real estate investing events what our site did for the online space.

 

The conference is going to cover many different topics, including “Rehabbing and Flipping Homes”, “Using Hard Money”, “Investing While Working Full Time”, ” Raising Private Capitol for your Investments Legally” and “Building Your Business through Social Media” to name a few.

So… make sure you check out the summit. Josh is offering an early bird discount through Feb. 24.

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

New Fire Damaged House Flip

We are working on a new fire damaged property.

This is a 3 bedroom 1 and a half bath colonial located in Springfield.

The fire started in the first floor stairway and traveled up to the second floor. The majority of the damage was done by the smoke, the actual fire damage is pretty limited. The good thing is the fire didn’t spread up through the roof or burn through the exterior of the home.

 

Here are some pictures of the house:

Springfield MA Fixer Upper

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Dining Room

Living Room with Melted TV

Front Hallway

Living Room

 

We are taking this house with all the contents so the next step is going to be the clean out.

Once we get it cleared of all the junk we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do with it.  We’ve got quite a few rehabs going on right now and some new purchases lined up so this may turn into a wholesale deal.

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

 

 

Renovated Springfield Home – Eton St

Here’s a look at our completed renovation project on Eton St in Springfield.

We did a lot of work to this property including a new roof, new siding, new windows, new kitchen, three new bathrooms, new driveway, updated electric and plumbing, refinished hardwoods and fresh paint.

We also made some floor plan changes which included opening up the kitchen to the dining room, expanding the master bedroom, adding a half bath to the master and rearranging the bedroom closets.

Here is a look at the completed home:  (you can see the before pictures and video HERE)

Eton St Springfield MA

Springfield MA renovated Home

Eton St

Foyer

Foyer

Living Room

Living Room

Living Room

Dining Room

Dining Room looking into Kitchen

Kitchen Looking from Dining Room

Kitchen

Kitchen Looking into Dining Room

Stainless Steel Appliances

Kitchen

Kitchen with Gorgeous Hardwoods

Bedroom

Bedroom 2

Full Bath

Tiled Tub Surround with Body Jets Shower Panel

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

Finished Basement

Finished Basement

 

We’ve got beautiful dark stained hardwoods throughout this home, even in the kitchen.

This great home is 2,042 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath, 2 half baths including a master bath, a large finished area in the basement and a 1 car garage.

Well that’s it for now, I want to wish everyone a happy New Year and a great 2012!

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

 

 

Tornado House Update – Springfield House Flip

We’ve been banging away at the new tornado damaged house in Springfield.

Our guys were there all last week getting the demo done and prepping for the new roof to go on. We’ve got to completely rebuild the roof and we will be adding some new soffits and overhangs to the roofline.

Inside all the damaged sheetrock has been removed and we also pulled up all the damaged hardwoods.

We’ll be rearranging the floorplan a bit by removing the wall between the living room and kitchen/dining room area. We are also going to alter the current kitchen layout to make some more space and make the flow more functional.

Here’s some pics of the demo work:

 

Exterior

Living Room

Wall to be Removed Between Living Room and Kitchen

Master Bedroom Gutted

 

Dining Area

Living Room II

Kitchen

 

As we started taking up the hardwoods we found a lot of the subfloor underneath was bad, so we are going to be  replacing some large sections of subfloor also.

Well that’s all the updates for now. I’ll post some new pics as we get more exterior work done.

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy House Flipping

Just wanted to wish all our blog readers, subscribers and followers a very merry Christmas.

Here’s my dog Teddy doing his best Santa impersonation:

Santa Claws

 

Best wishes to all and lets have an awesome 2012!!

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

House Flip Story – New Springfield Tornado Damaged House

We’ve bought another Tornado damaged house in Springfield. This one is a nice little ranch that took a beating from the tornadoes heavy winds.

The storm ripped the front of the roof clean off and knocked out some windows as well as ripping off some siding.

The roof was tarped but it was still leaking pretty bad so there is a good amount of water damage to the living room and two bedrooms.

We plan to gut out the kitchen and all the water damaged sheetrock and floors. On the exterior we’ll reframe and resupport all the walls and the new roof, install new windows, and do new siding.

The sellers of this house actually found us right here on our blog. They did a google search for “selling springfield tornado house” and my previous post about our other tornado house came up. Pretty Cool!

 

Here’s a look at the house:

Springfield Tornado house

Tornado Damaged House

 

Rear of House

Living Room

Living Room

Bedroom 1

 

Bedroom 2

Master Bedroom

Kitchen

Breezeway

Full Bath

 

And here’s a look at our neighbors house.

 

Neighbors House

Not much left but a fireplace and chimney!!!

 

We’ve started the demo on this one and the new roof should be going on.

 

We are working on lots of other projects as well. It’s full speed ahead, buying and selling like crazy!!!

 

P.S.  Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

[subscribe2]

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

 

 

Whats the Best Day to Sell Your House??

Sell My House Springfield MA

I came across this interesting article on www.Redfin.com.

 

If you’re like us and you put a lot of properties on the market, you have probably given this some thought. What is the best day to list your home???

 

Dominic and I are always going back and forth on this. We usually try to put our properties on the market as new on either a Wednesday or Thursday….. this way all the buyers will get it in their email updates and will be able to look at the house over the weekend. We were pretty close but according to this Redfin study it looks like Friday is the best day to list your house.

 

Check out the article below:

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

What day of the week should I list my home?

With home sales in the gutter, anyone thinking of selling a home today can use all the help they can get, starting with what day of the week to debut.

Serious sellers know that it is important to make repairs, stage well, and showcase their home online with professional photos, but there isn’t a consensus about which day of the week you should list your home for the best results. This is evidenced by the fact that new listings on the market are spread pretty evenly between Monday and Friday, with each day getting between seventeen and nineteen percent of the total share of listings (Saturday and Sunday are much lower at five to seven percent).

Since you only get one chance to make a first impression with your listing, we decided to dig into our data to find out whether putting your home on the market on a certain day of the week is correlated with sales success. We pulled the data on over a million listings spread throughout the nation over the last twenty-one months, and here’s what we found:

  • Homes listed on Sunday get marginally more online views.
  • Homes listed on Friday are toured 19% more.
  • Homes listed on Friday or Thursday sell for slightly closer to original list price.
  • Homes listed on Friday are 12% more likely to sell in 90 days.
For the best chance of selling your home, list it on a Friday.

The difference in views and sale-to-list ratios were not very dramatic across the week, but in the tours and sales categories, Friday was the clear winner. For the most tours and the best chance of selling your home, list it on a Friday. If you are the kind of seller that is more interested in online views than actually selling your home for a good price, listing on Sunday is a great plan. But since we’re pretty sure that kind of seller doesn’t exist, we’re confident in recommending Friday as the seller’s best day to list their home.

So why would Friday be such a great day to put your home on the market? Our theory is that since home buyers tend to tour homes on the weekends (Saturday and Sunday have 2.5x as many tours per day than Monday to Friday), homes listed on Fridays are the freshest in buyers’ minds when they’re making their weekend plans. It also seems likely that many home buyers sort their weekend “must see” lists by date listed, going to see the freshest homes first so they have the best chance of getting in on a potential good deal before other buyers. These factors put homes listed on Friday in front of more touring buyers on the weekend (which our touring data bears out). More tours leads to more offers, and more offers leads to a better price and a better chance of selling.

That’s our theory, now let’s hear yours! Also, for your viewing enjoyment, we have compiled our findings into the convenient chart form below. Note that while the sales data is based on all listings, the data on views is based only on views at Redfin.com, and the touring data is based only on homes that our agents took our customers out to see.

What day of the week should I list my home?

 

 

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

 

Whether you are an agent or an investor, this is some pretty helpful information.

 

P.S. Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!

House Flip Story – 32 Garcia St Before Video

And now, for your enjoyment……… Here is the before video that we did of our 32 Garcia St project.

We had a lot of fun with this one, and the transformation was pretty amazing!!!

 

You can see pictures of the finished home HERE.  All the before pictures are available HERE.

 

P.S. Remember, if you like our blog posts you can subscribe using the form right below:

or you can subscribe in the upper right hand corner under the heading “Subscribe to this Blog” , that way you get an email whenever we make a new exciting, awesome, informative and inspirational post!!!!