Flip this house Archives - Page 3 of 10

Bruce St Renovation, Final Staged Pictures

November 15, 2011 by Matt 7 Comments

Well, I have been slacking a little bit with the blog posts lately and I realized I never put up any pictures of our Bruce St rehab finished.

This was a major project that involved tearing off and raising the whole roof, redoing the foundation wall and gutting and renovating the interior.

We did new siding, new windows, new plumbing, new electric, new heating system, new central A/C, new kitchen, new baths, reworked the floorplan, etc………

You can see all the before pictures and videos here: http://flippingsmart.com/category/38-bruce-st-springfield-ma/

Here are the final staged pics:

Bruce St

Bruce St Kitchen with Granite and Stainless Steel Appliances

More Kitchen

Living Room

Dining Area

First Floor Bathroom

Second Floor Bath with Granite

Master Bedroom

Living Room again

Dining Area

Dang, this one looks good…. another stellar rehab in the books.

We are trucking along, buying and selling…. sprinkling in some wholesales here and there. Right now we have 4 new properties under contract to purchase, all of which look to be good rehab projects. I’ll get some updates of these going as we close on them and start the work.

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Filed Under: 38 Bruce St Springfield MA Tagged With: Buy home springfield ma, Buy House Springfield MA, Finished Rehab, Flip this house

Buying Houses, Selling Houses, and Quick Flips

August 16, 2011 by Matt 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: Flip this house, Flipping Houses, wholesale flip

Agawam Rehab Update and Motivational Arnold Video

July 19, 2011 by Matt Leave a Comment

So I guess I was a little overly optimistic thinking we were going to get 83 Cleveland St in Agawam on the market last week. It took our hardwood guy a little longer to finish up the floors…. but they came out looking great so it was worth the wait.

This home also has a pool that we were able to keep, our first one after filling in 4 last year. The pool company has been at the house getting the pool opened. We ended up having to drain it and refill it because the pool cover came off over the winter/spring and the water got too nasty to just dump some chemicals in there and clean it out.

Here are some pics of it almost done:

Kitchen

Hardwoods being Sanded Down

First Floor Half Bath/Laundry Room

Front Entrance Hallway

Master Bedroom with Sanded Wide Pine Hardwoods

Full Bath

And here is a shot of the living area with the hardwoods all refinished

Refinished Hardwood Floors

That looks nice!

This great home is now done. It will be cleaned tomorrow and staged over the next two days…… then it will go on the market!!

Now time for a little motivational video I recently came across.

This is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Six Rules for success from the USC graduation a few years back . Watch and be inspired. Oh yeah, they’re pretty funny too:

We all know Arnold is in a little trouble now due to his extra marital affairs….. but you gotta give him credit for what he has accomplished since coming to America with nothing.

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Filed Under: Cleveland St Agawam, Uncategorized Tagged With: 83 Cleveland St Agawam MA, Flip this house, Flipping Houses, House Flipping Blog

Going to Foreclosure Auctions? Watch out for Collusion!!

July 14, 2011 by Matt 1 Comment

Foreclosure Auction

We’re not too big into foreclosure auctions but I know the banks are really starting to wake up and let things go at nice discounts at many of these auctions…. so it is becoming a really viable strategy for finding deals.

Here’s an interesting article I came across about foreclosure auctions.

It seems some of our fellow real estate investors were secretly banding together at California auctions to keep the bids low. I wonder how many of these little “clicks” there are throughout the country??

Investors Plead Guilty to Bid-Rigging at California Foreclosure Auctions

By: Carrie Bay

Eight California real estate investors have agreed to plead guilty for conspiring to rig bids at public foreclosure auctions in Northern California.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the investors face felony charges for conspiring to fix bids by agreeing to refrain from bidding against one another.

The bid-rigging occurred between May 2008 and January 2011 at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Contra Costa County and Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay area.

The Justice Department says the primary purpose of the scheme was to suppress and restrain competition to obtain selected foreclosed real estate at noncompetitive prices.

When real estate properties are sold at these auctions, the proceeds are used to pay off the mortgage and other debt attached to the property, with remaining proceeds, if any, paid to the homeowner.

After the group’s designated bidder bought a property, the conspirators would hold a secret, private auction at which

each participant would bid the amount above the public auction price he was willing to pay, with the property going to the highest bidder.

DOJ officials say these private auctions took place at or near the courthouse steps where the public auctions were held.

According to court documents, the difference between the public auction price and that at the second auction was the group’s illicit profit, and it was divided among the conspirators, often in cash.

The eight conspirators were also charged with carrying out their conspiracy to defraud financial institutions by paying potential competitors not to bid in the public auctions for foreclosed properties, according to court filings.

“While the country faces unprecedented home foreclosure rates, the collusion taking place at these auctions is artificially driving down foreclosed home prices and is lining the pockets of the colluding real estate investors,” said Christine Varney, assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The Antitrust Division will vigorously pursue these kinds of collusive schemes that eliminate competition from the marketplace.”

Each violation for bid-rigging carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine for individuals. Each conspiracy count carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The DOJ’s Antitrust Division and the FBI say they have identified a pattern of collusive schemes among real estate investors aimed at eliminating competition at real estate foreclosure auctions.

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Who knew this kind of thing was illegal!!??? 🙂

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Filed Under: Foreclosures Tagged With: Buying a bank REO, Flip this house, Flipping REOs, Foreclosure Auction

Another House with Burst Pipes!! – Agawam Rehab

May 31, 2011 by Matt 6 Comments

Here’s another house that we picked up from the bank with some burst pipes, just like our 84 Rhinebeck Ave house.

It seems like every spring we score a couple of these rehabs.

You all know the story… owner moves out in Fall/Early winter…. bank doesn’t get in there to winterize the pipes…. come springtime once things thaw out a little you have water running down the ceilings and walls. If the house sits for a little while you start to get mold everywhere.

Fortunately we got to this house before the water damage was too bad and any mold could set in.

Our Agawam house is a two story colonial and all the damage happened to the first floor.

We are gonna be replacing all the water damaged walls and ceilings on the first floor. Redoing all the hardwood flooring that was damaged. We will be adding a new kitchen, redoing the half bath and a whole bunch of other nice upgrades and improvements.

The exterior of this house is in great condition, the roof is newer, the windows are new, and the siding is new…. so we barely have any work to do outside.

Here are some pics of this beauty:

Agawam MA rehab

Rear View

Pool

We got another pool with this house. We’ve filled in a number of these over the years because they were too far gone to salvage…. however this one was just installed in 2008 and seems to be in real good shape…. so I think we are finally gonna be able to save a pool here.

Kitchen

Living Room/Dining Room

Dining Room

First Floor Half Bath

Master Bedroom

Full Bath

Bedroom

Another Look at some of that Damage

The bank was really motivated to move this quickly before any further damage was done by the water and before some serious mold set in. We used this to our advantage, offering a very fast closing timeline, and this helped us to get the deal done.

For those of you who live down south where it is always warm, I feel bad that you will never be able to experience the joys of frozen pipes…. and the rush that comes with making a deal on these types of homes!!! 🙂

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Filed Under: Cleveland St Agawam Tagged With: Flip this house, Flipping Houses, Hampden Homebuyers, House for Sale Agawam MA, water damage house

84 Rhinebeck Ave Rehab Progress – House Flip Update

May 23, 2011 by Matt 2 Comments

Here’s a look at our 84 Rhinebeck Ave property in Springfield.

We gutted out all the damaged sheetrock and floors.

In these photos you can see all the beautiful new sheetrock taped and mudded.

84 Rhinebeck Ave Springfield House For Sale

Rhinebeck Living Room

We opened the wall between the living room and kitchen to give the space a nice open and airy feel. Look at how smooth that tape job is!!!

Kitchen Gutted Out

Heres a look at the kitchen all gutted out with the new sheetrock hung. You can see some of the rough electric and plumbing in. We also added some recessed lighting in both the kitchen and living room.

Bathroom

Here is one of the 2 full baths with all the colorful new sheetrock hung. You can also see the new vinyl replacement windows that we added throughout the house.

84 Rhinebeck Ave Home For Sale

Here is one of the upstairs bedrooms with all the walls painted. We will put down a new subfloor and then probably add some berber carpeting to the room.

This ones probably gonna be finished up within the next week.

We’ll have it staged and for sale soon. I’ll post the finished pics so you can see the amazing transformation!!!!

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Filed Under: 84 Rhinebeck Ave Springfield MA Tagged With: 84 Rhinebeck Ave Springfield MA, Flip this house, Flipping Houses, Gut Rehab, Hampden Homebuyers, House for sale Springfield MA

New Springfield Rehab- Rhinebeck Ave House Flip

May 11, 2011 by Matt 3 Comments

We picked up another nice rehab property in Springfield.

It seems like every winter /spring we get 1-2 properties with frozen pipes and some pretty bad water damage. The good thing is these are pretty straightforward rehabs… just gut out the damaged ceilings, walls and floors, and fix the busted plumbing.

The nice thing about these types of properties is that the sellers are usually pretty motivated to get rid of them. Most sellers realize that if the house sits for too long with all that water in there then the mold is gonna start growing fast…. and as soon as that mold sets in the price goes way down!!

Rhinebeck Ave is a really nice 4 bedroom 2 full bath cape located in an awesome neighborhood in Springfield. This cape already has a 60% dormer, so we don’t even have to worry about doing a dormer addition.

The exterior is pretty good, all we really have to do is new windows, powerwash, and maybe add a new garage door.

Inside we need to gut out all the water damaged sheetrock and floors, add a new kitchen, do 2 new baths, new flooring, fix the busted pipes, new sheetrock, open up the floorplan and add some new lighting.

Heres a look at the house:

84 Rhinebeck Ave

Rhinebeck Kitchen

Livng Room

Dining Area

First Floor Bath

Bedroom

Second Floor Bedroom

Second Floor Bathroom

The owner had been renting the house out for years and you can see that it was pretty dated and needed some rehab even without the burst pipes.

Ours guys have been working over there for a couple weeks and it’s almost finished. I’ll post some more pics of the progress of the job as we move forward.

Filed Under: 84 Rhinebeck Ave Springfield MA Tagged With: Flip this house, Flipping Houses, Hampden Homebuyers, House Flip Blog, Real Estate Investing

New Longmeadow Rehab – Shady Side

May 6, 2011 by Matt 6 Comments

Well, we have another rehab in the beautiful town of Longmeadow underway.

This property is a huge executive ranch set in one of the premier neighborhoods of Longmeadow. The home is 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, has a huge master suite with master bath, and is nearly 2,600 square feet with a two car garage.

The house was in the same family since it was built and needs tons of updating. We are doing a new kitchen, new baths, new flooring, new paint, new lighting, new roof, new windows, lots of landscaping, new garage doors, new driveway etc…….

Overall its a pretty straight forward rehab, but the sheer size of the house and volume of work will be the main challenge with this project.

We made this deal during the heart of the winter when their was 18 some odd feet of snow on the ground… which made assessing the grounds and exterior of the house a bit more challenging. Once all the snow melted up we realized their was quite a bit more yard clean up and exterior work needed then we thought. Oh well…. that’s what you get for buying houses in the winter in New England!

Here are some before pics of 130 Shady Side Dr. (Look at all that snow)