70 Glenwood; Where Have You Gone

If you’ve been following my blog for a little while you may have remembered the property at 70 Glenwood St. This is the property with some major fire damage where we completely knocked out the floor of the first level. If you missed that video you have to see it … click HERE to watch it!!

Well we hit some delays getting our heat on there because the gas company told us they cut the line at the street and they wouldn’t be able to fix it until spring time. Long story short, they finally sent someone to the house and realized the line wasn’t cut at the street and we did have gas to the house, however we lost a good amount of time because we couldn’t get heat to the house, which also meant no water.

So I have a video we put together awhile back, as well as some more recent photos of the property near completion. Heres the video:

And here are some pictures of the house nearly complete. This is the first property we started using those nice archways, we borrowed the idea from Tom Tarrant over at www.TomTarrant.com .

Check it out:

Living Room with Bamboo Flooring

Front Door Looking from Living Room

Kitchen Looking from Dining Room

Archway Between Dining Room and Kitchen

Kitchen

Full Bath

Master Bedroom

Finished Attic Space

New Main Support Beam

This house was a small two family home that we converted to a single family. It is now 4-5 bedrooms with 2 1/2 baths and maybe 1600-1700 square feet.

Next step is to stage it and get it SOLD!!

Deal Updates – 209 Gifford St, Springfield

Our sweet little cape on Gifford St is nearing completion. All the finish electrical work is done and the plumbers should be completing their finish work over the next week. We installed some new hard wood floors and added a nice deck to the back of the house.

We put a  FSBO sign out on all our properties as we are nearing completion and Dom has been receiving quite a few calls  from interested buyers. I also noticed quite a few google searches for 209 Gifford St finding their way to this blog. The property is in an awesome neighborhood and its a good sign that we are getting alot of interest already.

Heres a couple pics of some of the work;

209 Gifford St Springfield MA

 

New Front Entrance Just Added

 

New Deck just Built off Rear of House

 

Open Kitchen

New Hardwoods just Installed

Double Sink Vanity

Glass Tile Inlay

Stainless Steel Appliances, Birch Cabinets

This house has come a long way since we first purchased it.

Well thats all I’ve got for tonight. I’ll work on getting some updates done on a few of our other houses.

Time for some Deal Updates- 42 Wexford St

OK, so I’ve been kind of slow with the property updates lately. We’ve got a ton of houses finishing up and quite a few more in the pipeline to purchase, with all this activity my blogging efforts have suffered. As a matter of fact I’ve got houses that we’ve purchased and are now renovating that I haven’t even mentioned yet…. plus, I don’t know how many videos just sitting in my Flip Camera, waiting to be edited into some kick ass Youtube videos.  I think maybe it’s time to hire some VA’s from India to run the Blog 🙂   

First up on the docket is 42 Wexford St. This beauty is done and we are staging it right now. The renovation of this property included a new roof, new gutters, two new decks, two new garage doors with openers, new driveway, brand new kitchen, renovating the full bath and adding a half bath, new electrical service and some new wiring, new plumbing, new boiler, new stainless steel appliances, new flooring throughout and fresh paint….. is that all????

This puppy shines and whoever buys it is going to be very lucky. Heres a look:

42 Wexford St, Springfield MA

Living Room

Fireplace

Open Staircase

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen Looking in from Dining Room

Dining Room

Full Bath

Master Bedroom

Finished Attic Space

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. I love the look of the Tudor style house!!! I think it’s those pointy roofs over the front entrance.

We’ll probably do some landscaping to the front of the property, clean it, stage it, then sell it.    

On to the next one……

Box Trucks and Paint Colors

Well it’s been another productive week in Springfield. We got two BPO’s done for short sales that we are working on, looked at a ton of houses, got an offer accepted on a nice REO deal, and yesterday we had lunch with a group of investors that came up to Springfield from southern CT for a little mastermind session. I know they read my blog so I want to thank you guys for lunch!! 

On the marketing front, we picked up a big box truck a few weeks back that we’ve been having our contractor use to cruise around town with. The truck serves two purposes; it’s great for our contractor to store all his tools and transport materials to all the various job sites, but more importantly we are using it for a bit of shameless advertising. Heres a look at it:

Sweet Box Truck

 

Now isn’t that a sweet ride!!!! It’s too bad our contractor is married with kids because I know he could be getting a lot of chicks driving around in a truck like that 🙂 

On the deal front we are going to be closing on the Giant Historic house next week as the title issues are finally cleared up. We spent today in Boston visiting a friend of mine who develops six unit condominium complexes. These are new construction buildings that he develops in existing neighborhoods. He builds them to look like older historic homes to match the surrounding properties. His buildings come out awesome and he uses some real nice exterior paint schemes. We visited a couple of his properties to get some good ideas for our exterior paint colors on the historic house. Heres a look at a few of his buildings:

House #1

This property has a darker sage green for the main body… almost an olive-green. The trim is a pale yellow and the accents are a burnt orange. I really like this particular look.

Historic Color Scheme 1

House #2

This house has a very deep red for the main body with a pale yellow trim and black accents. I think this may be a little too dark for what we are looking for.

House #3

This property has a lighter sage green for the main body with cream trim and a very rich/deep purple on the trim. I like this color scheme as well but I think I prefer the burnt orange over the deep purple.

Historic House Paint Color #3

House #4

This property has a lighter blue for the main body with pale yellow trim and burnt orange accent.

I’m leaning towards a sage green for the main body and I really like the contrasting look of the burnt orange accents. Tomorrow I’m going to go to Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore to look at their books and get some more ideas. We are suppose to be meeting with the local Historical Society on Monday so I’d like to have the exterior paint colors nailed down so I can show them what we are going to be using.

Let me know which of the houses you like or which colors you think look good. Leave a comment as any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!

Property Update: 143 Lloyd Ave, Finished and Staged

The finished houses are going to be coming fast and furious over the next few weeks. My plan of buying a bunch of properties in Oct.-Dec. to have ready for the Spring market and the expiration of the First Time Buyer tax credit is playing out perfectly.

I showed you our finished house on Ravenwood St a few days back. Now have a look at our property located at 143 Lloyd Ave in Springfield. We did a pretty extensive rehab on this property including new siding, a new roof, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, new boiler, all new plumbing, new flooring and fresh paint. We also took a 3 season enclosed breezeway located between the garage and kitchen and turned it into living space. This additional living area is a great feature as it adds space for a formal dining room or family room.

Here it is (you can see the before pictures HERE) :

143 Lloyd Ave

New Entrance from converted Breezeway into Kitchen

Kitchen - Stainless Applainces, Tile Backsplash

Kitchen- 18x18 Floor Tiles, All Wood Cabinets

Eat In Kitchen/ Dining Area

Living Room - Large Bay Window

Bathroom - Totally Updated

Bathroom - Tile Floors, Tile Tub Surround

New Shower Panel w/ 8 Body Jets

Converted Breezeway, now added Living Space

Bedroom

Wow, so thats it…. came out pretty darn nice!!!  You can see what it looked like before here: Lloyd Ave Before Pics.

We were suppose to be closing on the big ugly pink and purple house this week but there are a few title issues that need to be cleared up, so looks like we will be waiting a little longer on that one. Heres a picture of that house in case you don’t remember it:

Well, thats all I got for tonight. I looked at eight properties today; four that I want to buy, and four that we already own… and now I’m ready for bed.

Adios Amigos

Well that was Quick!! Ravenwood Finished

So I posted a semi-before video of the property at Ravenwood on Friday…. and now I’ve already got the after pictures for you to see. This renovation went real quick, and believe it or not it’s already sold and our new buyer has moved in.

We purchased this house as a short sale on January 21, 2010, had the renovation complete by February 12, and had our new buyer moving in on February 20th. That is lightning fast… but we did cheat a little bit. See ,we actually started working on the house about two weeks before we even owned it, a little risky, yes, but the rehab business is about taking risks. Also, we had been working with this buyer for a few months. She had wanted to buy our Plumtree Rd house and Lasalle St house but missed out on both those… so she was very determined not to miss this one. She saw Ravenwood before we were even done with the work and said she’d take it…. so it was an easy sale!!!

The house came out real nice… I’m not a huge fan of the color of the roof, but one half was brand new shingles (reddish brown color) and the other half of the roof needed to be replaced. So rather than tear off the brand new section we just matched what was there (the reddish brown shingle). My first choice is always a blackish grey shingle, this color looks awesome no matter what color the house is. The only time we really deviate from this is when we have to match an existing shingle… and honestly, I don’t know what some of these homeowners are thinking when they are choosing a roof color??? Shingle color is something I am very particular about, almost like a pet peeve, but I realize I am probably boring most of you so let’s get on with the pictures; (you can see the before pictures HERE)

Ravenwood St Springfield MA

Ravenwood St Front

So I just realized you can’t even really see the roof in these photos… just take my word for it.

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Kitchen 3

Kitchen -- Again....

I took alot of pictures of the kitchen, I think it came out nice!! Check out the appliances, top of the line GE Profile… yes that is a Double Oven!!  We went even more over the top on the Fridge….

GE Cafe Series French Door Fridge

If you look hard enough you can see the little GE symbol on the Fridge is Red… this is the Cafe series…. and supposedly it is a step up from the Profile Series… which means it’s a real bad-ass fridge, almost better than Electrolux!!! Plus it’s a French Door Fridge… so that makes it even more awesome.

Kitchen Looking in from Living Room

Living Room

Dining Area -- Nice 18x18 Tiles on the Floor

Living Room from Kitchen

Bathroom

Tiled Tub Surround with Glass Tile Border

Shower Panel w/ Glass Tile Inlay

 We did the bathroom a little different here… We used a glass tile inlay and I think it looks real Sweet. You will see this in all our houses moving forward. Also we added one of those curved Hotel Shower Bars… a nice little upgrade.

Bedroom

Finished Basement

So, that’s about it for Ravenwood… In and Out in the blink of an eye, a real text-book flip. On to the next one!!

Ravenwood St Update

Heres a look at the short sale property on Ravenwood St that we bought a few weeks back. This video was shot after the first couple of days of construction. You can see all the before pictures here.

Crazy Week + 37 Mansfield St Final Video

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;