Hampden Homebuyers - We Buy Houses Springfield MA Sell House Fast
Heres a quick video we did of our Granger St property during demo. You can see all the before pictures of the house HERE.
This property is moving right along. We have the new addition/breezeway conversion built, all the mechanicals are roughed in, the sheetrock is up and the walls have been painted.
We started work on an awesome new project located at 64 Fullerton St. This house sits right across the street from our rehab we completed and sold at 53 Fullerton St.
We purchased both properties as REO’s. The nice thing about both Fullerton properties is that they each came with additional building lots that we were able to subdivide off. 53 Fullerton had 1 extra lot on the right hand side of the house. 64 Fullerton has 2 additional building lots, one located on each side of the house. Our plan is to find a buyer or 3 and build some new houses on our lots.
From the outside Fullerton doesn’t look like a bad house. It has newer vinyl siding and a new roof…. but once you get inside it is a different story, the house is pretty nasty. Everything inside the house is old, dirty and looks like crap, so we are going to gut it out and make it look nice!
The plan is to do all new electric, new heating system, new driveway, new plumbing, add a half bath to the first floor, new kitchen, new full bath, and rearrange the floorplan both upstairs and downstairs. We will also be redoing the giant 2 car garage that sits detached from the house.
Here’s a look at our before pictures:
64 Fullerton St
Garage
Addition off Side of Garage
Kitchen pic 1
Kitchen Pic 2
Living Room
Living Room
Dining Room
Full Bath
Tub - 2nd Floor
Bedroom 1
Green Slime Bedroom
Living Room
Hallway/Stairwell
I realized this morning that I haven’t done any new updates on the rehab of our historic house since the news story aired on CBS 3.
Right now it has a new roof, we cleared the yard, filled in the pool, tore off the half-assed addition and cleaned everything up, all the new windows are in, the interior plumbing and electric is all roughed in, all the sheetrock is up and the guys are starting to paint the interior. Our contractor said that he picked up 90 gallons of paint at Sherwin Williams for the interior. Also the exterior is primed and we are starting the finish coats on that.
Here are some photos I have of the work in progress. You can see the before pictures HERE, the before video HERE and the CBS news story of the house HERE;
Filling in the Pool
View of Illegal Addition and Pool
Tearing off the Addition
Addition Gone, Pool Filled In
Side View all Cleaned Up
I don’t have any new pictures of the interior or of the exterior painted, so I will have to get some of those to show you what it is looking like now.
We should be finishing this one up soon. Once the sheetrock goes up and everything is painted it’s a race to the finish line!
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!!
We picked up a nice little ranch on Granger St in Springfield a few weeks back. It’s a small two bedroom home with a real tight and boxy floorplan that we are going to open right up. We are also going to add more living space by doing a small addition and converting the breezeway into a dining room, similiar to what we did at 143 Lloyd Ave.
This deal came about as a lead from our website, www.HampdenHomebuyers.com. The seller had met with a realtor that told him the house was worth $135,000 if it was fixed up, but in the realtors estimation the house needed $17,000 in work, so the seller should look to sell the property for $110,000. Well, Mr.Seller was motivated and he did not want to wait around to sell the house, so he got in touch with us and said he wanted $110,000 for the house but he was willing to be flexible. He told me what work was needed and I politely explained to him the realtor was dreaming thinking the house only needed $17,000 in work, but we’d come out to have a look at it.
We met the seller on a Friday; it was the day after our news story aired on CBS 3, and as luck would have it Mr. Seller saw us on TV the night before… instant credibility. It turns out his wife grew up in one of the historic homes located about 5 houses down from our Bowdoin St project and they really took an interest in the story. After touring his house and signing a few autographs for him and his wife (we are TV stars :)), we got into negotiations and agreed on a purchase price of $65,000.
We’ll be doing a new roof, some new siding, a new furnace, new plumbing, new water heater, new kitchen, new bathroom, finishing the basement, opening up the floorplan, and a breezeway conversion with a small bumpout addition.
Here are some pictures of the house:
Granger St Springfield MA
Granger St Springfield MA
Kitchen 1
Kitchen 2
Eat In Kitchen area
Bathroom
Living Room
Bedroom
Basement
So after seeing our news story, and realizing that we “buy homes on the cheap”, the seller was willing to come way down off his asking price. He actually said that seeing the story made him understand our business alot better and he realized that his asking price of $110,000 was unrealistic.
Time for an update of our rehab at 35 Dorothy Ave in Chicopee.
We purchased this property as a short sale. This was definitely one of our quicker short sale negotiations, and we hit very few snags during the closing process, which was great because that is usually not the case with short sales.
The rehab of the property also went very smooth. The major improvement we made was converting the home from a two bedroom to a three bedroom. We did this by converting the old dining room into the third bedroom. We created space for an eat in kitchen by eliminating some excess cabinets along the rear wall of the kitchen and by opening up the wall between the kitchen and living room to create a more open space.
We put the home on the market last weekend and accepted an offer within 1 day!!! This was a very encouraging sign to us becase even with the first time buyer tax credit gone we are still moving our finished rehabs quickly.
Here are the finished pictures: (you can see the before pictures HERE)
35 Dorothy Ave Chicopee MA
35 Dorothy Ave Chicopee
Rear view of house and Garage
New Kitchen
35 Dorothy Kitchen
35 Dorothy Kitchen, New Eat In area
This kitchen really came out awesome!! We added granite counter tops and a top of the line Samsung stainless steel appliance package. As usual we did 18×18 tiles on the kitchen floor, but this time we laid them in a staggered pattern. The staging adds the finishing touch to make this great kitchen shine.
Dorothy Ave living room
Dorothy Ave living room
We found some really nice hardwood floors under that nasty old shag carpet. A little sanding and some poly and these babies shine!!!
35 Dorothy Ave Bathroom
35 Dorothy Bathroom
Bathroom
The bathroom received a complete makeover. We added all new fixtures, tiled the floor and did our signature tiled tub surround with glass tile inlay. The staging brings some more color into the bathroom and gives it the finishing touches.
Bedroom
Bedroom 2
The bedrooms were pretty straight forward…. some paint, redo the hardwoods, add add some new doors.
Finished Basement
Finished Basement with Wood Stove
Basement
The finished basement came out really sweet and is a great selling feature. The nice thing about this house is it has two wood burning stoves, one in the basement and one in the living room. Those two stoves alone could probably heat the house throughout the winter.
So there it is….. 1 day on the market even with the tax credit being gone.
We are dealing with the whole 90 day seasoning mumbo jumbo, as the buyers lender doesn’t want to embrace FHA’s new policies doing away with the 90 day rule, but it’s not gonna affect our closing timeline too much.
Well thats it for tonight. I’ve got 7-8 more properties that we are working on that I haven’t even mentioned yet, so I’ve got some catching up to do!!!!!
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 .
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!!!
We’ve rehabbed alot of houses that have fire damage, because of this I get quite a few questions from our readers on renovating fire damaged homes.
These types of properties can seem very intimidating to the new and experienced investor alike. You have multiple issues with fire damaged homes; not only are you dealing with the burn damage, but there is also smoke and water damage that come into play when renovating these houses. Because of this trifecta of potential problems we usually just look at most fire damaged properties as full guts…. this way there is little question as to what we can save and what we need to replace….. we just replace it all!!!
Below are two recent questions I’ve recieved from visitors to the site along with my responses.
Matt,
I was curious if you could give some tips on rehabbing a fire damaged property. I am making an offer on one today and would like to hear from you about any ‘gotchas’ or unique requirements from buyers, lenders, fire departments, municipalities, etc.Thanks!
My response:
Hi,
Alot of it depends on the extent of the fire damage. Was it contained to one small room, or did the fire spread throughout the house?
We generally budget for a full gut rehab with all new mechanicals when doing a fire job. Once you have the house gutted out it becomes pretty easy.
Make sure you pay close attention to any burn damage to structural beams and joists. These usually will have to be sistered or replaced depending on the extent of the burn damage.
You can walk the building inspector through before you start the project and he will point out what he wants fixed and corrected.
Also be sure to work with a very good contractor that has experience with full gut rehabs and knows alot about framing and correcting any structural/support issues.
Good luck with your offer!!!
And now the second question:
Hey MattI live in Baltimore and am looking to do some similar things to what you and your partner are doing up in MAss. Can I get any tips on renovating a burned out place…Is there anything specific I need to do prior or during renovation? How do you deal with the smoke smell, do you guys like wash them down inside or once the drywall goes on it kind of encapsulates all that? Any kind of special testing group I need to bring on or anything?
Hope this helps – Matt
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