Crazy Times in Real Estate + We’re on the News!!

April 29, 2010 by 8 Comments

So it’s been a very hectic 7-10 days. With the expiration of the first time buyer tax credit looming on the horizon, buyers have been out in droves trying to snatch up a home. We put quite a few finished properties on the market in anticipation of this rush and there’s been no shortage of action. Dominic’s phone has been ringing off the hook with agents wanting to set up showings, buyers wanting to see houses, and offers coming in. Heck, it looks like we may even be selling an REO we just bought last week, that isn’t even halfway done, to a first time buyer determined to buy one of our finished homes…….

Which brings me to an interesting phenomenon that we have noticed lately. Several buyers have come to us and said they want to buy one of our finished homes, and no one else’s. Typically they will look at one of our properties or see some pictures online, they will instantly fall in love with the finish work and they will have an epiphany… they say to themselves “These guys houses are head and shoulders above the rest of the rehabbed junk that’s on the market…. and I only want to buy from them.” At least that’s what I think they say 🙂

In other news, we bought another house today. A short sale in Chicopee MA that is going to be a pretty sweet deal. It wasn’t with Bank of America so it didn’t take over a year to get done. It actually was pretty quick, maybe about four months, which is good for a short sale. I’ll post more details about this property in a separate post.

Now on to the most exciting news of the day. We’re going to be on the News!!! We met with the very talented Jennifer Thome today of CBS 3 Springfield, she is doing a story on Hampden Homebuyers and the renovation we are doing of the Historic Home on Bowdoin St. We spent several hours at Bowdoin St today with Jen, doing interviews and walking through the property. She even interviewed our contractor Jason, here are the pictures;

Smile for the Camera!!!!

Jason's a natural with the Microphone

Notice how he’s sitting down during the interview, what’s up with that?? I think he’s getting a little lazy on us 🙂

So anyway, the story is suppose to air next Thursday on the 6 PM and 11 PM news here in Springfield on CBS. I don’t know how long it will be, maybe only 30 seconds.. maybe a couple minutes…. but it is good publicity for the house and our company. Plus we can use it as a credibility builder going forward, when we meet with sellers, lenders, other media outlets, etc…… I don’t usually watch the news because it’s usually filled with negative stories and doom and gloom, but I’ll have to make an exception here.

Well that’s it for tonight, we’ve got a lot of new properties I need to write about, but that will have to wait for another day.

Filed Under: 151 Bowdoin St Springfield MA, Short Sales Tagged With: , , , , , ,

REO Rehab Complete – 53 Fullerton St Finished and Staged

April 25, 2010 by 11 Comments

We are working overtime trying to finish up a couple properties in order to beat the first time buyer tax credit deadline. I’m hoping their are lots of last minute shoppers out there who will be out looking for a new home over the next 7 days.

First up on the list is 53 Fullerton St. This was our first ever MLS/REO purchase. It seems hard to believe that over the last couple years, with all the deals we have done, we had never bought off the MLS. I was trained as an investor to market for deals and work directly with sellers…. this is our preferred method of doing deals as there is usually no competition and better deals can be made. However, with the flood of foreclosures, I couldn’t ignore the REO’s anymore. You have to be aggressive, and quick with your offers when working REO’s. It’s true that the well priced ones will go very fast, usually with multiple offers. So there’s always competition, which will limit your profit potential, but good deals can be had. As a matter of fact, we bought two REO’s last week and got an offer accepted on a third!

OK, back to Fullerton St. We did new siding, new windows, a new kitchen, 2 new full baths, new electric, new plumbing, a new boiler and a new driveway. This house had a very funky second floor bathroom. It was one of those ones where the tub was built right into the slope of the roof line. In order to take a shower you either had to be a midget, or kneel in the tub because there was absolutely no head room due to the slope of the roof. We corrected this by extending the bathroom out into the main hallway. We pushed the main hallway over, taking some space from a bedroom and a small closet. This allowed us to move the tub out of the roof line and gave us a functional shower and tub.  

Onto the pictures; (you can see the before pictures HERE)

House for sale Fullerton St Springfield MA

53 Fullerton St Springfield MA

Home for sale springfield MA

Fullerton St Springfield MA

Staged Kitchen

Fullerton Kitchen, Stainless Appliances

Cabinets and breakfast bar top facing Dining Room

House for sale 53 Fullerton St

Fancy Built In Fridge, Tile Countertop

Dining Room with Breakfast Bar to Kitchen

Dining Room

Living Room with nice shiny Hardwood Floors

Living Room looking at Staircase

First Floor Bathroom Tub and Shower panel staged

First Floor Bathroom Vanity

53 Fullerton St Bedroom

New Second Floor Tub that we Moved out of the Roof Line

Flipped house bathroom

Second Floor Bathroom

New Boiler

 

Damn…. this place shines!!!! It has 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths and 1500 square feet. I really like the floorplan of this house as it has a great flow to it. We enhanced this by removing the wall between the kitchen and dining room, creating that great open feel and adding the breakfast bar.

We’ve got two more going on the market so I’ll post some updates and photos of those soon.

Filed Under: 53 Fullerton St Springfield Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Flip This Ranch- New Property Update- 1892 Parker St

April 20, 2010 by 8 Comments

This is a new update on a property we started rehabbing back in January. I guess I’ve fallen a little behind with some of these houses.

1890 Parker St is a huge “sprawling ranch”. I like to call it an executive ranch, but some people don’t agree with me on that. We got this deal off one of our banners that we hang from our various rehabs.

This house was very dated and had a couple roof leaks, but overall was in fairly good condition compared to the properties we usually buy. The renovation plan is to really open up the floorplan by removing walls between the kitchen, dining room and living room. We will also do a new roof, some new siding, and all new windows throughout. The electrical turned into a bit of a problem. Alot of the wiring was done very half assed, and looked like the job of a “handy Home-owner”. There were buried junction boxes all over and exposed wires everywhere. So we are basically going to have to rewire the whole house, which we did not budget for. Other than that we will do a totally updated kitchen, two and a half new baths, fresh paint, some new sheetrock, new lighting and new flooring.

Here are some of the before pictures:

1890 Parker St

1890 Parker St Springfield MA

House for Sale Parker St

Parker St Springfield MA

We Buy Houses Springfield MA

Parker St Springfield with We Buy Houses Sign

Parker St House For Sale Springfield MA

Living Room with Walls marked to be Removed

Master Bedroom

Kitchen

Kitchen 2

Full Bath 1

Master Bath

Back Bedroom with Roof Leak

Finished Basement

This ranch is just under 2,000 square feet and it has 4-5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, 2 fireplaces and a finished basement.

So far it is coming along real nice. It should be finished within the next week or two, so I will post some updated photos and videos for you in the near future.

Filed Under: 1892 Parker St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

House Flipping Update – 209 Gifford St Springfield

April 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Work is now complete at 209 Gifford St and it will be going on the market.

This project went pretty smooth without any major problems. Our biggest challenge came in dealing with the water department over the main water line. See, the main water line was damaged inside the house during our initial demo and the city had to turn the water off at the street. Our plumber repaired the line but the water department said they wouldn’t turn our water back on because they didn’t allow soldered repairs to the main line, and they wanted us to pay to run a whole new line from the street. After much arguing they agreed to come out to the house and do a pressure test. The test failed, but it wasn’t because of our soldered repair, turns out the line was also broken somewhere underground between the street and the house. So the water department had to dig up the street and our yard to run a new line into the house, and we ended up having to pay for a new line anyways.

So, this house now even has a brand new main water line all the way to the street to go along with everything else that is brand new!!!

I still need some pictures with the house staged, and I do have a video, but here are my most recent photos for you to view:  (You can see the before photos HERE. )

209 Gifford St Springfield MA

209 Gifford St Springfield House for Sale

View of Kitchen

Kitchen with tile Backsplash

Kitchen looking into Dining Area

Stainless Steel Appliances, 18x18 tile floors

New staircase heading to Second Floor

Dining Area with shiny Hardwood Floors

First Floor Bathroom w/Tile Floor

Fireplace with new mantle and tile

Second Floor Bath w/ Double sink vanity

Body Jet shower panel with Tile surround and Glass Tile border

Master Bedroom

Bedroom with Skylight and Closet

New High Efficiency Boiler and Water Tank

This one was another full gut rehab for us. We ripped off the whole roof and second story, then we rebuilt the whole thing and added a full dormer off the back. The house came out awesome and we should get a quick sale.

Filed Under: 209 Gifford St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Flip This House Update-Historic Home Rehab

April 16, 2010 by 4 Comments

Dominic met with the historic society last night and we got all our final approvals to go ahead with our renovation of the historic house on Bowdoin St.

Heres a video of the way it looked just after we closed on it.

Filed Under: 151 Bowdoin St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

House Flip Update – 70 Glenwood St Sold

April 11, 2010 by 11 Comments

We put 70 Glenwood St on the market just over two weeks ago and it is already sold!!! We were able to get this done so quickly because we found that ever so elusive retail cash buyer. 

We met our buyer over at Glenwood St on Thurs. April 1st and she immediately fell on love with the house. She informed us that she had the cash available to purchase the house and she could close in a week. Well, that was music to our ears and we made it happen. After negotiating the price a little, title was ordered, inspections were done, and we officially closed one week later. Another bonus is she was not working with an agent so we saved a few bucks on that end as well.

Here are the final pictures of it finished and staged (you can see the before pictures HERE) … enjoy;

70 Glenwood St Springfield MA

Flip This House - 70 Glenwood St

Flip this House - 70 Glenwood St

Green Renovating - Bamboo Flooring

Porch Converted to Living Space. Archway

Stainless Appliances

Glenwood St Kitchen

Full Bath 1

Kitchen Looking from Dining Room

Full Bath 2

Bedroom with Shiny Hardwoods

Master Bedroom

Full Bath 2 with shower panel Body Jets

Beautiful Bright White Handrail and Railing

Well, I wish they could all be that easy. Two weeks exactly, from the day the property first hit the market, to the day we are at the closing table signing the deed over, that’s definitely a record that will be hard to beat!!

Filed Under: 70 Glenwood St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Dirty Pools, Short Sales, and New Website Updates

April 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The new site is still a work in progress. Its amazing how customized you can make these WordPress sites, with all the themes, plug-ins, widgets and who knows what else, it’s actually a little overwhelming. I should have the new site ready over the next few days.

On the house flipping front we are still cruising right along. We’ve got three new properties lined up that we should be closing on over the next 10 days…. and I just heard from my negotiator that we got another short sale deal approved today.

The three new purchases are all really good deals. Two of them are REO’s that we are buying through the same agent and one is a short sale that we have been negotiating for the last 10 months.

One of the bank owned houses has yet another pool. This is the fourth pool we’ve had to deal with in the last three months. We were thinking we may actually be able to save this one, but after draining it and having a pool company look at it closer, it turns out there are some problems that are going to make it too costly to fix. In determining if we are going to keep a pool we look at how much it’s gonna cost to fix it and get it up and running vs. how much it will cost to fill it in….. usually it’s just cheaper to fill them in…. and so that is what we do.  Of the four pools, one was an above ground that we knocked down, and three were inground that we filled in. Here in the Northeast pools add very little resale value, if any at all, so that is why we fill them in.

Heres a look at it before we drained it. This thing looked and smelled like a swamp. Notice the nice green color.

Green Pool

 

Dominic tried to throw a whole bunch of chlorine in their to clean it up, but I don’t think it worked.

I’ve got to share this video with you…. it’s the funniest thing ever. I was laughing so hard when I saw this on TV for the first time. This is Armando visiting our pool pictured above!!!!

LOL!!!!! Oh man I could watch that all day 🙂

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

42 Wexford St – Finished and Staged, plus changes coming to the Blog….

April 2, 2010 by 7 Comments

So it’s been just about a year since I set this blog up (April 6th was my first post) and I could never have imagined just how many deals we’d be doing, and how much this blog would grow. To be honest, I had no clue what I was doing when I set this up…. I just used your basic WordPress hosted site and started writing and posting pictures of our various deals. Well, here it is one year later, we’ve built a Flipping Machine, and now I’m looking to build a little nicer website, but there are some serious limitations to using a basic WordPress hosted site…. so the plan is to move the blog over to private hosting and set up a more customized site that offers a richer experience. Right now it’s all a work in progress, but I will let you know when it is complete. (I know your waiting on the edge of your seat!!!!)

OK, back to why you came here; Flipping Houses.

The spring market is here and there are alot of buyers out trying to beat the deadline for the tax credit. So far we’ve put 143 Lloyd Ave and 70 Glenwood St on the market, both are now under agreement with home inspections scheduled for this weekend.

Next up to hit the market is 42 Wexford St. I posted some pics of this house a few weeks back as we were winding down. Now I have all the final pictures of the home finished and staged (you can see the before pictures HERE). Have a look;

Exterior

42 Wexford St Springfield MA

House For Sale Wexford St Springfield

New Driveway and 2 Car Garage

On the exterior we added a new roof, installed new windows, painted all the trim, added new shutters, repointed the chimney, added a new driveway, and installed two new garage doors with automatic overhead openers. We also pulled out 7 overgrown shrubs that were blocking the front of the house. The roof on this house was very expensive and kind of caught us by surprise. It has a very steep pitch and because of all the various dormers there were a lot of cuts that needed to be made. Also the roof had two layers of shingles over the original cedar shakes, so all that had to be ripped off and we had to lay new plywood.  

 

Interior

Living Room looking at Staircase

Living Room Fireplace and Mantle

Den located off Living Room

Dining Room

Archway between Dining Room and Kitchen

Kitchen Pic 1

Kitchen Pic 2

Kitchen Pic 3

Archway Looking from Kitchen into Dining Room

Full Bath Pic 1

Full Bath Pic 2

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom Pic 2

On the interior we did a full gut of the kitchen, added the archway and breakfast bar between the kitchen and dining room, opened the wall between the kitchen and living room, redid both bathrooms, added tile to the kitchen and bathroom floors, refinished all the hardwoods, did some new sheetrock, painted everything, did some new electric including a new 200 amp panel, added all new plumbing, and installed a new boiler.

 

So thats it for Wexford… another successful project. It’s live on the MLS now and with the nice weather we are suppose to have this weekend hopefully we’ll have some traffic and a couple offers to follow!!!

To all my religious folks out there, have a good Good Friday…. and to the rest of you, have a good Friday 🙂

Filed Under: 42 Wexford St Springfield MA Tagged With: , , , , ,