209 Gifford St, SOLD … House Flip Recap

We officially sold our rehab at 209 Gifford St on Friday. It turned out to be a very good deal for us.

We purchased this house right off the MLS. I used to be of the school of thought that there are no deals on the MLS… that if the house was a good deal the agent would buy it themselves, or they have pocket buyers that they send their good deals to. But that’s just not the case.

This property hit the market and we had our offer in within a day. There were multiple offers on the house and it went to highest and best. I think we were the second highest offer, but we were cash, the other higher offer was financed. If you remember what this house looked like you’ll know there was no bank that would touch this property. So we ended up not being the highest… but we were the best!!!!

This was a major rehab that consisted of gutting the whole interior, ripping off the second floor and rebuilding it with a full dormer.

Once the rehab was complete we sold the property to one of our own buyers, for full price, which saved us over $9,000 on commissions.

Below is the final video we did at the end of construction. You can see our before pictures HERE and our before video HERE.

Well, the house sure did come out gorgeous.

 

Buying and Selling – House Flip Updates

Well it has been a very eventful couple of weeks. Ever since the end of April we have been cranking full speed ahead.

The expiration of the first time buyers tax credit kept us very busy in April. We put 6 of our finished rehabs on the market and 5 went under contract to sell by April 30th.  Those properties are 53 Fullerton St, 143 Lloyd Ave, 209 Gifford St, 42 Wexford St, and 8 Bosworth St.

Gifford St and Lloyd Ave are suppose to close this week, and the other three will close over the next couple weeks.

Although the first time buyer credit is now gone, and everyone thinks the market is gonna crash, we have still been quite active on the buying front. We just bought two properties today; an estate property and a bank REO…. and we should be buying three more by the weeks end. We’ll see how this strategy plays out over the next couple months…. things are definitely a bit slower now but I’ve found there are still a good amount of buyers out looking.

The three purchases coming up at the end of the week are pretty interesting.

One is a short sale that has given us all sorts of trouble. The bank gave us a verbal approval at a very good price. A day before the bank was to issue the approval letter we find out the sellers ex-husband filed for bankruptcy, whom I thought was no longer on the loan anymore, but obviously he still was. 

We got everything squared away with the bankruptcy court and are ready to close…. when all the sudden we find out there is also a second mortgage on the property and two judgement liens, which we had no clue about.

OK, so we gotta put the first on ice while we try to take care of these new liens. The second is with TD Banknorth and these fools decide they are not going to take anything less than a full payoff. I’m not sure what their thought process is here… the first is taking a $50,000+ haircut, we sent them the appraisal showing the house is worth nowhere near the debt owed, and they still won’t budge. I guess they don’t realize if it goes to foreclosure they will get wiped out and receive nothing!!!!

So we may have to bite the bullet and pay the second in full, which I don’t want to do, but there is enough room in this deal that we can do that and still make it work.

I guess the moral of the story is to do a good title rundown prior to doing your short sales.  

Well that’s it for tonight. We’ll be getting some more pictures and videos together as these deals unfold.

1892 Parker St -Executive Ranch Rehab Complete- House For Sale

The renovations are now complete on 1892 Parker St, Springfield.

This is an executive ranch that has 5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and just under 2,000 sq. ft. of living space on the first floor. Add in the finished basement and this house is pushing 3,000 sq. ft. Another nice feature of this house is the large yard. There is about a half acre, which is very big for the city.

We did a full renovation on this house including a new roof, new windows, new electric, new kitchen with granite counters and top of the line stainless steel appliances, 3 new bathrooms, new flooring, new paint, and alot of other stuff…… 

It really came out top notch!!

Here are some photos I took; (you can see the before pictures HERE and the before video HERE)

House For Sale Parker St Springfield MA

1892 Parker St Springfield MA

House for sale Springfield MA

House for Sale Parker St Springfield MA

House for sale 1892 Parker St Springfield

Kitchen with Granite Counters, 18X18 Floor Tiles

Stainless Steel Applainces, Tile Backsplash

Kitchen Staged. Birch Wood Cabinets

GE Profile Series French Door Fridge

1892 Parker St For Sale

Front Entrance looking into Kitchen

Living Room with Fireplace

Dining Room open into Kitchen

Open Dining Room Living Room Area

Full Bath Staged

Tub with Tiled Surround

Home for sale Parker St springfield MA

Master Suite with new Berber Carpet

Master Bath with Tile Floor and new Fixtures

Master Bath Tub

Finished Basement with Half Bath and Bar

 

Wow!! Isn’t this sprawling, executive ranch a real beauty!! She’s gonna make some lucky family a real nice home.

1892 Parker St Video Preview

Heres a look at our ranch located at 1892 Parker St in Springfield. I showed you the before photos a few weeks back, now have a look at the before video.

 

This house is now complete and ready for the market. I will post some of the finished pictures in a couple days.

House Flipping News Story Update

Our story aired on Thursday night during both the 6PM and 11PM news and it really came out great. Jen Thome with CBS 3 did an awesome job of putting it all together and putting a good, positive, spin on the story. I wasn’t sure just how long it was going to be, but it turned out to be over two and a half minutes.

Heres the link to the story that aired: (just click on it to open)

Local Company Flips Historic Homes

And here it is on Yutube:

On top of our company being on TV, Jen invited us to the CBS 3 studio so we could check out the newsroom and help anchor the 11 PM news.

Here are the photos of Dominic and I in action

Hampden Homebuyers on the news

Matt and Dom covering the Days Top Stories

Dom covering Sports

Matt Giving a Weather Update

Matt, Jen and Dom discussing all the latest Trends in Flipping Houses

We’re officially Famous….. so if you want an autograph just leave a request in the comments section below!!! LOL

Hampden Homebuyers in the News

You’ve seen us on Youtube, now it’s time to catch us on the Primetime News…Our story will be airing tommorrow (Thursday) night on the 6 PM and 11 PM news on CBS 3 here in Springfield. Next stop is A&E’s Flip This House!!

I received an email from the news anchor Jen Thome that read….  “Just wanted to let you know our promotions director put together a promo for the story.  It’s running on CBS now until Thursday.  It will definitely run during the news but should run other times too.”

Heres a look at the promo that has been running on CBS:

Pretty Cool!!

New House Flip – REO Rehab, Bosworth St Springfield

We purchased a new rehab property located at 8 Bosworth St in Springfield MA. This house was an REO that we bid on in early March. We wanted to close in 2 weeks but the bank asked us to push the closing out to a month. This seems to be the norm right now, we always write our offers up for a quick closing and the banks always ask to put the closing out for a month or longer. I guess with the volume of REO’s all these lenders are trying to process they can’t close fast anymore.

This house is a newer colonial (built in 1985) that had some burst pipes which caused a bit of water damage. It also had a real nasty pool that we had to clean up and fill in. We’ll do a new roof, a new kitchen, two new full baths, gut out the water damaged sheetrock and flooring, and add all new plumbing. The second floor bedrooms all had electric heat, so we are going to run a new line off the boiler and add hot water baseboard heat to the second floor.

We closed on this house a little less than two weeks ago and we are making real good progress. All the rough plumbing and electric is done, the sheetrock is up and the guys have started painting.

The nice thing about this house is we already have it sold. A buyer that fell in love with our house on Fullerton St, but was outbid, really wanted to buy one of our houses…. they also wanted to get in contract before the expiration of the tax credit. So we showed them this property when it wasn’t even halfway done and they decided they would take it!

Here’s a look at some of the pictures from this project:

New REO rehab in Springfield MA

8 Bosworth St Springfield MA

Nasty Green Pool

Flip this house Kitchen

Kitchen

First Floor Bathroom

Living Room

Second Floor Bathroom

Bedroom

 

The first thing we did was drain and fill in the pool. I thought we may be able to save this one because the liner was still good and it was holding water…. but it had some problems with the pump and some of the pipes buried in the concrete were cracked…. so we just filled it in. The good thing is the pool took up the majority of the backyard, so now we have a really nice fenced in backyard.

Heres how it looks now:

Filled in Pool

Filled in Pool

 

We’ll be testing out FHA’s new guidelines of allowing flips within 90 days of ownership, so we’ll see how that goes.

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

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.