151 Bowdoin St Update – Historic House Rehab

September 22, 2010 by 8 Comments

151 Bowdoin Before

Our historic house on Bowdoin St is a few weeks out from completion.

The outside is mostly done and it looks really amazing!!! I’m liking the color combination that we chose. We went with a sage green for the main body, an off white creamy kinda color for the trim, and a burgundy for all the accents. Check it out; (you can see all the before pictures HERE)

151 Bowdoin St Springfield MA

151 Bowdoin Rear View

151 Bowdoin St Front

The lighting wasn’t the best when I took these pics, but it still looks good!!

Your going to have to wait for interior photos because I haven’t taken any of those yet.

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House Flip Update; Historic Home Rehab

July 26, 2010 by 6 Comments

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!

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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.

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Historic Home Rehab

March 26, 2010 by 22 Comments

We’ve officially closed on the historic home and our renovation plans have been approved by the historical society. Our first job is to smash up the concrete pool deck, fill the pool in, clear and level the overgrown yard, and tear off the illegal addition built on the rear of the house. 

I was a bit surprised to find that the interior of the house is no where near as bad as the exterior. Don’t get me wrong….. it definitely needs lots of work, and it smells terrible, but overall it isn’t as bad as we first thought.

We are doing a full renovation on over 3,000 sq. ft., so this job is going to take several months to complete. The budget is around $75k-$80k, but hopefully our contractor can find a way to save a few bucks here and there. 🙂

 Heres a bunch of before pictures for you to look at:

Bowdoin St Springfield MA

Pool

Pondwater in Pool

Illegal/Halfassed addition built on rear of House

Overgrown Yard

Overgrown Yard

Interior of illegal addition

Kitchen

Kitchen pic 2

Kitchen Pic 3

Dining Room

Living Room

Main Hallway/Staircase

Full Bath 1

Full Bath 2

Half Bath

Bedroom with Fireplace

Bedroom 2

Scarface Bedroom

The REO broker told us that they took 8 dumpsters worth of trash out of this house just from the inside, and then they hired a professional cleaning crew to come in and scrub everything down…. and it still looks real nasty, and smells even worse. If you add up the cash-for-keys the bank had to give to the owners to get them out ($2,000), the cost of the trash out and the cost of the cleaning crew, the bank probably spent more getting the house ready for sale than what we paid for it!!!! Not to mention the $176,000 they lost on the mortgage they gave in 2006.  Hmmmm I wonder why all these banks are going out of business??

I’ll post some more updates of this project as things progress, as well as a few videos that we’ve put together.

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Box Trucks and Paint Colors

March 13, 2010 by 10 Comments

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!!!

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