Starting the Week off Right

This week started off just like last week….. with a closing on Monday and another on Tuesday.  We sold the Ware House on Monday and sold 39 Brooks St  on Tuesday.

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The Ware House – If you remember this beauty I was up in the air about rehabbing it or just wholesaling it. We closed on it, but because it’s located about 45 minutes outside our normal territory, we couldn’t get any of our contractors to travel out and do the work…. so I ended up putting it on the MLS and got a cash buyer who is going to fix it up and live in it. We only paid $15,000 for this gem so it was pretty easy to flip it out for a quick profit.

 

We are still waiting on the clear to close for Hartford Terrace, we should sell that at the end of this week. We also have two more purchases lined up for next week. These last few weeks have been really crazy as we have worked through all these closings….. by the end of next week we will have closed on seven properties in total, selling four of our properties and buying three new ones! I guess when it rains it pours!!!!!

Bessemer is sold… and a few firsts for Hampden Homebuyers

Monday was a day of firsts for our business…. We closed on our first ever deal bought from a wholesaler, the English Tudor on Wexford St I wrote about in my last post. We put this house under contract last week on Tuesday and closed yesterday (the following Monday).  Also it looks like we are going to be purchasing our first ever property off the MLS…. a bank REO that we have been offering on for the last three weeks, and finally got our offer accepted on Monday. While we have bought alot of properties over the last couple years, they have all been through dealing directly with the sellers. We’ve made quite a few offers on REO’s, and been pretty close on getting a couple accepted, but this one looks to be our first.  I’ll post some pictures and a writeup about the home over the next few days.

On another note, we had our second closing of the week today…. we sold the house on Bessemer St. This deal took about 5 months from our purchase to the sale to our new buyer. It is definitely our best project to date. The renovations went very smooth and stayed within budget. The house turned out incredible and we had multiple offers the first day on the market. We ended up selling it for above our asking price and most important of all, the profit on this deal was very good!!

Things are really cranking along right now…. over the next two weeks we will be selling three of our properties (Hartford Ter, Brooks St, and the Ware House) and we will be buying two more rehabs.

Stay tuned for more updates and videos!!!

Plumtree Rd Update ~ Interior Finished

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Our contractor got through Plumtree Rd pretty quick. Heres a look at the inside:

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Kitchen

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Kitchen

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Dining Room

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Living Room w/ Fireplace

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Living Room/ Staircase

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First Floor Bath

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Bedroom 1

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Bedroom 2

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2nd Floor Bath

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Entryway

 

We installed a corner shower unit in the second floor bath where the old tub use to be. These are nice as they save space but still provide plenty of room to bathe in.

Next step is to stage the home and get it ready to show!

Plumtree is Moving Along

The outside of Plumtree Rd is complete and we should be finishing up the inside soon. Here’s how it looked on Tuesday before we finished up the landscaping;

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Heres how it looks after we finished up the landscaping today:

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I think it’s a pretty good transformation from where we were 10 days ago.

It looks alot like Bessemer St except we used green shutters. My first choice is a burgundy raised panel shutter, but this house had green trim on all the windows so we went with a green shutter to match the trim. We also added the white picket fence to the front of the property. I think the fence looks pretty sharp…. we’ve had this in the scopes of work on a few other houses but for some reason it always gets cut out last minute. 

Let me know what you think of the white picket fence. I’d like to use it on some other projects and am looking for some feedback!!

Deal Updates

A quick update on where some of our projects stand;

 

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39 Brooks St, Springfield:We put Brooks St on the market for $133,900 and accepted an offer in early August. The home inspection was done two weeks ago and went very well. The appraisal was done on Friday and the buyer has received their loan commitment contingent upon appraisal review. Closing should be early to mid September.

 

 

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17 Bessemer St, Springfield:  Bessemer St went under agreement very fast. We put the property on the market on Friday 8/15 and by the end of the open house on Saturday 8/16 we had multiple offers. The home inspection was performed last week, with the appraisal scheduled for this week…. closing should be the end of September. This home came out really nice and will probably be our best project to date.   

 

 

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71 Hartford Terrace Springfield:  Hartford Terrace initially went under agreement back in June. After our first buyers hit some delays in getting their financing we put the home back on the market in late July at our initial asking price of $189,900. We had four showings the first day back on the market and received multiple full price offers. The home inspection and appraisal are complete and we are just waiting to close at the end of September. 

 

 

Work is still under way at Mansfield St, Plumtree and Glenwood.   

September is going to be another busy month so stay tuned…….

"Plumtree Road" New Project Underway

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We just started renovations on our newest project on Plumtree Rd in Springfield. This is a great location in a neighborhood known as East Forest Park, just around the corner from our house on Hartford Terrace. This is an easy project compared to most of our other rehabs…. no fire damage, no leaking roofs, no full gut…. just a light rehab that will take less than two weeks. I guess this is one of those light cosmetic jobs I have been looking for.

We have been working on buying this property for over a year. I first spoke with the owner in February of 2008. The owner lived in Arizona and flew up to show me the house. We were pretty close to making a deal with her at that time… then she found out she may be transferred back up to Springfield for work and she decided to hold onto the house. Thanks to Dominics persistent follow up we were the first ones on her mind when she realized she would not be coming back to Springfield and she needed to get rid of the house!!

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It’s a nice Cape with a huge backyard, similiar to our house on Bessemer St. This house has 3 bedrooms and 2 full baths. We will be painting the outside, updating the second floor bath, putting on a roof, doing some sheetrock repairs, refinishing the hardwoods, repairing some water damage from a leaking pipe, and painting everything.    Heres some more photos:

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Dining Room

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Living Room

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Kitchen

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First Floor Bathroom

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Fireplace

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Second Floor Bathroom

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Second Floor Bedroom

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Second Floor Bedroom

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Open Staircase

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Kitchen

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First Floor Bedroom

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High Effeciency Furnace

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Tankless Water Heater

You’ll notice that the kitchen ceiling is laying on the kitchen floor in the above pictures. There was a steady leak from the upstairs bathroom sink supply line that caved in the kitchen ceiling.

The good thing is this house already had a brand new high efficiency furnace and tankless water heater installed, those are big ticket items that we don’t have to address.

We don’t have a huge budget on this one so it’s not going to be as decked out as Bessemer, but it will still look real sharp when we’re done!

37 Mansfield St– Fire Damaged Multi Rehab Update

We’ve made some slight changes over at the fire damage three family…. mainly we decided that it was no longer going to be a three family, we are converting it to a two family. The main reason behind this is because the city wanted us to do too many life/safety upgrades to the property that would have killed our budget. They were requiring us to either put a sprinkler system in, or install a fire alarm system complete with pull boxes, strobe lights, illuminated exit signs, beacons, and a fire panel that wirelessly called directly into the fire department. These are things you would generally find in a large office building or a 50-100 unit apartment complex…. not a dinky little three family located on a side road in Forest Park.

 The changes are actually going to work out pretty good. We had planned on holding this property as a rental, but now since it is only two units we are going to retail it. The value of the property actually doesn’t change that much, a two family is worth about the same as a three family, mainly due to the ease in which an owner occupant can buy a two family. A three family is much more difficult for an owner occupant to finance and an investor purchasing usually needs 20%-30% down thus limiting the pool of buyers and bringing the price of a three unit down.

It is now a very large two family with the second unit taking up two floors, kind of like a townhouse unit. The second floor unit will now be 6 bedrooms and 2 full baths…. it’s gonna be huge!

We’ve finished up the majority of the work on the outside. The inside is being sheetrocked. Heres a look;

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All the siding is complete along with the roof and the windows. The front porch was rebuilt and the side porch was taken down. Heres what it looked like before;

 

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  So the outside is looking real sharp. Now it’s just a matter of finishing up the sheetrock, painting, and completing all the finish work inside. Before you know it we’ll have this one on the market and under agreement!!!

Bessemer Pictures, Finished and Staged

Here’s the finished pictures of Bessemer St; cleaned, staged and ready for a new buyer!! 

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Dang, thats alot of pictures….. didn’t realize I took so many!!! 

The house came out great and I definetly think it will sell fast. I’m off to the open house.