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 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.

Yet another completed Rehab… 104 Columbus Ave Holyoke, MA – Finished and Staged

Here is another amazing home we finished and just brought to the market.

This property is located at 104 Columbus Avein Holyoke MA. We did a full gut renovation of this property, bringing it down to the studs. We rearranged the floorplan to give it a great open feel. We enlarged the kitchen and the first floor bath. We also finished the second floor into a master suite complete with it’s own full bath.

The major problem we had to deal with on this house was some structural issues caused by 4 layers of shingles on the roof. With all that weight on the roof it was crushing the house. So the roof was stripped and there’s only 1 layer on there now. We also had to build new foundation walls to give the house a solid structure to sit on. Our contractor jacked the house up, rebuilt the foundation, and resupported the band joist and floor joists. Now the house is as strong as an Ox!!!

Here are the pictures of the completed home; (you can see the before pictures HERE)  

House for sale holyoke MA 104 Columbus Ave

104 Columbus Ave Holyoke MA

House for sale Holyoke MA 104 Columbus Ave

Home for sale Holyoke MA

Living Room Columbus Ave

House for sale Holyoke MA

Living Room Looking into Kitchen

House for sale Holyoke MA

Columbus Ave Kitchen Staged

Kitchen with Breakfast Bar looking into Living Room/Dining Area

House for sale Holyoke MA columbus Ave

Huge Kitchen looking at Built in Fridge

Kitchen with Tile Backsplash and Stainless Appliances

First floor bath Vanity with tile floor

First Floor Bath tub with glass tile inlay / border

First Floor bedroom with shiny hardwoods

New second Floor bedroom addition

New second Floor Full Bath staged

New second floor Full bath Vanity

Another look at second floor Bedroom addition

Newly built foundation wall

All new electric lines

One more Look at this Gorgeuos Kitchen

Wow!!!! This one looks incredible. With the second floor finished we have 4 bedrooms and 2 Full baths. This house has new electric, new plumbing, new insulation, new sheetrock, new kitchen, 2 new baths, fresh paint on the inside and outside, new flooring, and two newly built foundation walls.

This home is on the market now should go Fast!!!!

REO Rehab Complete – 53 Fullerton St Finished and Staged

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.