Time for some Deal Updates- 42 Wexford St

March 21, 2010 by 3 Comments

OK, so I’ve been kind of slow with the property updates lately. We’ve got a ton of houses finishing up and quite a few more in the pipeline to purchase, with all this activity my blogging efforts have suffered. As a matter of fact I’ve got houses that we’ve purchased and are now renovating that I haven’t even mentioned yet…. plus, I don’t know how many videos just sitting in my Flip Camera, waiting to be edited into some kick ass Youtube videos.  I think maybe it’s time to hire some VA’s from India to run the Blog 🙂   

First up on the docket is 42 Wexford St. This beauty is done and we are staging it right now. The renovation of this property included a new roof, new gutters, two new decks, two new garage doors with openers, new driveway, brand new kitchen, renovating the full bath and adding a half bath, new electrical service and some new wiring, new plumbing, new boiler, new stainless steel appliances, new flooring throughout and fresh paint….. is that all????

This puppy shines and whoever buys it is going to be very lucky. Heres a look:

42 Wexford St, Springfield MA

Living Room

Fireplace

Open Staircase

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen Looking in from Dining Room

Dining Room

Full Bath

Master Bedroom

Finished Attic Space

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. I love the look of the Tudor style house!!! I think it’s those pointy roofs over the front entrance.

We’ll probably do some landscaping to the front of the property, clean it, stage it, then sell it.    

On to the next one……

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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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Property Update: 143 Lloyd Ave, Finished and Staged

March 6, 2010 by 4 Comments

The finished houses are going to be coming fast and furious over the next few weeks. My plan of buying a bunch of properties in Oct.-Dec. to have ready for the Spring market and the expiration of the First Time Buyer tax credit is playing out perfectly.

I showed you our finished house on Ravenwood St a few days back. Now have a look at our property located at 143 Lloyd Ave in Springfield. We did a pretty extensive rehab on this property including new siding, a new roof, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, new boiler, all new plumbing, new flooring and fresh paint. We also took a 3 season enclosed breezeway located between the garage and kitchen and turned it into living space. This additional living area is a great feature as it adds space for a formal dining room or family room.

Here it is (you can see the before pictures HERE) :

143 Lloyd Ave

New Entrance from converted Breezeway into Kitchen

Kitchen - Stainless Applainces, Tile Backsplash

Kitchen- 18x18 Floor Tiles, All Wood Cabinets

Eat In Kitchen/ Dining Area

Living Room - Large Bay Window

Bathroom - Totally Updated

Bathroom - Tile Floors, Tile Tub Surround

New Shower Panel w/ 8 Body Jets

Converted Breezeway, now added Living Space

Bedroom

Wow, so thats it…. came out pretty darn nice!!!  You can see what it looked like before here: Lloyd Ave Before Pics.

We were suppose to be closing on the big ugly pink and purple house this week but there are a few title issues that need to be cleared up, so looks like we will be waiting a little longer on that one. Heres a picture of that house in case you don’t remember it:

Well, thats all I got for tonight. I looked at eight properties today; four that I want to buy, and four that we already own… and now I’m ready for bed.

Adios Amigos

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Well that was Quick!! Ravenwood Finished

March 2, 2010 by 1 Comment

So I posted a semi-before video of the property at Ravenwood on Friday…. and now I’ve already got the after pictures for you to see. This renovation went real quick, and believe it or not it’s already sold and our new buyer has moved in.

We purchased this house as a short sale on January 21, 2010, had the renovation complete by February 12, and had our new buyer moving in on February 20th. That is lightning fast… but we did cheat a little bit. See ,we actually started working on the house about two weeks before we even owned it, a little risky, yes, but the rehab business is about taking risks. Also, we had been working with this buyer for a few months. She had wanted to buy our Plumtree Rd house and Lasalle St house but missed out on both those… so she was very determined not to miss this one. She saw Ravenwood before we were even done with the work and said she’d take it…. so it was an easy sale!!!

The house came out real nice… I’m not a huge fan of the color of the roof, but one half was brand new shingles (reddish brown color) and the other half of the roof needed to be replaced. So rather than tear off the brand new section we just matched what was there (the reddish brown shingle). My first choice is always a blackish grey shingle, this color looks awesome no matter what color the house is. The only time we really deviate from this is when we have to match an existing shingle… and honestly, I don’t know what some of these homeowners are thinking when they are choosing a roof color??? Shingle color is something I am very particular about, almost like a pet peeve, but I realize I am probably boring most of you so let’s get on with the pictures; (you can see the before pictures HERE)

Ravenwood St Springfield MA

Ravenwood St Front

So I just realized you can’t even really see the roof in these photos… just take my word for it.

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Kitchen 3

Kitchen -- Again....

I took alot of pictures of the kitchen, I think it came out nice!! Check out the appliances, top of the line GE Profile… yes that is a Double Oven!!  We went even more over the top on the Fridge….

GE Cafe Series French Door Fridge

If you look hard enough you can see the little GE symbol on the Fridge is Red… this is the Cafe series…. and supposedly it is a step up from the Profile Series… which means it’s a real bad-ass fridge, almost better than Electrolux!!! Plus it’s a French Door Fridge… so that makes it even more awesome.

Kitchen Looking in from Living Room

Living Room

Dining Area -- Nice 18x18 Tiles on the Floor

Living Room from Kitchen

Bathroom

Tiled Tub Surround with Glass Tile Border

Shower Panel w/ Glass Tile Inlay

 We did the bathroom a little different here… We used a glass tile inlay and I think it looks real Sweet. You will see this in all our houses moving forward. Also we added one of those curved Hotel Shower Bars… a nice little upgrade.

Bedroom

Finished Basement

So, that’s about it for Ravenwood… In and Out in the blink of an eye, a real text-book flip. On to the next one!!

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Ravenwood St Update

February 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Heres a look at the short sale property on Ravenwood St that we bought a few weeks back. This video was shot after the first couple of days of construction. You can see all the before pictures here.

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143 Lloyd Ave Update

February 13, 2010 by 4 Comments

Lloyd Before

Our property at 143 Lloyd Ave is almost done. The city came out and turned the water on for us yesterday, so now the plumber can finish up with his connections and can fire up the heating system. This house received new siding, new roof, new windows, and a complete interior makeover. The major change that we made was converting the existing breezeway into living space. This required insulating and sheetrocking the whole room, installing vinyl windows and adding flooring. This new spaces adds about 200 more square feet to our living area and will make a nice dining room or family room.

Here are some pics of the house as we are finishing up;

143 Lloyd Ave

 

Converted Breezeway

Converted Breezeway Looking into Kitchen

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Eat In Kitchen Area

Bathroom

Living Room

Bedroom

Once the plumber completes his work we’ll put together a final punch list. When the punch list is complete the home will get cleaned, staged and to the market.

In other news I think we have the house on Ravenwood St sold. This was the Bank of America short sale that we purchased two weeks back. We started the rehab well before we officially closed, so by the time we actually owned the house the renovation was nearly complete. We brought a buyer through this week and she is ready to sign a purchase and sale. I’ve got videos and pictures that I need to post of this property so keep your eye out for those.

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Hunting Down Short Sales and Deal Updates

February 11, 2010 by 16 Comments

Nowadays short sales are a dime a dozen, you don’t have to look too hard to find them…. but every once in awhile one will catch my eye that I really wanna buy. In order for a short sale to get me all hot and bothered it’s got to have a few key factors. First, it needs to be a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Secondly, it needs to be vacant. Thirdly, somethings happened to the house thats gonna make the bank motivated to move it, and will allow the BPO or appraisal to come in nice and low (i.e. burst pipes, hole in the roof, mold etc…).  

This was the case with a house that I’ve had on my radar for the last month. This particular property was located in a great neighborhood and had excellent curb appeal. It was very similar in style and location as to our house at 42 Wexford. I pulled up an old listing sheet on the house and it said the boiler was inoperable…. sweet!! I went by the house and peaked in the windows and saw the ceilings had caved in from burst pipes in the second floor bathroom…. double sweet!!! I figured this would be a slam dunk short sale as long as I could get in touch with the owner prior to the bank taking it back. I found a PO Box for the owner in Colorado and bombarded them with letters and postcards for the last four weeks. I finally received an email today from the owner telling me that they no longer own the house and to stop contacting him. “Well” I thought to myself… “he must be mistaken”. See, I checked the registry of deeds and the house was still in his name, and while the bank did file the foreclosure notice in October, they hadn’t actually gone through with any auction. I also checked all the auction sites and the public notices and the house wasn’t in any of them for the last four months. So I replied back to the owner letting him know that while the bank did file a foreclosure notice, there has been no auction and that he still owns the house and he can still sell it…. and further…. I want to buy it from him and lets get this thing rolling!!!  Well his response back crushed me. He said “I don’t know what the banks doing, but we deeded it back to them in lieu of foreclosure in December.” 🙁  DAMN….. thats the one thought I had when he initially said that he didn’t own in anymore, but a Deed in Lieu, who’s ever heard of a bank actually doing these?? I’ve been around quite few of these foreclosure situations and have never heard of a bank actually going through with a Deed in Lieu…. oh well… I guess they haven’t gotten around to recording the new deed, you know how fast these banks are. Looks like I’m gonna have to wait till it becomes an REO and bid against the 30 other investors that will be offering on it.

New House

On the deal front we just put this monster under contract to purchase:

Front of House

Eastern side of House

Eastern side of House

Western side of House

 Wow, She’s a real beauty!! This beast is 6 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and over 3,000 square feet. It needs a major renovation and its in a historic district, so we have to play by a whole new set of rules. The good thing is we bought it real, real cheap ($16,000), but the rehabs going to come with a very hefty price tag!!

We’ve got a few other rehabs finishing up that I could post about… but this is getting too long so I will save those for another day…..

 Peace Out

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Gifford St Update, Sheetrocked and Painted

February 3, 2010 by 2 Comments

The Gifford St house is a few weeks away from completion. All the sheetrock is up and everything is painted. Now it’s time for trim, doors, kitchen cabinets, etc….. We have some outside work to do, like building a deck off the back of the house, but this stuff is gonna have to wait till it warms up a bit.

Heres a look;

209 Gifford St

Dining Room looking into Kitchen

New Staircase

Living Room

Dining Room

New Second Floor Bath

New Second Floor Master Bedroom

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