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Oct

31

House #4: Rental Analysis

October 31, 2008 | 4 Comments

Because we’re seriously considering holding The Yellow Stain House as a long-term rental, I put together a full financial analysis for renting this property to give us an idea of how lucrative this approach would be. Of course, I did a preliminary analysis a long time ago indicating that the property would work as […]

Oct

30

House #4: Loans & Partners

October 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Because I decided to change my exit strategy on The Yellow Stain House, I realized that the typical loan program that I generally use won’t suffice for this project. The rehab loans that I typically get are 12-month loans that — while sufficient for a rehab and resale of a property — are insufficient […]

Oct

29

House #4: New Plan

October 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

As I mentioned yesterday, The Yellow Stain House is currently in a flood plain, and I have no idea how that will affect resale value and future insurance premiums. I do have enough information to know that the problem is probably not too bad, but it will likely take several weeks to get a […]

Oct

28

House #4: Flood Plain!?

October 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The Yellow Stain House is quickly becoming the bane of my existence…
Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but it’s causing more frustration than I care to have in a house that I don’t yet own. First, there was the foundation issue. Then, there was the major plumbing issues. Now, just 24 hours before […]

Oct

27

House #1: Open House

October 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

The Corn House went on the market last week, and I’m very annoyed that in the first 7 days, my agent brought exactly 0 people through the house. It’s a fantastic house for a fantastic price, and I’m convinced that if we can get just a few buyers through, we’ll get an offer. […]

Oct

25

The Crack House

October 25, 2008 | 4 Comments

I mentioned in a previous post about an offer I made on a house with a major foundation issue that may even need to be knocked down. The offer I put on this property was extremely low, but considering the seller (a bank) has had two previous buyers back out when they evaluated the […]

Oct

24

Accounting & Record Keeping

October 24, 2008 | 1 Comment

A couple people who also flip houses have asked me about my method of accounting and recording keeping for the work that I’m doing. I wanted to give a quick summary, which will hopefully help explain why I group costs and financial data in the way that I do. For those who aren’t […]

Oct

22

Update for 10/22/2008

October 22, 2008 | 1 Comment

Now that I’m down to rehabbing a single house for the first time in over a month (The Bulge House sale just closed and The Corn House is now on the market), things feel very slow. I’ve decided to use much of the past two days to look at new houses on the market, […]

Oct

21

House #2: Final Analysis

October 21, 2008 | 11 Comments

As of this morning, The Bulge House is officially sold!
It’s been both fun and educational going through my first complete cycle of flipping of a house, and I can honestly say that I’ve learned more in the past several months than I ever expected I could.
Now that The Bulge House is officially sold, […]

Oct

20

House #4: Some Details

October 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ll likely be closing on The Yellow Stain House in the next 10 days, so I wanted to take some time to post pictures and some additional details on the house.
First, here are some BEFORE pictures…
As you’ll notice, this house is in great shape cosmetically. In fact, if it were for a couple major […]

Oct

18

House #1: Purchase/Rehab Costs

October 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Now that The Corn House is officially on the market, I did my final accounting to determine how much I’ve spent to both purchase and rehab this property. My original budget for this project project was $30K, plus 10% for “surprises,” for a total budget of $33K. Additionally, my goal was to keep […]

Oct

17

House #1: Rehabbed!

October 17, 2008 | 2 Comments

We finally finished The Corn House rehab today! While the GC finished a couple days ago, we’ve spent the last couple days touching up, staging, landscaping, and doing some repainting of the front deck…
When our agent stopped by to view the property the other day, she noted that the vinyl siding (which can’t easily […]

Oct

16

House #4: Initial Bids

October 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

As I mentioned a few days ago, the bank compromised on selling The Yellow Stain House for a reasonable discount. Based on the fact that the foundation was cracked, the plumbing needed to be replaced, and the roof framing was structurally inadequate, they offered a $14K discount on the originally agreed-upon purchase price. […]

Oct

15

Negotiation (Part 2)

October 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

The other day, I posted about negotiation tactics, both for real estate investing, and in general. I got a lot of great feedback from that post, so I’m going to add some additional basic negotiating tactics that I’ve found very useful over the past several months while jumping into RE investing…

Friction is Your Friend: […]

Oct

13

Negotiation (Part 1)

October 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

A reader of mine asked me if I would write a bit about negotiation. While I’d love to say I know everything there is about negotiating property purchases and negotiating with contractors, I’m still learning the intricacies of real estate negotiation. That said, there are a lot of very general negotiating principles that […]

Oct

10

House #4: One More Try

October 10, 2008 | 4 Comments

It looks like the bank came to their senses, and are willing to drop the price of The Yellow Stain House considerably. Not quite the $20K that I originally asked for, but they’re willing to reduce the price by $14K. This price reduction would cover the extra costs undercovered during the inspection: […]

Oct

9

House #1: After Pics

October 9, 2008 | 6 Comments

As promised, here are some pictures of the interior of The Corn House, taken during staging today…
While the house isn’t yet fully staged, these should give a general idea of the work we did and the final outcome of the interior. I think I speak for the whole team (my wife, my brother, his […]

Oct

8

Update for 10/8/2008

October 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

A general update on everything going on with the houses and the continued search for more properties:
House #1: The Corn House
We’re about a week behind schedule on this project (my very first project), but we’re getting down to the wire. Yesterday, we started staging the interior, and today we’ll be finishing staging and […]

Oct

7

House #4: No Go

October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Well, it looks like House #4 is eluding me on all fronts…
First, The Yellow Stain House is a no-go, as the bank rejected my revised offer, and claimed that my new offer wasn’t anywhere close to what they would accept. While I would have likely upped my offer a couple thousand more dollars, between […]

Oct

6

House #4: New Offer

October 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I mentioned yesterday that based on the inspection report I received on The Yellow Stain House, I was planning to ask for a price reduction from the seller (before signing the contract). Before deciding on how much of a reduction to ask for, I had a structural engineer visit the house on Friday […]

Oct

3

House #4: Maybe Not

October 3, 2008 | 3 Comments

The Yellow Stain House caused some frustration the past couple days because the seller (the bank) didn’t want to provide a due diligence period; after giving them a large deposit ($5000) and agreeing to close in 2 weeks, they refused to allow me time to do any inspections before committing to the sale. While […]

Oct

2

Rehab Tip: Materials Discounts

October 2, 2008 | 3 Comments

One of the big advantages I believe I have in this business is that I am planning to scale quickly; if leveraged properly, that scale should provide me the ability to attract good team members, good deals, and good discounts. This week, I realized that leveraging that scale for good discounts may be even […]

Oct

1

House #4: Yellow Stain House

October 1, 2008 | 1 Comment

As I mentioned yesterday, I had three offers submitted and waiting for response from sellers. Well, I received one response today, and it was a good one…I now have my fourth house!
This is the third house mentioned in yesterday’s post, the 3 bedroom, 2 bath house built in 1988 that’s in rent-ready condition, and […]