House #1 The Learning House

I have decided to start documenting the projects that we undertake and posting them on our blog. Please keep in mind that I’m not a natural writer, so be patient with me! I will kind of loosely follow the setup from another great real estate blog, 1-2-3 Flip. It’s an outstanding blog based out of Atlanta with a lot of great real estate investing info. Check it out when you get a chance. Anyways, this project holds a near and dear place in our hearts because we spilled a lot of sweat, blood, and tears into this one. I named this project the Learning House because it definitely taught us a whole lot. In fact, working on this house felt like we in Flipping School! Here we go….

Update: Once you are finished reading about this first project, you can read the next one in the series HERE.

Pre-purchase

This was a 4 bed 3 bath home that we were able to purchase in Cross Lanes. Unfortunately, it was sad circumstances that brought this home to our attention. The homeowner had actually inherited this home from her daughter who had passed away some months before. She was elderly and just didn’t need this big home as she owned her own home already nearby. We felt for her loss as her daughter had been her only child and her husband had already passed as well. After some setbacks dealing with the lawyers and the bank who owned the mortgage, we were able to purchase this home for cash from the estate in a much shorter time than it would have taken if we would have had to deal with a bank. We were so excited about this project that we left straight from the closing table to the home to start on the demo!

The Rehab

This house was located in a really good neighborhood where people tend to buy houses, but we had a lot of work to do. My partner, Steve, and I made our budget and then got to work. Although the home had good bones, we realized very quickly that we had a ton of work to do before this would be ready for a family. Here is a list of items that needed to be done:

• The front yard had a few bushes that had been overgrown and needed to be disposed of.
• The concrete on the sidewalk and steps had become cracked and broken so new steps and sidewalk needed to be re-poured.
• The gutters had been draining behind the front porch for who knows how long and the water had eroded the ground under the front porch. To fix this required us to break up the porch, dig new drain lines to the street from the gutters to the down spouts in the front yard. We then had to pour a new porch.
• The windows were old and needed to be replaced.
• We placed new laminate flooring in the kitchen and foyer and also new carpet in the 3 of the bedrooms and the basement.
• We put new tile in the bathrooms and shower walls.
• The roof wasn’t in bad shape, but we placed a new 40 year metal roof on it anyways. We try to add as much value as we can to our homes, therefore we put new roofs on each house that we rehab.
• We added another AC unit to give the house 2(two) total units.
• We replaced both decks.
• We put in new countertops and stainless steel appliances.
• We also added new garage doors and openers.
• We thought that we might have to have the home treated for termites, but my buddy Russ from Envirotech found out that it had already been treated thankfully.

The Sell

This project took us 6 weeks to complete from start to finish. We placed it on the market and had an accepted offer within 3 weeks. The buyers were really excited to have gotten the home and we were set to close in less than a month….right before Christmas. That’d be a nice gift right! Well, Christmas came and went and still no closing. We patiently waited for the bank to complete the sale. After six weeks, we finally got word from the buyers’ realtor that they couldn’t complete the loan process. Uggghhh….so we had to start all over again. We placed the home back on the market and had it under contract again in two weeks, unfortunately for $8,000 less than the original offer. However, this time the buyer was able to close and we were able to feed our families for another month. 🙂  The buyer had been relocated here from Atlanta by the railroad company and he had been living in a hotel room for weeks while trying to find a house that suited his family. Fortunately, he chose our house, stating that “He felt like he was buying a new house”, due to all of the updates we had placed in the home. Take a look at our finished pics and video below!

After Rehab Video

Thanks for following along. For more posts on our blog – CLICK HERE

Also, you can read about our next house, The 4 level house, HERE.

Also, if you have any interest in learning more about the local real estate market and networking with other real estate investors, please consider coming to one of the Charleston Real Estate Investors Association meetings. We currently hold the meetings at Boom’s in Kanawha City. Here’s the link to the Meeting info page.

Do You Need  To Sell Your House Quickly? Simply fill out the form below and we will be in touch!