House #3 – The Edgewood House

Well, it’s been a long while since I wrote a post on one of the houses that we have rehabbed, so I guess it’s about that time! We This is the third house that we renovated and it turned out pretty well! If you missed the first two house recaps, you can go read them HERE and HERE.

Pre-purchase

This was a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath house located in the Edgewood area. We found this home at a courthouse auction and therefore had to buy it sight unseen. It appealed to us because it was in a nice neighborhood on a quiet brick street. It needed quite a bit of exterior work, but we could see the potential in it.

We were the winning bidder for the house at the courthouse auction. Of course, the trustee who sells the house at the auction has almost no information on the house nor do they have keys. So, we called a locksmith to come change the locks and let us into the house. As we walked through the house, we noticed that it was in really good shape. It just needed some critical updating.

The basement was last on the tour and we didn’t really expect to see any issues. Boy, were we wrong. A basement wall was visibly protruding outward into the room. At some point in the past, I beams had been installed to keep the walls from bowing, but ultimately, these had failed. Panic immediately set in because when we had made the budget for the house, structural work was not included. And usually structural work is very expensive.

So, we called Jared from American Home Inspectors to come give us an estimate. Whenever we run into any suspected structural issues, we ALWAYS call a certified structural engineer to assess the problem. It is only the ethical thing to do. We would never leave a problem unrepaired to leave the new home owner holding the bag. Jared came over, reviewed the issue and called for us to place tiebacks into the wall to hold back the pressure that was pushing against it. It so happened that there was a large tree right behind that wall and the roots had grown so much that they were pushing the wall in. With the house sitting on a flat lot, we would have never guessed that it would have a structural issue. So we called the Bobby from United Structural Systems and he ran over to give us the cost of fixing it based on Jared’s recommendations. And we were off and running on the new project.

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 roof was in terrible shape and needed to be replaced immediately.
• The house had very old wood siding and needed to be replaced with vinyl.
• The structural problem needed to be addressed and repaired by a reputable structural repair company. We chose United Structural Systems. They are great to work with and were very diligent in repairing this issue.
• The basement was mostly unfinished and dingy, so we decided to finish it with new walls, carpet, and drop ceiling. We also gutted the bathroom down there and put a new half bath in.
• The house needed a new coat of paint.
• We did a little landscaping in the front yard and back yard.
• We replaced and painted the new fence.
• We cleaned and stained the back deck.
• We brought the electrical up to code.

The Sell

This project took us approximately 8 weeks to complete from start to finish. We placed it on the market and had an accepted full price offer in 1 day! The buyers were excited to have gotten the home and we were set to close in a month. They loved the character of the house and the neighborhood. We really enjoyed working on this home and were very pleased with the results.

Take a look at the after rehab pics below!

Like this recap? Head over to read about our first flip HERE if you missed it.

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 Realtime Reporters on 713 Lee St. in Charleston, WV on every third Thursday of the month at 6pm. Here’s the link to the Meeting info page.

 Do you need to sell your house FAST? Simply fill out the form below. We may be able to help!