Both House #8 and House #11 are both SOLD !!!

Fittingly enough, we bought them 2 days apart from the same agent and sold them on the same, just over 5 months later.

I have already posted pictures of House #8, but have posted very little about House #11.

It is a townhouse unit quite far from where we normally buy.  One of our favorite agents who now no longer works this area told us that he thought it was a decent deal and helped us get it at a quite price!!  It is a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom unit that is 1,280 sq ft and built in the 80′s.  I am a little bit disappointed we did not decide to rent this one as it would of worked out quite well for us!

Front – Before

Front – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Master Bedroom – Before

Master Bedroom – After

This property was a great learning experience for me.  We accepted a really high VA Loan offer, and it took 21 days just go an appraisal through, as the money had to be transferred through all kinds of government agenencies.   NEVER AGAIN, will I accept a VA offer in this market coniditions.  The appraiser is assigned randomly and the appraisal came in well under the accepted offer number.  After waiting so long, we weighed our options and just decided to work with the buyer and take less money for it.  The agent made some great concessions and ended up making almost nothing on this deal, which I probably wouldn’t allow again, because it definitely affects their attitude toward the deal and getting stuff done.  Live and learn!

Glad to see this one closed!

Sorry again for the lack of activity, I have been swamped with a couple other businesses I’m involved in and getting our existing properties into escrow.

House #6: This house has been in escrow forever now, since March.  The buyer had credit issues that are now fixed, but the agent has not been ideal to work with.  I think she has been stretching the truth the whole way through (but what agent doesn’t ).  It is set to close within the next week, if it does not, I have an $8,500 earnest money deposit that I will be keeping (and won’t feel very bad about it), as they have removed all contingencies.

House #5: This one has also been in escrow for a long time.  We’ve put the property back on the market (and got an offer today), but my escrow officer has a connection at the loan company and it sounds like this one should go through with the existing buyer before the end of the month as well.  This one has been in escrow about 50 days now, which is a long but seems to be the norm on FHA sales right now.

House #8: This one has been in escrow 45 days now, and we have all loan conditions removed, just waiting for docs.  Should close mid-next week .

House #11: Apparently, I haven’t written about this one at all, but this one we picked up at a sweet deal!  We accepted a really high VA offer, but VA appraisals are assigned randomly and the appraisal came in $28,000 under what we had it in escrow at.  We had a couple backup offers that fell through, so we did some fancy negotiating but still took a $15,000 hair cut (from original).  Luckily, it is a meaty deal, so there is still pletny of profit.

House #4: I will write about this one and upload some pictures.  We put it in escrow about two weeks ago, appraisal was good and we’re have a strongly qualified buyer, so I am hoping for smooth sailing.

The good news, if everything goes as planned we should close four properties before the end of June.

The bad news, we’ve looked at over 100 properties in June and probably made at least 50 offers.  So far we’ve missed everything, and not by just a little bit.  The moratoriums have really made the market go haywire.   One property was listed at $89,000, we were willing to pay $115,000, it ended up getting 40+ cash offers and went into escrow at $144,500.   Just amazing!  We’re going to keep on looking, hopefully I’ll have some time to catch up on the older blog posts.