We purchased House #3 on October 24, 2008.  Just under 4 months later we just closed escrow.  This deal turned out to be quite profitable for us.  All of our repairs where right on budget and we ended up selling it for about $5,000 over our appraised value.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

The buyer was an FHA buyer and we offered 5% downpayment assistance.  He also negotiated to buy our furniture within the contract.

We now have sold 6 properties and own 6 properties.  As of right now, we probably will not be buying any new properties until April or May.

House #4 is beginning to becoming a major pain!  The inspector keeps adding what seem to be new requirements.

• Once we pulled the roof off, he forced us to re-inforce the existing rafters.
• The existing footers needed to be re-inforced.
• And now for some reason, he does not like a rock wall he previously approved.

We are dealing with it one step at a time, but it is really starting to balloon our budget.

The purchase escrow on the fire house closed yesterday.

The buyer’s loan funded for House #3 today, so we are excited as we should record tomorrow.

Well, yesterday, we had a minor complication with the inspector.  This house was built in about 1880 and has had numerous additions including 5 layers of previous roofing.  After we finally got it all off, our inspector stopped by and said we are going to have to get an engineers approval on the roof before we can re-sheet it.

After spending all-day dealing with our engineer we came up with a solution.  We got everything beefed up and an approval letter from the engineer, but not return call from the inspector and it’s supposed to rain everyday until Tuesday.

So we ended up tarping the roof and are going to hit it again when it stops raining.

Isn’t this business fun.

I have not had time to post very much lately.  I wish I could say it was because I was off on vacation, but we have been swamped closing properties, getting permits and fixing what we got.

House #3 – In Escrow (or Close)
This house should be in escrow today at a solid above asking price offer.  There has been two or three days of delay getting it into escrow, but it seems like the buyer is thinking it is his already, which makes the chances of him closing pretty high.  Crossing my fingers.

House #5 – On Market
We finished repairs on this one and had an open house this weekend!  Because of the FHA 90 day flip rule we have listed it quite high and have about 45 days before we can even take an FHA offer anyways.  So we are planning to just sit back and see if we can somehow get a conventional offer.  I will post some pictures of the finished product shortly.

House #6 – Under Repairs
Our contractors have been hitting this house hard!  It is starting to look awesome.  Our budget one this one was $30,000 and it really shows that we can pretty much make the house totally brand new in 30 days for that amount.

Fire Place – Before

Fire Place – After

House #4 – Just got Permits
House #4 is a huge job!  We closed in October and tore it to the studs and worked on getting permits for a 500 sq ft kitchen addition.  We got this property real cheap, and it’s in a pretty good neighborhood, so we are going to do well, but it might take a little while along the way.

House #8 – Should Close Escrow this Week
We should purchase this house tomorrow.  Our repair budget is a cheap $14,000 and we are hoping to be in and out in about a week, but we will see.

Will post some before and after pictures of House #5 shorty!

House #3 is in what we thought was a good area of our farm.  We did get a smoking deal.  After we purchased it, we realized the street was a little bit busier then we thought, but figured we would be okay.

Fast forward 90 days later and we have had a whole run in of break-ins:

• Our Real Estate Agents sign has been tagged numerous times, we just keep it inside the front window now.
• Someone broke-in and stole half of our staging furniture.  They even stole the candle stands and the towels in the bathroom.
• Someone took a rock to the sprinker
• Someone broke on of the new garage windows and was sleeping inside.  We caught him and chased him away.
• The next day, he broke one of the kitchen windows to get in and wrecked the door between the garage and house (he used a rock to try to break in).

The good news, we pretty much have this baby in escrow with a buyer who wants the property bad.  He has helped us chase away this bandit and has made friends with the neighbor to “protect his house”.  We are just crossing our fingers it makes it through escrow.  Home inspection should be no problem.  We are thinking the appraisal should be good.  Because it is an FHA buyer, the chances of him getting approved for a loan are very high.  So chances are good as long as he wants the house it will close.

Honestly, when people said do not buy corner lots I never really understood.  Now you can add me to the list of a person who will never buy a corner lot.  I read somewhere that break-ins are 3x as likely in corner lots and carbon moxide pollutants are 80% higher then other houses.

If you do not want to be driving by your house with a bat to protect it at 10-11pm every night, maybe this isn’t the business for you!

House #9
Everything on House #9 went as planned, which is not very common in this business.  The escrow company that the bank picked I was nervous about, my agent has had numerous bad experiences with them.  At the end of the day, they did a professional job of being organized and getting everything done super fast.  My only complaint is they are extremely expensive (3x what I normally pay).  Luckily, I asked for a discount and received about a $500 discount between the two transactions.

House #3
I don’t think I have blogged at all about House #3 yet, but we closed on this one at the end of October and we have probably received ten full price offers, all 10 of which have been FHA offers.  This 90 day flip rule really sucks!  Our day 91 is next Friday, so we have a couple that wants the house bad enough, they have written us a check and we have started to sign documents.  Hopefully we can get this escrow closed within about 21 days, so by the middle of February.  We did insist that their earnest money deposit should go hard within 5 business days.

Overall, that makes a pretty good day for us.  Sorry for no update on Thursday, but my internet was down all-day.  Let me tell you it is hard to get anything done without the internet!