House #39 is flying along.  The painter started Tuesday this week and is almost done the inside and about half done the outside.  We should be done at the end of the first week of August and looking forward to getting this house on the market.

I have added some preliminary before and after pictures.  The main things we have left to do are:

Kitchen: we have already bought the cabinets and appliances but they need to be assembled and installed.

Flooring: we were able to save a lot of the flooring on the main floor, but the entire upstairs needs flooring.

Bathrooms: the bathrooms need the most work.  Pretty much everything needs to be completed.

Finish Work: electrical outlets need to be installed, molding needs to be added and the fixtures.

Here are some before and after pictures of our progress to date.

Before

After

Before

After

After

After

Before

After

Before

After

After

I have not written about House #46 yet, but it is a bit unique.  It is one of the few houses we have purchased with genuine pretty bad “location problems.”  Normally, we probably would not have pursued this house at all but an agent we work with quite a bit got the listing from the bank at a pretty good price.

The house is one lot over from a really busy street, with a bar right next door. Directly across the street from it is a pretty big commercial complex.  These are all big no-no’s in the world of real estate investing.

Now that the market is slowing down a bit I am curious as to what buyers will be willing to pay for this type of properties.  There still is very little competition in this price range.  If they can afford 20% more they can by a much bigger house with no location problems (probably not remodeled as nice though).  An investor might scoop it up as a rental, that would be the ideal scenerio in my books.

Here is the aerial view of the house:

The house is under 1,000 sq ft, built in 1939 and 2 bedroom 1 bathroom with a garage conversion.  We ended up adding a 2nd bathroom in the garage conversion so now it is a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house.  As you can imagine all the bedrooms are really small.

Before and After Pictures

Front – Before

Front – After

Family Room – Before

Family Room – After

Main Bathroom – Before

Main Bathroom – After

Dinning Room – Before

Dinning Room – After

Kitchen – Before

Kitchen – After

Master – Before

Master – After

Master Bathroom – Before

We added this bathroom completely and apparently I didn’t take a picture of the laundry room that used to be here.

Master Bathroom – After

Back of House – Before

Back of House – After

It has been a pretty boring week.  The market is a bit slow, still getting a couple calls on the stuff we have for sale and actually got one or two decent offers so that looks promising.  We are lowering what we’re willing to pay again, pricing us completely out of a lot of stuff, so we haven’t been looking real aggressive.  We put another one under contract, just an okay deal, but will make a good rental (it’s in our main farm where we have many rentals).

Here are some pictures of the latest deal we just closed on.  This is definitely the worst house in a great neighborhood.  It is actually one of the better houses we have owned.  I would love to keep it, but the prices are a bit too high, plus I think I have a buyer who would buy this lined up.

The house is 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and about 1,600 square feet.  On a good sized lot, and it needs everything. The roof is bad damaged, the ceiling had some water leak through to it, so some of it needs replacing.

Overall, we paid a little bit more then we normally do, but it should sell quickly with a decent profit. The main logic behind paying a little bit extra is, this is a new REO office for us that is pretty big.  We wanted to show them we could perform and hopefully get on their short list.  We already put a second house under contract and now one of the agents is calling us about his pre-listings!  Which is always nice.

Here are the pictures:

Family Room

The hole in ceiling

Kitchen

Have a good weekend everyone!

House #39 is coming along quite well.  We have blueprints at the City awaiting approval and inspections, so we are not going to be able to complete any additional work if we don’t get approval soon.

Southern California Edison approved us for temporary power earlier this week.   This house is just a flat out huge project.  We’re excited about it, it is going to turn out really nice when we are finished.  It sure is a nice change for our workers to be working on a house built in 2004 versus the 1950′s stuff we typically purchase.

Here are some videos:

The Downstairs

The Upstairs

The View

So Steve, you’ve owned this property for almost 5 months and haven’t sold it or given us an update?  Yes, it’s true, we have owned this property a long time and we just listed it on the MLS 10 days ago.  Why, well a lot of reasons, but no great ones.  We had a lot of different projects that always moved ahead of this one.  Since this was a big rehab that needed permits, we used it as our “utility project.”  Whenever our workers had no other work we sent them here, not the fastest way to finish a project.

This property started out at 1060 sq ft and needed a lot of work.  We added a second bathroom and permitted the porch.  If we bought this property 2-3 months later it surely would have gone into our rental pool.

Now let’s get to the pictures!  PS: a video should be coming soon.

Outside

Before

After

Kitchen

Before

After

Enclosed Porch

Before

After

Bedroom

Before

After

Bathroom

Before

After

We have 5 or 6 offers and it should be flying into escrow on Tuesday (since Monday is a holiday).

Sorry, the pictures are not that great for this one, we have been slacking lately.

Things are really rolling along for House #26.

• We got workers to fix and replace the cabinets for the kitchen and the built in media center (total cost $1,200).
• We have three or four of our workers fixing the electrical, they are probably 75% done after to days of work.
• We got a deal on some used wrott iron that is going to work pretty good (total cost $7,000).
• We are working on used appliances that is going to be one of the more expensive projects – they’re probably $10,000 new.
• A pool guys has given us a quote to replace some equipment, fix the under ground leak, clean and pressure wash the pool for $2,400.  The pool alone takes 4 motors I guess.
• We got all the doors hung and pulled all the plywood of the windows, that didn’t need any replacing.
• We are going to start patching the drywall tomorrow
• Paint should start Friday, or so, the painter can start in sections that don’t need as much patching.
• The cement in the toilets didn’t make it to the pipes, but someone poured cement down the master tub, which we fixed and the master shower drain (we might have to cut into the downstairs ceiling to replace some pipe to fix this).

Overall, we are extremely pleased with the progress, so far everything has gone quite smooth.  Here is the latest video walkthrough.

This deal was kind of confusing, so I did not mention it on the blog until we closed escrow, earlier today, just to make sure we actually got it.

This property isn’t even close to what we normally buy, it was built in 2003, it is over 4,000 sq ft and it has some very impressive upgrades.  We met the old owners today, by chance, and they mentioned they spent over $700,000 in upgrades in the back yard.  The appraised valued the entire backyard all about $40,000, that is so sad.

Some of the features, just outside:

• Beach Walk-In to the Pool
• Cave Spa (it’s actually under cover) with a waterfall that flows into from the roof
• Bathroom hidden in the saves
• Three Koi Ponds
• Covered BBQ area
• Live Size Chess Board
• Sand Pit / Volleyball Court
• The whole place is rigged for surround sound
• Video Surveillance System with 10+ cameras

Inside is a whole different story.  This property got majorly damaged while it was vacant.

Look at the View

The Pool Area:

The Spa

As you can see the property was majorly damaged along the way.  So much stuff has been stolen.

We are finished House #19, in great timing, we closed escrow about 30 days ago and now we’re finished!  The house is fixed up really nice and we should really flip it, but because 2/5 of our profits would go to taxes we aren’t in a rush to get rid of it.

One of our workers family members is very interested in renting it and we are going working on running his credit and application through the system.

That being said, let’s get to the before and after pictures!

Front of the House

Before

After

Kitchen

Before

After

Fireplace

Before

After

Main Bathroom

Before

After

Master Bedroom

Before

After

Master Bathroom

Before

After

We have completed the rehab on House #17.  It turned out very good and everyone who has seen it so far is definitely impressed.  Now we just need some conventional offers!

Escrow closed on this property in early September so we still have almost 60 days left before we can sell it to an FHA buyer.  We are willing to wait, but because this is in a higher end neighborhood we have listed it and we will see if we can garner any offers.

The rehab was slightly over budget, I am still crunching the number to figure out why, as the rehab went very smooth.

Without further adieu, here are the before and after pictures:

Front of the House

Before

After

Kitchen

Before

After

Main Bathroom

Before

After

Den

Before

After

Soon to Be Kitchen

House #19 is going to be our second rental property.  Remodeling should be complete in 2 weeks or so.  The picture to the left is what is going to be the kitchen.

The layout of this house was really bad, it had numerous code violations and the asset manager was seriously debating demolishing it until we came along.  We had our designer do a drawing of the property so we could plan a better layout.  The previous owners added a bad addition behind the kitchen and they added two bedrooms and a bathroom to the garage.

Click for a full screen of the layout:

Click to Enlarge

We are completely removing the additions in the garage and the ATF Living Area behind the kitchen.  This will get code enforcement to take the lien off of the property.  Layout wise, everything else is staying pretty similar.  We are expanding Bathroom 2 a little bit, but it still is really small.

Not much else to say about this property.  We don’t have a renter lined up for this one, so we will see how it goes once it is finished, but I am hoping to have a tenant in it before October is over.