We mostly finished up rehab on The Probate House over the weekend, including staging and decorating…

I never did get around to posting the BEFORE pics (maybe before we sell it), but here are the final pictures of the house

The house is deceptively big. Not shown in the pictures is two extra rooms that could be bedrooms or work areas, a storage room in the garage, an “office” in the garage, a mud-room, and another interior storage room. The house is about 2300 square feet, but because part of it was an addition that was laid out very poorly, it’s easy to miss a good part of the house if you’re not searching for it.

After all was said and done, we spent about $20K on rehab — we removed three dumpsters worth of trash, replaced a good bit of siding and trim, reglazed the windows, repaired the roof, replaced the gutters, removed a problematic tree and its root system, remediated all the interior mold and replaced the damaged drywall, treated for and repaired some termite damage to the framing, replaced most of the light fixtures, replaced a couple exterior doors, painted inside and out, and replaced the carpet. We still need to fix a couple minor electrical and HVAC issues, and the house will be ready to go.

Ultimately, this was more a remediation rehab than a structural or cosmetic rehab. In other words, we focused on fixing the mold issue and the root causes of the water penetrating the house; while we also did a bit of structural work (repaired some termite-damaged framing) and a good bit of cosmetic work, the remediation was our key concern and the most important piece of the renovation.

The house is going on the MLS today, and hopefully we’ll get some good feedback from potential buyers…

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House #12: Final Analysis

February 5, 2010

We closed on the sale of The Mini House today…
I’d like to say this was a fun project, but after dealing with four different buyers over the past six months, I’m pretty sick of having to deal with or think about this house.
I take full responsibility for this one not closing back in [...]

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House #12: Last Issue?

February 4, 2010

Will the issues ever end with The Mini House?!?!
First, the two pieces of good news:
The buyer completed her inspection last weekend, and aside from fixing a couple flooring issues (stain on the vinyl and a bad carpet seam), everything was good. We actually had a the thermostat break after the inspection, so [...]

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House #13: Second Offer

February 3, 2010

We received our second offer on The Poor House today…
We were originally told we’d be getting an offer about two weeks ago, but due to some family issues, the buyer was out of town for much of the past two weeks. Then, we were told we’d be getting an offer this past weekend, but [...]

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Update for 1/29/2010

January 29, 2010

Very quick update on all the houses and other stuff going on…
House #1: The Corn House
According to the credit repair company we have them set up with, the lease-purchase tenants may be close to qualifying for an FHA loan. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but we plan to have them [...]

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House #16: Rehab Underway

January 28, 2010

I still haven’t posted the before pictures (I was out of town prior to rehab starting and haven’t gotten the pics from my project manager), but after getting the trash out of The Probate House (three dumpsters!) and determining the source of the water infiltration, we finally figured out how we plan to proceed with [...]

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House #15: Officially Ours

January 26, 2010

We closed on the purchase of The Neighbor House yesterday…
While it took about a month past the original closing date, everything went pretty smoothly. I was planning on closing this one with a loan, but the title company pulled a short version of the title, and my lender wouldn’t finance the property without the [...]

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Value of Being an Agent

January 24, 2010

I often get asked the question of whether having your real estate license as an investor is a good idea. I discuss most of the pros and cons in this article, but I wanted to throw out another — real life — data point…
I’m finishing up my taxes for last year, and thought it [...]

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House #15: Wanna Buy It?

January 22, 2010

The Neighbor House is being sold by Fannie Mae, and in their standard REO contract, it stipulates that the buyer (me) can’t resell the property for more than 20% above the purchase price for 90 days.
In other words, if I try to sell this property for more than $60K, I need to wait [...]

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House #12: Fourth Contract

January 21, 2010

It only took a couple days, but we have yet another contract on The Mini House…
I’m not too surprised…we’ve had a ton of interest on this property since we put it on the market last summer, and if it weren’t for stupid mortgage brokers, idiot buyers, and bad appraisers, we would have had it sold [...]

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