As most of the rehab was done several months ago before we rented it out, there wasn’t much to do this time — just some touch-up paint, pressure washing, and some other minor details. But, not having seen this house staged before, I was very pleasantly surprised at how nice it looks.

Here are some staging pictures of the house…

This makes three houses we’ve put on the market in the past week, so I’m hoping we get some decent traffic through them this weekend and perhaps even an offer or two. I’ll post a recap of how the showings are going next week…

Here are some pictures (before the painting): The Wrong House

This one is currently being marketed to investors, both through the MLS, on Craigslist and through my personal buyer list. If we don’t get any takers in the next week or two, we’ll do a bit more renovation (though there’s not much we can find to do), and try to sell it to an owner occupant.

If you’re interested in a rental or an easy flip in my area, let me know and I’ll give you more details. It’s currently listed at $59,500, but that’s negotiable…

Here are the final pictures — you’ll notice that many of them are just copies of the pictures of The Trifecta House — this is because the houses are the same layout, same finishes and same staging…so why bother taking new pictures…

Aside from the surprise leaks we had when we turned on the water, and other than a few additional expenses that we didn’t account for, the rehab went quickly and smoothly. We’re over budget by a few hundred dollars, which is disappointing, but on a $20,000 project, not too bad.

One of the unexpected expenses is replacing our neighbor’s mailbox (which is custom based on HOA requirements); we believe that the dumpster company we use knocked over the mailbox when they were picking up the dumpster this morning. While we’ll try to get them to reimburse us, I’m not counting on it, and we’ll likely just have to eat the $250. We’re replacing our own mailbox anyway, and were able to convince the mailbox company to give us a small 2-for-1 discount.

I’ll post a detailed budget recap next week, and will hopefully have an update on the traffic we’re getting from our listing…

Here are some final staging pictures of the rehab…

Of course, here is my favorite picture from this house:

The exterior of the property has undergone a dramatic change. We rebuilt the front steps, painte the exterior and replaced the roof (here is what it looked like before):

And here are the final staging pictures of the house…

The house went on the market today at $115,000 ($5000 less than the first time), we had our first showing this afternoon (which sounds like it went well), and we’ll see how much traffic we get over the next week before we decide if we want to lower the price.

Horsey House: Before Pictures

We’re scheduled to close on the purchase of this property sometime around March 21…I’ll have more to say about our rehab plan, budget and schedule as we get closer to the closing date…

While the rehab is going pretty well (we’re trying a new rehab crew on this one, and they’re a bit slower and less meticulous than we’re used to), the one major issue was the thing that should have been the easiest — putting on the new roof. Turns out that the shingle manufacturer was in the midst of changing the colors of a couple of their shingle SKUs, and the palette of shingles that got delivered to our house actually consisted of two different colors!

Here’s a picture:

Unfortunately, they crew didn’t realize that the shingles were different colors until the old roof had already been torn off and the new one was going on, so they really had no option other than to finish the job. Luckily, the shingles are under warranty, and not only will we get a new batch of materials free, but the shingle manufacturer will pay the second set of labor costs for the crew as well.

The only issue is that it may be another week before we can get the new roof on (still waiting for the warranty company to finish their insurance claim), so we’ll either have to hold off getting exterior photos or do some photoshopping…

Btw, in the picture above, you’ll notice the new siding color…it’s MUCH, MUCH better…

While I haven’t done the final tally of the expenses, I believe we’re within a hundred dollars of our budget (and possibly under), and from a schedule standpoint, while the house was ready to be shown this weekend (that was our goal), we didn’t get it on the MLS until Sunday afternoon, so we didn’t do much marketing yet. That said, we had a couple potential buyers waiting for this house to be completed, so we did get a couple showings over the weekend.

I’ll post final budget detail in an upcoming post, but in the meantime, here are the final pictures of the house…

So far this week, we finished the interior painting, hanging the light fixtures, painting the cabinets, painting and rehanging the doors, etc. On Friday, we will replace the carpet and vinyl on the second level, replace the plumbing fixtures, rehang the cabinet doors, and start working on the details (installing door knobs, smoke alarms, registers/returns, etc). On Saturday, the hardwoods will be repaired. And then on Monday, we’ll do a final cleaning and some landscaping.

Here are some pictures taken today in the midst of the work:

Unfortunately, my wife has been away for the past week, so my sister-in-law and I were responsible for the staging ourselves (with my wife directing us over the phone ). While the staging turned out great, unfortunately we were also responsible for the photos, and this is something that my wife is certainly much better at.

That said, she was able to take our photos, improve them with Photoshop (basic stuff like adjusting the brightness, contrast, etc), and turn them into very decent photos…

Here are the final staging pictures…

And for comparison, here are the before pictures…