On the staging front, we haven’t been marketing the staging to other investors, though a few have found us…but now that we have so much furniture out there (and only one house of our own being staged), we are starting to do some marketing to ensure that the furniture continues to have a home — and so that we don’t have to load up a storage space with it. If you know any investors in the Atlanta metro area looking for a great deal on staging, let me know!

In the meantime, here are pictures of another completed staging job my wife did recently. This is a small, 750 square foot, one bedroom, one bath condo in a suburban high-rise building. The pics include both interior shots along with some pictures of the building amenities (since she did the pics for the MLS listing as well as the staging):

About a month ago, she finished her sixth job for an investor who is selling a small house in downtown Atlanta. The house is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, with an open kitchen, dining room, and living room.

The investor didn’t hire her to take pictures or to create a marketing flyer, so the pics below aren’t great (we only took them for inventory/insurance purposes). In fact, my wife will probably kill me for posting these.

That said, the investors still “stole” them for use in his MLS listing, so I guess they aren’t that bad…

Here are the final staging pictures from her fifth staging job for an investor other than ourselves. This is a small townhouse in Atlanta — 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. This was a pretty standard staging job, and we used much of the same furniture that we’ve used in previous staging jobs, so it will probably look familiar…

The new floor plan brings the house into the 21st century, but as we learned with The Second Chance House, buyers are able to make a better connection to their potential new home when open-concept living spaces are defined for them through staging. There were a few rooms that had some wacky colors (bright orange, bright yellow) that might have seemed good in theory, but didn’t really fit into a non-custom remodel, but my wife was able to stage around the colors and incorporate them into the design.

I was amazed at how differently this house looked after it was completed…the layout/design of the furniture made a tremendous difference. Here are some pictures:

We staged this property last month…it was a condo in a nice section of Atlanta (Buckhead), and to be honest I’m a little surprised it sold so quickly. Not because it wasn’t a great property, but there were a couple other condos in the same complex that were a little bit bigger and around the same list price, so I imagined that the competition would mean it might take a bit longer to sell.

But, the quick sale is certainly a good testimonial to my wife’s awesome staging abilities: Not only did the condo sell quickly, but it sold for nearly full price!

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 check in with our mortgage broker first thing next week, and have their credit reports and FICO scores pulled.

Would love to get the house sold to them in the next couple months…

House #12: The Mini House

We have every reason to believe this one should close next Friday. The buyer finished her inspection, and has requested a few minor repairs. Her mortgage broker has told us that she is already through underwriting, and that they are just waiting for the appraisal on the house. While I would normally be a little nervous about the appraisal, the broker has informed us that they service all loans in-house, and therefore have their own appraisers. So, we don’t have to worry about any weird HVCC rules or weird FHA guidelines that could skew the appraisal in the wrong direction.

After four contracts on this one, I’m ready to get this thing closed, and I’m cautiously optimistic it will happen next week…

House #13: The Poor House

We’ve been told by an agent who took buyers to this property last week that we should be getting an offer. Apparently, the buyers’ had a death in the family a day or two after viewing the property, and have been out of town since. Also apparently (who really knows), they have called their agent a couple times to let her know they are very interested in submitting an offer when they return.

Well, they’re supposed to be back today, so we’ll see if we get an offer this weekend. If not, we’ll start doing some heavy marketing next week…

House #14: The Pine House

We replaced the roof on this one already, and would love to start some serious rehab (this will be a huge project), but because we weren’t positive we’d ever own it, we waited until we closed on the purchase before we ordered all the new windows for the house. Because we need the windows before we can replace all the siding, and because we need the new siding before we can do the mold remediation, and because we need the mold remediated before we can do anything else on the interior, we really have no choice but to put off the bulk of rehab until the windows come in.

Hopefully next week…

House #15: The Neighbor House

It doesn’t look like we have much traction trying to wholesale this property (though we haven’t really tried other than posting here on the blog and sending a couple emails to investors we know), and are still trying to figure out the best strategy to pursue here. Right now I’m leaning towards doing a rehab, waiting 90 days to sell, and making a nice profit. While I’d still consider wholesaling for a quick return, waiting a couple months doesn’t seem like a bad option given how easy this one will be to fix up and sell, and how much more we’ll make by rehabbing then we would be wholesaling.

I’ll make a final decision next week on what to do with this one…

House #16: The Probate House

As I mentioned yesterday, we’re in the middle of some reasonable renovations on this house, though we won’t be doing a full remodel. The bulk of the work has been on the exterior, and with all the rain we’ve received the past couple weeks, things have gone a bit more slowly than I was hoping. That said, I expect this one to be completed early next week, and we’ll start marketing it.

My wife wants to initially list it considerably higher than I want to, mostly because I feel like we should under-price it given that we didn’t do a full remodel. But, my wife is likely correct that even at her higher price, the new owner will be getting a great deal given the location and the size of the house. She’s usually right about most things, so I’ll probably relent (or just try to get her down a bit).

My goal on this one is a quick sale…the house is about 30 minutes from where we (or our project manager) lives, so going back and forth won’t be fun for very long…

Staging

Because my wife does most of her staging on contingency (meaning she only gets paid if the property sells while staged), we’re always happy when a staging project gets sold.

The investor who owns the Staging #2 project has indicated that he has gotten a lot of good feedback on the property and is currently negotiating a contract. Given the numbers he mentioned to me, I’m not sure if he and the buyer will be able to come together on price, but we’d love for him to make a relatively quick sale on this property.

The same investor owns the Staging #3 project, and I’m thrilled to say that that one is currently under contract and scheduled to close in two weeks. Not only will getting paid on this job be nice, but it will be nice to get the staging furniture back to use on another project.

Mobile Homes

I’ll have more to say in a future post, but there is a good bit going on with the mobile home business.

The buyers for MH #1 didn’t pay January rent, so we may have to start repossession (they still have a couple days before we kick them out).

The buyers for MH #2 and MH #3 are still paying on time.

The buyer for MH #4 bounced his down-payment check, and quietly agreed to leave. Looks like we’re going to turn around and sell this one for cash for a quick profit.

We have MH #5 purchased…more on that next week.

That’s it…have a great weekend!

The property was a low-end condo in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. Because the list price is relatively low, the investor she was staging for didn’t want to spend very much on the staging, so they agreed to do just a basic staging of the condo. This meant a bit less furniture than usual, not as much in the way of accessories and pictures, and no window treatments.

Despite the scaled back staging, the condo looks great. The spaces are well-defined, the color scheme (red and black) works tremendously well with the new hardwood floors, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it will help sell the property, and probably at a higher price. As with the previous project, my wife is working contingency, meaning she’ll only get paid when the house sell, and her payment will be a fixed percentage of the sale price.

Here are some pictures of the final staging:

House #1: The Corn House

Nothing much new with The Corn House. The lease-purchase tenants are consistently paying their rent, and their escrow account (what they pay each month towards their purchase) is up to about $7000. When they are able to buy the house, this will go towards their purchase, and if they never are able to buy the house, this will go right into our pocket.

Currently, we’re thinking they should be able to close before the tax credit expires next June. They’re working on their credit, and so far, doing everything necessary to ensure that they’ll be able to qualify for an FHA loan in the near future.

House #12: The Mini House

This one is still under contract and scheduled to sell by the end of this month. That said, the broker and buyer have been dragging out the process, and while we’ve been told numerous times that the appraisal is going to be “tomorrow,” we’ve yet to see the appraisal done.

Because we’ve given this buyer about 5 weeks to get the purchase completed, we’re not going to extend this contract if they can’t close by the first week of the new year. We’ll happily take their deposit, and start marketing this property to all the other agents that have contacted us over the past few weeks.

House #13: The Poor House

This one is still under contract to sell. The buyer and broker were aggressively trying to get this one closed last week, but that didn’t happen. That said, the appraisal has been completed (we haven’t gotten the results yet), and as far as we know, everything is on-schedule to close in the next week or so.

I assume that we’ll hear about the appraisal by tomorrow, and if there are no issues, we’ll hopefully schedule the closing before the end of the year. If everything goes as scheduled, this will be by-far the easiest deal we’ve ever done.

House #14: The Pine House

We were supposed to close on the purchase of this one last week, but not-surprisingly, the bank couldn’t get everything done in time. We don’t have a new closing scheduled yet, but I imagine it will be in the next week or two.

In the meantime, we’re continuing getting bids on all the work, and trying to figure out how we’ll make our budget…

I’ll post BEFORE pics tomorrow…

House #15: The Neighbor House

The contracts are officially signed for this one, and while we’re scheduled to close on December 30, I have a feeling we won’t quite make that date — again, I don’t imagine the bank will be able to get all the title work and paperwork done by then.

I’ll post BEFORE pics tomorrow…

Mobile Homes

Mobile Homes #1, #2, and #3 are all purchased, and we have received all payments from the buyers (not necessarily on-time, but they’ve paid the late fees!).

Mobile Home #4 was cleaned out today — there was a lot of junk left over from the previous tenant. We’ll start marketing it next week, and expect that we shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a buyer. The mobile home park has been very generous about allowing us to not pay rent for a month or two while we try to sell the home.

Staging

My wife is planning to start — and finish — Staging Project #3 tomorrow. I’ll post pictures when we’re complete…

We will be moving the furniture out of The Poor House for this staging project, so hopefully that house will close without any problems. We’d hate to have to restage the house if the deal falls through!

In fact, he was so happy, he has asked my wife to now stage another of his properties in the Buckhead part of Atlanta (an upscale area near downtown). This second Buckhouse house is a good bit smaller — 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths — and will likely be listed in the $120K range. We’re going to take a look at the property in the next couple days, and assuming my wife is interested in taking this job, we’ll probably have it staged in the next week or so.

Who would have thought we’d be busier with staging than we are with our rehabs!

My wife finished the house yesterday, and it looks fantastic! I expect the seller to be very happy (he saw it partially completed and was thrilled at that point)…hopefully he’ll get a quick sale…

Here are some pictures of the staged house: