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!

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:

After seeing all the work we do, he asked if we’d stage one of his flips in a relatively upscale Atlanta neighborhood (Buckhead)! So, my wife now has her second official staging project…

She is planning to stage this flip with the agreement that the investor will pay a small fee upfront (to cover our costs for furniture delivery), and then pay a percentage of the selling price if/when the house sells. This would allow him to have his house staged with little risk (other than the upfront fee, he only pays if the house sells), and also allows him to defer the cost until after he makes a profit on his flip. And my wife benefits by earning a profit based on selling price, as opposed to a flat fee or monthly fee. This means that the better the staging does to attract buyers, the more my wife will earn from the project.

In fact, we’ve decided to pursue this pricing model with all my wife’s clients, and I have a feeling many home sellers will prefer this compensation method to the traditional upfront plus monthly costs. This may also allow her to start stealing customers from the bigger staging companies in this area, as well as attract home sellers that otherwise wouldn’t consider staging. Certainly, there is a risk on our side (that the house doesn’t sell and we don’t get paid), but we’re willing to take it and see how it works out on the first few projects.

Anyway, the Buckhead project is scheduled for this upcoming week, and my wife expects to have it ready to be put on the market by next weekend…