The Corn House: Staging Pics (Rehab #2)

Hi Jan -

We actually used different painters on this house than most of our others, but we certainly credit our painters for a lot of our success. They are tremendously detail oriented, and do an amazing prep job, including fixing bad siding, bad sheetrock, replacing bad trim and other wood around the exterior, caulking all seams, etc. While the painting part is pretty standard, their amazing prep work is what makes all the houses look great.

As for painting vinyl, if you take a look at the BEFORE pics of this house, you’ll notice that the entire exterior is vinyl siding and trim. We painted it (the first time we’ve tried painting vinyl) and it came out great, as you can see in the pictures.

And yes, we almost always paint the entire interior and exterior, including all trim, gutters, etc. While a house may look like it doesn’t need paint, it ALWAYS looks much, much better after prepping and painting.

Hey Jan -

I think we are finding some great deals for a couple reasons:

1. We’re in a slightly higher-priced part of the suburbs. Many of the new investors are focusing on the run-down parts of the city where you can get houses for less than half of what I’m paying, but the neighborhoods are horrible, resale is near impossible, and the houses are just plain bad. Even better, I think a lot of investors think the prices where I am are higher than they are, as it took a while for the market to drop in my area. If they knew I was picking things up for these prices, I’d probably have more competition, but they gave up on this area back in 2007 when prices were twice as high as they are now;

2. We are able to move quickly. If a great deal comes along, we’ll get an offer in the first day, and hopefully have a contract by the second day, before a lot of part-time investors have even seen the property (the best deals are under contract by Friday, before the bulk of the investors have the weekend to find them);

3. We don’t mind buying the stuff that nobody else wants. Major rehabs, mold, and even some structural stuff doesn’t really bother us, so when a property has been on the market for 100 days without an offer, the bank is often willing to consider our low-ball bid;

4. We have some relationships with the big REO listing agents, and they will try to help us out when they can. Nothing illegal, but they’ll push the seller to consider our offers because they know we can reliably close on-time and without any drama;