Update for 10/8/2008

October 8, 2008 · 0 comments

A general update on everything going on with the houses and the continued search for more properties:

House #1: The Corn House

We’re about a week behind schedule on this project (my very first project), but we’re getting down to the wire. Yesterday, we started staging the interior, and today we’ll be finishing staging and our real estate agent will be stopping by to take a look and give us an idea of how much we’ll likely list the property for. She has already warned us that in this neighborhood it could take 120 days or more to sell, so we’re not getting our hopes up for a quick sale. That said, this is a great house that turned out better than I expected. The travertine and tile kitchen, the tiled bathrooms and shower, the hardwoods, and all the new appliances, fixtures and hardware will make this a fantastic home for someone, especially in its price-range.

Unfortunately, the exterior of the house is not quite as far along as the interior. We likely have about 4-5 more days of work on the exterior (landscaping, painting, trim, front porch, etc), and I’m hoping that by the time I get back from vacation on Monday, the exterior will be completed, and the house will be ready to list. My brother will be managing things while I’m gone, so we’ll see if he is better at getting this project completed than I have been.

I’ve always said that I’d be happy just breaking on this first house (I jumped in too quickly and didn’t get a great deal), but now that I see the finished product, thoughts of actually making a profit are running through my mind. I guess setting my expectations low from the beginning was a good thing; any profit on this project is going to feel like a big payday.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some AFTER interior pictures tomorrow, once staging is complete.

House #2: The Bulge House

We are officially out of the due diligence period on the selling of this one, the appraisal came back above the purchase price, and everything seems to be moving towards closing. Unless something unforeseen happens, it’s fairly likely we’ll close on this one in the next couple weeks. The nice surprise with selling The Bulge House is that, while we thought we’d need to wait three months to sell it from the time we purchased it (due to FHA rules on reselling too quickly), it still looks like we’ll be able to close prior to that three-month mark.

As I’m pretty confident we’ll get this deal closed fairly soon, we moved all the staging furniture out of The Bulge House yesterday, and into The Corn House. While I thought we might have to get another set of furniture, the quick sale on this property and the slip in schedule on that one worked out perfectly, and we’re able to use the same furniture.

House #3: The Second Chance House

Things are moving along with The Second Chance House. All the demo is complete, the new doors and windows are in, and framing, electrical, and HVAC are scheduled for this week. We did run into one unforeseen issue — there was some termite damage in the Bonus Room sub-floor, so we decided to rip out the entire sub-floor on that part of the house, and start from scratch. This will cost an extra $300, but we also found out that our cabinets and countertops will come in around $900 less than expected (including installation), so we’re still ahead in terms of budget for this project.

Tearing out the sub-floor in a couple rooms also necessitated having to remove any extra wall. This also works out well, as it lets us redesign the layout of the two back rooms (the Bonus Room and the Laundry Room) to optimize space and create a more optimal layout. I know the budget impact isn’t too bad; I just hope there is little or no schedule impact due to this added work.






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