April 2018

And the winning bid goes too...

After the success of the TAJO house sale, I was itching to find another one. After searching and searching I came across this poor little thing just screaming for a makeover. It was about the same size at TAJO and appeared to be in way better shape. Located in the Fox Run neighborhood of Kempsville, which happens to be a few miles from where Jason lives currently and grew up. We felt really confident in the location. It was listed at $239K which was way more than my conservative margins would allow on paper but Jason and I decided to have a look anyway. We quickly made the decision to go for it and like all investors, we decided to lowball it because, well, it's a Freddie Mac property and you're not hurting anyone feelings. (Sidenote: Doing this in our current market to a seller does not work 99.9% of the time. They get pissed and offended that you don't have the same love for their crusty old home and this can really backfire on you if you really do want to buy it. Consult me for more info.)  That evening I raced home to place a bid. I was informed almost immediately by the agent they had already accepted a bid.....BUUUUUMMMMMER. So It was back to the drawing board. I viewed over 12 homes by myself over the next few weeks before settling on a few with good potential. So I got Jason's contractor blessing on 3 bank owned homes and decided to bid on them all! After a heated negotiation, only 2 remained and both asked for my highest and best. I knew I was up against other investors but when you play in the big leagues you can not get caught up in what others are doing. You have to call it somewhere and not stretch yourself too thin. I submitted my offers and crossed my fingers. The next day I get an email from both listing agents with a counter. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO COUNTER MY HIGHEST & BEST??? When you get asked for Highest & Best you submit your highest & best! GEEZ....And then there was 1. I resubmitted the exact same offer as before and a few days later I got another email from the listing agent saying they decided to ACCEPT my offer but I had to close by the 30th of April. Which happened to be 10 days away! I said yes to the distressed...property!!!! I really felt like a winner because my offer was $48,000 BELOW list price and ironically the exact amount that won me the bid on the TAJO house. I felt it would bring us luck and IT DID! So here we go again! Fingers crossed this one will be even better than the last!

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We love progress yes we do! We love progress how bout you!

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Major item #1 was the new plumbing for the 1/2 bath and new master bath down stairs. Unlike the last rehab on TAJO we did, this one is not on a crawl space which makes relocating plumbing and electrical a little more labor intensive. We had to saw cut and jack hammer the concrete up to trench in the new route for the plumbing in the baths as well as the kitchen island. (By todays code, all built-in islands must have electrical in them.. just FYI) This is a very messy, very labor intensive job so we put Paul on the task of digging it all out. He's by far the youngest on the crew and those other old dudes cant swing a sledge hammer like they used too! Now it looks like we were trying to find the center of the Earth or bury a dead body...? 

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Major item #2 is the electrical. When I purchased this home it had Aluminum wiring which to say the least is less than desirable to most buyers due to the safety aspect and maintenance it requires. I was convinced that we had to rewire the entire home in order to make it right but after speaking with my electrician and my home inspector I learned that would be absurd to rewire the entire home (the cost is almost $16,000)  and we just needed to replace all outlets and switches with a special kind that is specifically made for aluminum. Now we did run fresh copper wire in some of the house like the kitchen where its more important and the large family room off the back already had copper because it had been added on after it was originally built. Either way the home is now safe and once they finish up the city inspector will come out and review everything before we close the walls back up! 

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Major item #3 is the new roof! I am sure the neighbors are happy the outside is finally getting done. She was the ugly duckling on the block. I am a little concerned about my decision not to change the gutter color. I decided to select a brown roof hoping it would just blend in. The neighborhood is very traditional and there are a lot of homes with brown accents. The gutters and metal wrap on the home had been recently updated and I didn't want to spend the money to replace it. You can paint gutters and metal but the home I currently live in has that and its pealing and looks crappy. We are doing a new taupe colored siding and the new windows will be white. Also adding new colored shutters and a front door color will hopefully draw your eye in and take away from the enormous amount of brown that was on the home when I bought it. I think I am leaving the garage door brown but re-wrapping the trim around the door in white to match the windows. I am hoping this doesn't look ridiculous but sometimes you have to do it and see. If it sucks then Its a small replacement cost to change the trim or door color. 

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The crew also ripped out and cut down all the crazy over growth around the house and trimmed off a few huge branches on the big tree in the front yard. Now its nice and opened and you can actually see the house. They loaded up 2 huge yard debris dumpsters I got from the city of VB. (The cost is only $40 during the week and $75 on the weekend if you ever need a yard over-hall and don't want to dump it yourself....your welcome!)

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Next comes windows and hopefully we will have some walls put back together next week! Kitchen cabinets have been ordered and should in hopefully in 3 weeks....Gosh that feels like a long time!!!! 

Anyway, Happy Fathers day everyone! Enjoy your weekend! 

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