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Matthew Gallo
  • Investor
  • Charlestown, MA
4
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15
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My First Flip - Boston, MA

Matthew Gallo
  • Investor
  • Charlestown, MA
Posted Jan 18 2015, 15:23

Hi All,

I've been on this site for quite some time and wanted to announce my first deal.  It was a little more unconventional, as I lived in the house while I worked on it and the flip was over the course of about 8 months.  It's the only way I could do a flip, as I was 26 when I purchased and didn't have the funds to float 2 mortgages.  

I purchased a house in Boston in 2013, it was a single family row house with 2 full bathrooms and 2 bedrooms with a fully finished basement.  

Here are some details:

Purchase:  $456,000 

SqFt: 1250

Bed/Bath: 2/2

Finished Basement

Small outdoor patio

Small galley kitchen

Hardwood floors

No Condo Fee

Prior to me purchasing the house it was actually completely re-done. Whoever whoever did the work did not spend their time or $ properly as the work was pretty bad.  

The bedrooms and bathrooms were fine, but the kitchen was extremely small and not functional.  There was also a wall that took up a lot of space in the dining room and blocked 2 windows from the rest of the house.

I ended up taking the wall down, which was a lot of fun!  I also ripped down the entire ceiling as it was a ugly swirl pattern that did not look very clean.  I put up a flat ceiling with a smooth finish, and sunk 8 new lights in for better lighting.  

There was some strange framing up there too that I ripped down. You can see that whoever framed it out didn't even use 2x4's, they used small 2x3's to save money!  

After ripping out the wall, there was so much more light coming into the house!

From there, we pulled the kitchen around the wall.  We replaced the electric stove with a gas stove and bought top of the line Bosch appliances.  We also installed top of the line cabinets, with soft close doors as well as granite counter tops.  

Here is the finished kitchen.  

We had the entire house professionally painted and all of the floors were completely sanded and re-finished.

Overall I'm extremely happy with how the house turned out and the new owner should be very happy with the quality of the work.  There is plenty more that they can do to the house and other rooms, so there is still a lot of potential there.

Here is where we ended up:

Asking price: $529,000

Purchase: $576,000

Investment (Work, materials etc): $30,000

I used the money to purchase a new home, and I've since started marketing for flips to do on the side.  I've gotten a few leads, but nothing too appealing yet.  My goal this year for 2015 is to try and get 2 houses done!

Thanks,

Matt

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