Flipping Full-Time in NJ #7 Complete
Let me ask you a question. Do you trust your real estate agent? Do you trust them enough to buy a house from them that they have under contract and that they are ready to hand your way, except you’re not allowed to see it until a few days before closing? Sounds a little unsettling, doesn’t it?
Yeah…we felt that way too. However, we had faith in our agent and believed them when they told us our patience would eventually pay off. We also had a long track record together doing deals. Could it have been naïve to conduct business this way? Maybe, but sometimes with a little more risk comes a little more reward and renovation projects weren’t exactly falling into our lap at the time, even with as much marketing as we’d been doing.
Back in January of this year (2019), I got a call from my agent about a house that was currently occupied but that would soon be abandoned by the current occupant due to a lack of payment and an upcoming auction. We told them we were interested, hesitantly, but wanted to see the inside first before we committed. We were told that because the situation was a little touchy, we wouldn’t be able to step inside until we completed our CO inspection before closing. Although we did have ways out of the deal should the house be a complete disaster inside, they would not have been easy to coordinate and would most likely cost us in one way or another due to how close they would have been to the actual closing date. After a long bit of pondering the numbers and weighing the worst-case scenario, we decided to move forward; and man did it pay off.
I’ll never forget walking into this house, months after first hearing about it, and seeing it for the first time. It wasn’t bad! After months of anxiously waiting to see the inside of the house, my imagination was running wild as to what could be wrong with it but we were pleasantly surprised. The kitchen cabinets had been removed but the granite was still leaning up against the wall, most of the house was tiled and it was completely salvageable, the hardwood flooring in the living room and laminate in the bedroom was in good shape and all of the mechanicals were clean and in working order. Score!
Now, this house wasn’t a complete breeze to repair, as we soon found out, but it wasn’t as bad as the house we had just come from (see our previous blog post on our 6th flip). We ended up renovating one of the two bathrooms, cleaning up the other as it was in good condition, designing the kitchen cabinets around the already existing countertops (which were a level 5 granite called Cosmic and worth roughly $100/sf), re-tiling the mechanical room and carpeting two of the three bedrooms. We also added a new roof, demolished two large chicken coups in the backyard, built stairs up to the rear French doors and cleaned up the yard.
Taking a look at the numbers, we purchased the house for a little under $160,000 and had a renovation budget of $25,000. We went $2,000 over budget due to some mold remediation and having to demolish those chicken coups but we listed it for $250,000 and got an offer $10,000 over listing! First time that’s ever happened and we hope it’s not the last. This offer came in less than a week from its initial listing so we can’t complain about the hold time either. All in all, this was probably our best project yet!
Check out the pictures for some before and after shots.
