All Forum Posts by: Peter Stanford

@Steve G., we will be listing with an agent. From my understanding, if you use a particular agent, she will stage the house for "free". 

We recently got some great news as a comp one street over just listed for 375. Hopefully the market stays that high and we can list higher that we anticipated. 

I agree @Nick Stango, but this one wasn't really making a pile of cash it was about just doing the first one. I would have dragged my feet for a long time if I didn't just jump in with my partner. Thanks for the positive words man, much appreciated!

@Steve G. I would have to confirm, but I don't believe the profits would be taxed.

@Lisa Thoele Thanks! We were both really happy with that tile. I would imagine not much changes from Home Depot to Home Depot. :)

@Mark Cruse I think that we have a bit of time before we need to start worrying about being upside down. I sold a house a year ago directly across the street in one day, so I am hoping that this area is still as hot. But yeah, if we make a few bucks learning, I am all for it.

@Ken T. I have been looking for the next one, but potentially have something lined up. It may be a bit ambitious for our 2nd project though. I constantly stay searching. I guess I will find out if that statement is true!

Exactly! I found myself enjoying the demo quite a bit! Scraping wallpaper and ceilings, not so much.

Thanks, @Kris Ontiveros . The plan is to do just that. Going into this first one, we went over our original budget by quite a bit. Once we have that extra 10-20k we can sub out all of the little time consuming jobs and have a faster turn around time. As of right now, the strong market in this area is coming into play. Hopefully we have a product on the market in time. But good, sound advise and I appreciate it!

Entry/Living Room: http://imgur.com/a/3n7Fh

1st Floor Bathroom: http://imgur.com/a/tw4eG

Here are a few pics from the entry and living room, @Dawn Anastasi  

Or not, maybe they were too big. I will share a link shortly.

Thanks for all of the support!

The money came from a HELOC on my current home. I took 225k in equity and have cash to fund the remaining rehab costs. The monthly holding costs break down like this: 400-600 per month for the HELOC, heating is gas so I would say total spent on that is 500, I paid 750 for the taxes for the quarter, and 150 for the water/sewage. So really, my only monthly reoccurring cost has been the HELOC. The 60-70k included holding costs and any hidden expenses that may come up (like snow removal).

The reason, @Manolo D.  it is taking a long time is that I work a 9-5 and so does my partner. We both do nights and weekends at this property. For a team of two, I think we are making really good progress. We are also at an advantage because the holding costs are so minimal. In our original plan, we were going to try for a cheaper property so that we could have a crew do most of the demo and things like that, but it just didn't work out that way for this one.

The finances look promising, @Steve G. We are aiming at a sale price of 315-320k. Even if we come in on the high end of rehab costs at 70k and low end of the market, we are still dealing with 38k. That 38k will be taxed and we will have selling costs. I still think it is a pretty decent ROI for our first flip and will give me a few extra dollars to put into the next one.

I haven't been very active on these boards as far as participation, but I am still eagerly listening to the Podcasts and checking the forums. My partner and I are now 3 months in on our first flip. We are doing it nights and weekends so we really don't have a conventional time line. 

First, I spent an hour or so every morning checking the MLS. We visited multiple properties, checked a few auction sites, went to local REI events (big shout out to @Justin Silverio), but in the end I ended up finding a property I was fairly familiar with on the MLS. The house was actually my old neighbor's house. There is a long story behind it, but my wife and I always joked that we would buy that house someday.

This particular property had been foreclosed, at no surprise to me, and it was listed at a reasonable price (219K). It is a 3 bed 1 bath Cape with just over 1500sqft of living space. I ended up offering well below that at 195 and got countered at 210. I ended up paying 207.5k in cash.

My agent looked at comps in the area and most were well over 300k. So now comes the cost of rehabbing. My partner estimated between 60-70k for all of the labor and materials, which would leave us a little meat on the bones. We both are heading into this thing with the hopes to learn a steady process and if we make a profit on #1, great! 

So as of now, we have made quite a bit progress. We had a new roof put on right away, a whole new heating system, new windows, and new front and rear doors. The plan is to take care of all of the major factors first, then tackle the remaining interior items.

Luckily, there haven't been any major issues. We are adding a second bathroom and turning the second floor into a master suite. As of now, we are right on budget but maybe off on our original end date. (Not a huge deal as I have a 2.5% interest rate on the money).

I hope to update as we make more progress on this one. I am also actively looking for the next one because it is quite an amazing experience!  

He was telling me I had to "rip the kitchen out". I told him that since everything BUT the stove had been approved, I would just simply remove the stove.

My insurance company did an appraisal and had zero issue with the second kitchen. The simple fix in this case is just removing the stove and being done with it.