Jun
19
So Long, Housie House
June 19, 2007 |
Barring any last minute obstacles (knock on wood), we’re scheduled to close on the Austin house this afternoon. Despite some last minute nit-pickiness by the buyers (I hope they realize that as home owners they’re going to need to learn how to sweep a few floors and touch up paint here and there), things have been mostly smooth sailing.
Must admit it was kind of weird, though, walking out of the house for the last time late last night. It was the first house my wife and I lived in, we had our wedding rehearsal dinner in the backyard, and all that sort of mushy stuff, so it’s got more than its fair share of emotional attachment. It’s been easy the last few months to view it as an obstacle dragging my flipping plans down, and I am pretty damn relieved to be selling and be done with it, but it was a very good house for us, and we had many very good times there, so it’s kind of sad to finally walk away for good.
Onward and upward, though. It’s a much nicer house and in much better shape than when we bought it in November 2003, and we’re looking at a net profit of about $40K when it’s all said and done, which isn’t too shabby.
While it wasn’t a flip per se, the last month or two was close to it, as far as all of the renovations I did before selling, and all in all that was pretty encouraging, as far as my ability to use my monkey skills to squeeze out additional profits. The kitchen and bathroom upgrades definitely paid off, as we’d have never gotten what we did without that, and wouldn’t have moved the property as quickly.
Spending the extra money to buy furniture and decorations for staging also was a good choice I think, as it was a pretty stark difference after emptying out everything the last few days. It was easier for us as we didn’t necessarily have to go high end for that stuff (as the house is a fairly basic 3-2 starter home, and that’s what I plan on flipping in the future, as far as future uses for the same staging stuff we bought), so we were able to do it reasonably cheaply by shopping at IKEA and Hobby Lobby, and dressing up some of the stuff we got with nicer throws and coverings.
As far as mistakes to avoid in the future, the biggest one was all the time I wasted mucking around with plumbing stuff. In theory, I like knowing how to do a little bit of everything, but time was a little more of the essence in this case, with the Main St. house to work on as well, and I should have just called a plumber at the very beginning to knock out everything that needed doing, as I literally wasted days of work on what would have taken a professional a few hours.
I also need to be more proactive about tasks that I know need doing, instead of relying on the fact that I know I have until X date to do Y, and that completion of Y will take Z amount of time. Things like waiting until the weekend before closing to clean out the attic and make the repairs they requested, when I could have done that a week ago. I’m fairly good about keeping an internal schedule in my head and alloting time for complettion of everything that needs to be done, but that obviously doesn’t include the unforeseeable, and I need to compensate for such things, especially with stuff that I know must be done, at some point.
