Aug
21
Painty McPainterton
August 21, 2007 |
So, knock on wood, the Main St. house appears to be done. I have a few hours of general scrubbing and cleaning tonight, as well as putting up a few more decorations for staging and moving a patio set over, but a marathon day yesterday knocked out the remaining work.
Photos coming shortly (I swear), as we’ll probably use my photos for the MLS listing, so even more motivation to provide photographic proof to back up all my babbling here.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I definitely made a few mistakes that go into the column to avoid in the future, but I think I did a pretty good job of picking my battles, as far as what I focused and spent money on. Of course, the real proof will be in whether a buyer thinks that, so, you know, fingers crossed.
Have an inspection lined up for House #2, and things are already rolling on the loan front. Mortgage banker is working up a few different options, but I’m looking at something along the lines of 5% down, 7-7.5% interest rate, which isn’t spectacularly awesome but not bad for a loan for an investment property.
I’m trying not to get too far ahead of myself as far as plans for the house, as there’s definitely going to have to be some give and take, depending on estimates I get for a master suite/bath addition. That’s the big wild card, as I can ballpark most of the other expenses but I’m just not sure what to expect there. Depending on what that looks like, some things like new siding may stay or go, and I may completely replace the kitchen cabinets or try to work with the existing ones, etc.
Instead of trying to twist contractor arms to come give me an estimate before I close (and just dealing with the logistics of getting access to the house), I’m probably going to wait until I actual close, and get a chance to putter around the house some. That worked well with the Main St. house, as far as spending time there doing some initial grunt work like ripping out carpets, taking out the old ceiling tile in the kitchen, and getting the bathroom ready for tile, and getting a better feel for the house and layout before I made any bigger decisions on a few things. Regardless of any other plans, the existing bathroom has to be gutted and basically rebuilt from scratch, so I’ll likely start there, and get estimates for the larger stuff at that point.
After poking around a bit looking at what’s on the market, the unofficial, always-subject-to-change goal I’m shooting for is to be able to list it at $159,000, and to have it back on the market by November 1. Based on the above, it’s sort of silly to throw out a target for budgets and what-not, but something in the $30,000-$40,000 range would put me at $115,000-$120,000. Which would work for me, as far as potential profits. I know those aren’t eye-popping potential gains, but again, if I can do 3-4 flips like this a year, part-time, and make $10,000-$20,000 in net profit per flip, well, that’s good enough for me.
