Everything went off without a hitch yesterday as far as closing on House #3, so it’s officially mine now, and the fun can begin in earnest. And yeah, I know, I need to come up with a more creative naming system than “House #1. House #2, House #3″. Maybe I should wait a bit until House #3 is more presentable, as if I tagged with a nickname now it’d be along the lines of “The Tiny Little Crappy Boarded-Up Abandoned House”.
As a reminder, here’s the beaut of the house I just bought (and the obvious tilt in the first photo is camera pilot error, as the house and foundation are surprisingly level):
It was fairly amusing talking to the seller, as she’s a realtor based out of Austin, and kind of a piece of work, as she seems to mainly buy houses to flip herself, in all sorts of cracked-out neighborhoods in and around Austin.
She did have a lot of useful info about House #3 in general and the status of the abandoned houses to either side of House #3, as her handyman who’d been trying to fix up House #3 talked to the neighbors a good bit. It’s sounding more hopeless as far as trying to buy the adjacent abandoned pink house right next to House #3, as it’s involved in various suits and liens, and the estate that owns it consists of like ten million kids, half of which are in jail, and it’s apparently been sold once at the tax deed sale but that was rescinded as all of the estate wasn’t properly notified, etc.
I think I’m going to try to start the process of simply getting it condemned and torn down by the city, as they’re apparently good at acting on such matters and it should be an easy enough case to make, as there’s not much left of the house, people have obviously been hanging out there and getting high in the not too distant past, there’s a church and an elementary school less than three blocks away, yada yada yada. Just having the eyesore next door gone would probably improve our property value by $5K, so it’s more than worth jumping through all of the necessary hoops.
The seller also had heard that the guy who owns the empty lot on the other side and the other abandoned house on our side of the street apparently wants $30,000 for both, which is, how shall we say, wildly optimistic. The house was apparently built by midgets, as it has 6 foot ceilings throughout, and is half-collapsed as it is, so the only real value is in the two lots, which are reasonably worth something like $8k-$10K. I sent the owner a letter a few weeks back, offering to buy them, but never heard back. He’s a couple of years behind in taxes, though, so that’s one to definitely keep an eye on, as far as potentially picking it up at the tax deed sale.
Our contractor is already at work on House #3, which is a welcome change from projects past. While I might be half-crazy for tackling House #3, it’s a world away from where I was last year at this time, in the midst of trying to get House #2 done. While the House #2 saga ultimately ended well, I’m pretty thankful to not be entangled in a similar project this time around, as far as sinking a ton of money into a house that I’m praying I’ll be able to sell, (and one that’d only marginally break if I had to rent it), working with a contractor that I trusted about as far as I could throw him, etc.
‘Tis a much different story this time around, which I’m very thankful for. Not that House #3 won’t have the inevitable bumps and snags, and I’m sure I’ll be sick of it by the time we’re finished with it, but it’s nice to have a solid game plan going in, to the point that I’m already looking for the next project, instead of hoping and praying the current one works out.