“Hey, Look, He’s Still Alive”

Apologies for being a bad house flipping blogger of late, as it’s been the usual deadly (to blogging) combination of being very busy and not having a lot in the way of “sexy” updates or photos to share from the current renovation project at the Creek House.

We’re about 2/3rds of the way done with the Creek House, with most of the heavy lifting done, shifting into sheetrock/paint/tile mode. I’m hoping to be done by June 5th, which will take a little hustle but is still very much doable.

The budget is still on track, and it’s looking like we’ll come in at about $45,000 for the entire renovation. I was initially hoping to keep it at just under $40,000, but the plumbing gods had different things in mind. We eventually got a bid of $5,400 for the HVAC installation that we went with (which was close enough to the $5,000 I budgeted for that), but the best plumbing bid we got was for $4,400, way off the $2,000-$2,500 I was hoping for. (And that one turned into closer to $5,000 when they discovered that the waste line tying into the city sewer had to be completely replaced and re-routed, with two new cleanouts added.)

Overall, though, this job has been clicking right along, and I’ve been much happier with our contractor on this job, as he’s hired on some more guys and we’ve been able to do better with scheduling both work and materials arriving, so we haven’t had as many wasted days as on the last project.

Recent sales activity and comps are also pretty encouraging. The market is far from going gangbusters, but what is moving most are 3-2s in the $115,000-$130,000 range, and those are almost all generic, boring starter homes, 1200-1300 sq. ft., builders-grade fixtures, smallish lots, cookie-cutter construction, etc. The Creek House will come in at 3-2, 1,600 sq. ft. on a half acre lot, and pretty much blow everything else away as far as upgrades (12 foot ceilings, backyard deck, French doors, and all that good stuff) and should be a quick, easy sell at $129,500. I’ll be at around $85,000 as far as total invested in the property, so anything in the mid 120s would make me pretty happy.

I’m heading out to Vegas for another poker freelance gig from June 30th-July 15th, so I’m not sure what immediate REI plans are going to be, once we finish up the Creek House. Unless something too juicy to pass up falls into my lap, I may take a break after the Creek House, and knock out some more work on our personal home, as well as prepping Larry’s House for renovation in August/September, when the redemption period expires.