The new site is pretty much complete and we are up and running. We’ve gone from Flipping Crazy to Flipping Smart…. come check it out at www.flippingsmart.com.

Click HERE!!!!!

On the house flipping front we are still cruising right along. We’ve got three new properties lined up that we should be closing on over the next 10 days…. and I just heard from my negotiator that we got another short sale deal approved today.

The three new purchases are all really good deals. Two of them are REO’s that we are buying through the same agent and one is a short sale that we have been negotiating for the last 10 months.

One of the bank owned houses has yet another pool. This is the fourth pool we’ve had to deal with in the last three months. We were thinking we may actually be able to save this one, but after draining it and having a pool company look at it closer, it turns out there are some problems that are going to make it too costly to fix. In determining if we are going to keep a pool we look at how much it’s gonna cost to fix it and get it up and running vs. how much it will cost to fill it in….. usually it’s just cheaper to fill them in…. and so that is what we do.  Of the four pools, one was an above ground that we knocked down, and three were inground that we filled in. Here in the Northeast pools add very little resale value, if any at all, so that is why we fill them in.

Heres a look at it before we drained it. This thing looked and smelled like a swamp. Notice the nice green color.

Green Pool

Dominic tried to throw a whole bunch of chlorine in their to clean it up, but I don’t think it worked.

I’ve got to share this video with you…. it’s the funniest thing ever. I was laughing so hard when I saw this on TV for the first time. This is Armando visiting our pool pictured above!!!!

LOL!!!!! Oh man I could watch that all day

OK, back to why you came here; Flipping Houses.

The spring market is here and there are alot of buyers out trying to beat the deadline for the tax credit. So far we’ve put 143 Lloyd Ave and 70 Glenwood St on the market, both are now under agreement with home inspections scheduled for this weekend.

Next up to hit the market is 42 Wexford St. I posted some pics of this house a few weeks back as we were winding down. Now I have all the final pictures of the home finished and staged. Have a look;

Exterior

42 Wexford St Springfield MA

House For Sale Wexford St Springfield

New Driveway and 2 Car Garage

On the exterior we added a new roof, installed new windows, painted all the trim, added new shutters, repointed the chimney, added a new driveway, and installed two new garage doors with automatic overhead openers. We also pulled out 7 overgrown shrubs that were blocking the front of the house. The roof on this house was very expensive and kind of caught us by surprise. It has a very steep pitch and because of all the various dormers there were a lot of cuts that needed to be made. Also the roof had two layers of shingles over the original cedar shakes, so all that had to be ripped off and we had to lay new plywood.  

Interior

Living Room looking at Staircase

Living Room Fireplace and Mantle

Den located off Living Room

Dining Room

Archway between Dining Room and Kitchen

Kitchen Pic 1

Kitchen Pic 2

Kitchen Pic 3

Archway Looking from Kitchen into Dining Room

Full Bath Pic 1

Full Bath Pic 2

Master Bedroom

On the interior we did a full gut of the kitchen, added the archway and breakfast bar between the kitchen and dining room, opened the wall between the kitchen and living room, redid both bathrooms, added tile to the kitchen and bathroom floors, refinished all the hardwoods, did some new sheetrock, painted everything, did some new electric including a new 200 amp panel, added all new plumbing, and installed a new boiler.

So thats it for Wexford… another successful project. It’s live on the MLS now and with the nice weather we are suppose to have this weekend hopefully we’ll have some traffic and a couple offers to follow!!!

To all my religious folks out there, have a good Good Friday…. and to the rest of you, have a good Friday

I was a bit surprised to find that the interior of the house is no where near as bad as the exterior. Don’t get me wrong….. it definitely needs lots of work, and it smells terrible, but overall it isn’t as bad as we first thought.

We are doing a full renovation on over 3,000 sq. ft., so this job is going to take several months to complete. The budget is around $75k-$80k, but hopefully our contractor can find a way to save a few bucks here and there.

 Heres a bunch of before pictures for you to look at:

Bowdoin St Springfield MA

Pool

Pondwater in Pool

Illegal/Halfassed addition built on rear of House

Overgrown Yard

Interior of illegal addition

Kitchen

Kitchen pic 2

Kitchen Pic 3

Dining Room

Living Room

Main Hallway/Staircase

Full Bath 1

Full Bath 2

Half Bath

Bedroom with Fireplace

Bedroom 2

Scarface Bedroom

The REO broker told us that they took 8 dumpsters worth of trash out of this house just from the inside, and then they hired a professional cleaning crew to come in and scrub everything down…. and it still looks real nasty, and smells even worse. If you add up the cash-for-keys the bank had to give to the owners to get them out ($2,000), the cost of the trash out and the cost of the cleaning crew, the bank probably spent more getting the house ready for sale than what we paid for it!!!! Not to mention the $176,000 they lost on the mortgage they gave in 2006.  Hmmmm I wonder why all these banks are going out of business??

I’ll post some more updates of this project as things progress, as well as a few videos that we’ve put together.

Well we hit some delays getting our heat on there because the gas company told us they cut the line at the street and they wouldn’t be able to fix it until spring time. Long story short, they finally sent someone to the house and realized the line wasn’t cut at the street and we did have gas to the house, however we lost a good amount of time because we couldn’t get heat to the house, which also meant no water.

So I have a video we put together awhile back, as well as some more recent photos of the property near completion. Heres the video:

And here are some pictures of the house nearly complete. This is the first property we started using those nice archways, we borrowed the idea from Tom Tarrant over at www.TomTarrant.com .

Check it out:

Living Room with Bamboo Flooring

Front Door Looking from Living Room

Archway Between Dining Room and Kitchen

Kitchen

Full Bath

Master Bedroom

Finished Attic Space

New Main Support Beam

This house was a small two family home that we converted to a single family. It is now 4-5 bedrooms with 2 1/2 baths and maybe 1600-1700 square feet.

Next step is to stage it and get it SOLD!!

We put a  FSBO sign out on all our properties as we are nearing completion and Dom has been receiving quite a few calls  from interested buyers. I also noticed quite a few google searches for 209 Gifford St finding their way to this blog. The property is in an awesome neighborhood and its a good sign that we are getting alot of interest already.

Heres a couple pics of some of the work;

209 Gifford St Springfield MA

New Front Entrance Just Added

New Deck just Built off Rear of House

Open Kitchen

New Hardwoods just Installed

Double Sink Vanity

Glass Tile Inlay

Stainless Steel Appliances, Birch Cabinets

This house has come a long way since we first purchased it.

Well thats all I’ve got for tonight. I’ll work on getting some updates done on a few of our other houses.

First up on the docket is 42 Wexford St. This beauty is done and we are staging it right now. The renovation of this property included a new roof, new gutters, two new decks, two new garage doors with openers, new driveway, brand new kitchen, renovating the full bath and adding a half bath, new electrical service and some new wiring, new plumbing, new boiler, new stainless steel appliances, new flooring throughout and fresh paint….. is that all????

This puppy shines and whoever buys it is going to be very lucky. Heres a look:

42 Wexford St, Springfield MA

Living Room

Fireplace

Kitchen

Kitchen

Dining Room

Full Bath

Master Bedroom

Finished Attic Space

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. I love the look of the Tudor style house!!! I think it’s those pointy roofs over the front entrance.

We’ll probably do some landscaping to the front of the property, clean it, stage it, then sell it.    

On to the next one……

On the marketing front, we picked up a big box truck a few weeks back that we’ve been having our contractor use to cruise around town with. The truck serves two purposes; it’s great for our contractor to store all his tools and transport materials to all the various job sites, but more importantly we are using it for a bit of shameless advertising. Heres a look at it:

Sweet Box Truck

Now isn’t that a sweet ride!!!! It’s too bad our contractor is married with kids because I know he could be getting a lot of chicks driving around in a truck like that  

On the deal front we are going to be closing on the Giant Historic house next week as the title issues are finally cleared up. We spent today in Boston visiting a friend of mine who develops six unit condominium complexes. These are new construction buildings that he develops in existing neighborhoods. He builds them to look like older historic homes to match the surrounding properties. His buildings come out awesome and he uses some real nice exterior paint schemes. We visited a couple of his properties to get some good ideas for our exterior paint colors on the historic house. Heres a look at a few of his buildings:

House #1

This property has a darker sage green for the main body… almost an olive-green. The trim is a pale yellow and the accents are a burnt orange. I really like this particular look.

Historic Color Scheme 1

House #2

This house has a very deep red for the main body with a pale yellow trim and black accents. I think this may be a little too dark for what we are looking for.

House #3

This property has a lighter sage green for the main body with cream trim and a very rich/deep purple on the trim. I like this color scheme as well but I think I prefer the burnt orange over the deep purple.

Historic House Paint Color #3

House #4

This property has a lighter blue for the main body with pale yellow trim and burnt orange accent.

I’m leaning towards a sage green for the main body and I really like the contrasting look of the burnt orange accents. Tomorrow I’m going to go to Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore to look at their books and get some more ideas. We are suppose to be meeting with the local Historical Society on Monday so I’d like to have the exterior paint colors nailed down so I can show them what we are going to be using.

Let me know which of the houses you like or which colors you think look good. Leave a comment as any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!

I showed you our finished house on Ravenwood St a few days back. Now have a look at our property located at 143 Lloyd Ave in Springfield. We did a pretty extensive rehab on this property including new siding, a new roof, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, new boiler, all new plumbing, new flooring and fresh paint. We also took a 3 season enclosed breezeway located between the garage and kitchen and turned it into living space. This additional living area is a great feature as it adds space for a formal dining room or family room.

Here it is:

143 Lloyd Ave

New Entrance from converted Breezeway into Kitchen

Kitchen - Stainless Applainces, Tile Backsplash

Kitchen- 18x18 Floor Tiles, All Wood Cabinets

Eat In Kitchen/ Dining Area

Living Room - Large Bay Window

Bathroom - Totally Updated

Bathroom - Tile Floors, Tile Tub Surround

New Shower Panel w/ 8 Body Jets

Converted Breezeway, now added Living Space

Bedroom

Wow, so thats it…. came out pretty darn nice!!!  You can see what it looked like before here: Lloyd Ave Before Pics.

We were suppose to be closing on the big ugly pink and purple house this week but there are a few title issues that need to be cleared up, so looks like we will be waiting a little longer on that one. Heres a picture of that house in case you don’t remember it:

Well, thats all I got for tonight. I looked at eight properties today; four that I want to buy, and four that we already own… and now I’m ready for bed.

Adios Amigos

We purchased this house as a short sale on January 21, 2010, had the renovation complete by February 12, and had our new buyer moving in on February 20th. That is lightning fast… but we did cheat a little bit. See ,we actually started working on the house about two weeks before we even owned it, a little risky, yes, but the rehab business is about taking risks. Also, we had been working with this buyer for a few months. She had wanted to buy our Plumtree Rd house and Lasalle St house but missed out on both those… so she was very determined not to miss this one. She saw Ravenwood before we were even done with the work and said she’d take it…. so it was an easy sale!!!

The house came out real nice… I’m not a huge fan of the color of the roof, but one half was brand new shingles (reddish brown color) and the other half of the roof needed to be replaced. So rather than tear off the brand new section we just matched what was there (the reddish brown shingle). My first choice is always a blackish grey shingle, this color looks awesome no matter what color the house is. The only time we really deviate from this is when we have to match an existing shingle… and honestly, I don’t know what some of these homeowners are thinking when they are choosing a roof color??? Shingle color is something I am very particular about, almost like a pet peeve, but I realize I am probably boring most of you so let’s get on with the pictures;

Ravenwood St Springfield MA

Ravenwood St Front

So I just realized you can’t even really see the roof in these photos… just take my word for it.

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Kitchen 3

Kitchen -- Again....

I took alot of pictures of the kitchen, I think it came out nice!! Check out the appliances, top of the line GE Profile… yes that is a Double Oven!!  We went even more over the top on the Fridge….

GE Cafe Series French Door Fridge

If you look hard enough you can see the little GE symbol on the Fridge is Red… this is the Cafe series…. and supposedly it is a step up from the Profile Series… which means it’s a real bad-ass fridge, almost better than Electrolux!!! Plus it’s a French Door Fridge… so that makes it even more awesome.

Kitchen Looking in from Living Room

Living Room

Dining Area -- Nice 18x18 Tiles on the Floor

Living Room from Kitchen

Bathroom

Tiled Tub Surround with Glass Tile Border

Shower Panel w/ Glass Tile Inlay

 We did the bathroom a little different here… We used a glass tile inlay and I think it looks real Sweet. You will see this in all our houses moving forward. Also we added one of those curved Hotel Shower Bars… a nice little upgrade.

Bedroom

Finished Basement

So, that’s about it for Ravenwood… In and Out in the blink of an eye, a real text-book flip. On to the next one!!