Wow, it was bitterly cold today. The high was 16 but the wind was whipping at 30 mph so it sent a chill right through you…. it was almost unbearable.  Even my little snowdog Teddy couldn’t take it. Usually when I let him out to do his business in the morning he plays in the snow or meanders around sniffing the ground for 20 minutes, not today, he did his thing and raced back inside within a minute and headed straight for my jacket to warm up!! 

Teddy Warming Up

Well, enough complaining about the weather… not much you can do about it anyways, except move down south (Hi Mom and Dad).

So it looks like the two family on Leete St will be the last rehab that we buy in 2009. We’re hoping to close on the sale of 37 Mansfield St before the new year, but I’m not sure thats going to happen. We need the building inspector to sign off on our Certificate of Occupancy in order to close, and he is away on vacation and nobody within the building department seems to know when he is coming back???

Heres a look at Leete St. I don’t have any inside pictures because it is still boarded and I didn’t have my screw gun to get inside. The great thing about this property is that we’ve got a homeless guy living in the shed behind the house…. I’m sure he’s not gonna want to pay us rent so I think we’ll have to evict him!!!

Leete St

This house is located in a section of town we normally don’t buy in, but it was a good deal and we are looking to establish a good business relationship with the private lender who owned the property.

So, it’s a few days before christmas, and it seems like everybodys on vacation this week…. but not us, we’ve been busy closing two deals over the last two days. The first deal was the purchase of a 2 family rehab located on Leete St in Springfield. I don’t have any pictures of this property but I’ll be getting some to post shortly. The second was the sale of our finished rehab at 93 White St in Westfield.

We also started work on a new project that we purchased a few weeks back. The house is located at 143 Lloyd Ave in Springfield. We purchased this property from the next door neighbor of our 17 Bessemer St house. He approached us as we were finishing up the renovation of Bessemer and said he had inherited his mother’s house, it needed a good amount of work, and he wanted to know if we would be interested in buying it. We took a look at the house and made him an offer…. after much negotiating with him and his brothers, we were able to come to an agreement. We had to wait a few months for the house to go through probate before we could close. It’s going to be a pretty easy rehab as the house is your basic single level ranch; we’re doing a new roof, new siding, new gutters, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, redo all the hardwoods, and convert the breezeway into a dining room. The house did have an inground pool that had not been maintained over the years. The liner was gone and trees were growing up out of the middle of the pool. Instead of spending some big bucks to fix the pool, we just crushed the concrete and filled it in.

Here are some before pictures;

143 Lloyd Ave

Backyard after Filling the Pool In

Rear of House

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Kitchen/Eat In Area

Bathroom 1

Bathroom 2

Living Room 1

Living Room 2

Bedroom

Breezeway being Converted to Dining Area

Basement

I didn’t get any pictures of the pool before we filled it in as the guys were too quick in getting over there… too bad as it would have made a good video. This is going to be a great little house and will be perfect for a first time buyer once we are finished with the renovations.

It’s been a pretty busy 10 days since I last posted. We closed on a new rehab project on Parker St in Springfield on Wednesday. We also made deals on three new properties; the first is a two family that we are buying from a local money lender, the second is a short sale that we finally got approved after working with Bank of America for almost a year, and the third is an estate property that needs a pretty thorough cosmetic overhaul. 

On top of all that we still have our 6-7 ongoing projects and we will be selling two of our finished properties next week; 37 Mansfield St and 93 White St. 

Now for our ongoing projects….. Things are moving along well at Gifford St. Most of the rough framing is complete and the plumbers have been there the last couple days doing their rough in. The outside has been completely sided, the new roof is on and we’ve added the new driveway. Heres a look; 

New Driveway

New Second Floor Bath framed in with Tub and Plumbing

Second Floor Bedroom closet framed in

New Second Floor Bedroom with Full Dormer

Kitchen looking in from Dining Room

First Floor Gutted

New Stairway Going In

The electricians will be coming in next to do all their rough work once the plumber finishes up. From their we get all our rough inspections done and then it will time to for insulation and sheetrock. Once we get the sheetrock up it will start to look like a house again!!

37 Mansfield Before

The renovation work is totally complete at 37 Mansfield St. The property came out awesome and we found a buyer without even having to put it on the MLS. This property had alot going against it; it was condemned, it was fire damaged, the porches were falling down, and it had some serious structural problems… but we fixed all that and turned it into a real gem!! With over 3,700 square feet, 10+ bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms this was by far the biggest property that we have rehabbed. We started renovation of the home in June and work was completed at the end of September. We ended up converting this property from a three family to a two family. This was a total gut down to the studs; we did new electric, plumbing, heating systems, roof, siding, windows, kitchens, baths, sheetrock, etc…..   

You can see more of the before pictures here and some video here.

Heres a look at the finished product:

37 Mansfield St- After

37 Mansfield After

Kitchen Unit 1

Kitchen Unit 1

Bathroom Unit 1

Bedroom Unit 1

Living Room Unit 1

Bedroom Unit 2

Third Floor Living Room Unit 2

I was amazed out how nice the hardwoods came out. When we first started work I didn’t think we were going to be able to save any of the floors but our hardwood refinisher was able to work some real magic on those old floors!!

So have another look at the before pictures here and let me know what you think….

Renovations are moving right along at the Gifford St project. When I last showed you this house it had no roof (see the picture above).

Now after a little over a week we’ve got the new roof on, the dormer is built out, all the new windows are installed and the house is being wrapped in vinyl siding. Once the outside is complete, the roof is shingled, and the property is weather tight we’ll begin framing the new layout on the first and second floor.

Heres a look at the house so far;

209 Gifford; siding under way

Gifford St with New Dormer and Roof Line

Rear/Side View

New Dormer off Back of House and Repaired Chimney

New Second Floor

New Second Floor

Skylights added to Front of House

This will Soon be 2 Bedrooms and a Full Bath!!!

So thats where we’re at now. It’s a pretty significant change from what we started with. The raised roof line and bumped out dormer gives us a ton of room on the second floor. We’ll now be adding two large bedrooms and a full bath up there.

Well thats about it for tonight. I’m taking a lead abatement class all day tomorrow so I can become certified to remove lead from our properties. This is gonna come in real handy…. especially on the multi family homes so we’ll have no problems getting clean lead certificates.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I spent the last week visiting family in South Carolina for the holiday…. but I’m back home now and it’s time to get back to work.

All rehabs are moving forward nicely. I think we have 7 houses under renovation right now so we are crazy busy! We actually put another rehab under contract the day I left for South Carolina and we will be closing on it either this Friday or next week on Mon or Tues. I’ll give you the details of that property once we close on it.

Fortunately not all our ongoing projects are full guts like Gifford St and Columbus Ave . We bought a light cosmetic rehab about two weeks ago, located at 82 Lasalle St in East Longmeadow, MA,  and we began construction on it Monday. This house is in the best condition by far out of all the properties we’ve bought. The sellers were downsizing and had already found their retirement home. They didn’t want to deal with the hassles of listing the property with a realtor and they didn’t want to face the prospects of missing out on their retirement home dealing with the delays associated with working with traditional buyers. The seller found our company website over the internet and said we are exactly what he is looking for. We took a look at the house, negotiated a fair deal, and closed on it in two weeks.

The house is already sided and has a new roof on it. We are going to do some upgrades to the kitchen and bathroom, paint all the walls, refinish the hardwoods, install new windows, upgrade the electrical panel and do some other misc. upgrades. This should be an easy two week job and we’ll have it back on the market. Here are some pictures of the house:

82 Lasalle St East Longmeadow

Front of House

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Dining Area

Bathroom

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Hallway

Living Room with Pellet Stove

So thats it… the furnace is good, the water heater is good, the sellers already sided it and put a new roof on it.  We’ll modernize it and bring it up to todays standards than we’ll unleash it to the market.

So what do you think?? Looks a little easier than Gifford St!!

We’re a week into the Gifford St project and we are making very good progress. The inside has been completely gutted and we’ve prepared the exterior for the siding and the new dormer. Have a look at the house now….. there seems to be something missing:

Since the roof was in such poor condition we decided to chop it right off. We’re now going to raise the roof line and add the full dormer off the back of the house.  Heres a look at some of the new framing:

The raised roof is going to allow us to make the upstairs alot bigger and alot more functional. I’ve got some video footage of our contractor ripping the roof off. He didn’t do it by hand, he used some pretty heavy duty machinery to get the job done. I’ll post that once I get it edited.

I posted a video of this property last week but I wanted to post a couple pictures to show you what we’re up against at this house. I’m amazed that it wasn’t condemned…. actually if the city knew just how bad it was inside I’m pretty sure it would have been condemned.

It’s not the worst house we’ve done but it is up there…. the house is kind of a cross between Bessemer St and the Ware House. It is definitely real spooky inside!!

Gifford St

Gifford

Gifford - rear of house

Back Roof... notice the sweater coming through the hole in the roof! Who needs a tarp!

Living Room 1

Living Room 2

Kitchen.... love the chair!!

Bathroom

Dining Room/Bedroom

Bedroom - First Floor

Bathroom Ceiling

Second Floor Bedroom

Basement

Basement 2

The sweater coming through the hole in the roof is classic…. as you can see by the holes in the ceiling it didn’t do much to stop the water from coming in!! 

The house is all gutted out now and ready to be framed. I spent the day there today and we had a lot of fun. I’ll post a video and some pictures of the action there today, you’re not gonna want to miss it!!!!!

Time for my weekly update.

We put the property at 93 White St in Westfield MA on the market last Thursday and we accepted an offer after the first weekend of showings. We actually had multiple offers on the property and sold it for slightly above our asking price. We priced this one pretty aggresively so I’m not surprised that we received a couple offers. 

239 Plumtree Rd is looking like it will be sold this week…. probably on Friday. 37 Mansfield St is under agreement with a closing scheduled for December. We were able to get a buyer for this one without even having to put it on the MLS! I’ll get some photos up of the finished rehab…it came out great!!

We have six properties under some stage of renovation and we are suppose to buy another this week.

104 Columbus Ave Holyoke MA

We closed on this property about two weeks ago. It’s a small cottage style home with 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath and a little over 1,100 sq. ft.  This house has some structural issues that we need to address. The roof had four layers of shingles and was so heavy that it was literally crushing the house!! The weight caused the rimm joist (the main joist that the exterior walls sit on) to crack and buckle out, which caused the house to sink about 3-4 inches. When the rimm joist cracked and kicked out it caused a bunch of the floor joists to also crack and bend. To fix this we are going to have to jack up the whole house and build a new foundation. Once we have a fresh new foundation we will fix the rimm joist and floor joists and set it back down. While we are at it we will gut the first floor and finish the attic space into another bedroom with a half bath.    

Here are some before pictures:

Kitchen

Kitchen

Bathroom

Living Room

Bedroom

Basement

We closed on our latest rehab project on Friday located on Gifford St in Springfield. When I first saw this house I thought it was a pretty nice looking cape and would make for an easy rehab….. until I got inside.  The house was trashed! It smelled like a mix of cat piss and dirty diapers. There was trash waist high in the basement, living room and upstairs bedrooms. The roof was leaking so bad that it caved in the ceilings along the back half of the house and caused the hardwood floors to buckle.  Needless to say this is my kinda house!!!

We are going to be doing a complete renovation of this house including adding a full dormer to the second story just like we did at 17 Bessemer St. When we’re done this house will have new siding, windows, roof, electrical, plumbing, heating system, kitchen, bathrooms and flooring…. plus we’ll add the second story dormer which will give us two very large bedrooms and another full bathroom upstairs.

 Have a look at the house:

So what do you think of this place?? I don’t think the camera does it full justice…. you really need to experience all the sights and smells first hand!!