Hello and welcome guys! This is my first post in what will be the start of our newest flip house project! Now that we’re 90% sure we’ve secured another house to flip I’ve decided to document the entire journey on the blog! So you should probably type your email in and subscribe to get updates when a new post is up!
We’ve been so busy recently I’ve been forgetting to document projects, remodels and house hunts for my blog… I know I know, shame on me, I’m really a terrible blogger.
Truthfully, it’s been really difficult to get myself to sit down and write for this blog. Sometimes I feel guilty taking time to write (which is therapeutic for me) since we have so many projects and other “real life” things to deal with. But I’m slowly trying to change that with a new morning routine which will include quiet time to write posts for this blog!
So let’s get on with the our newest flip…
90% Sure We Have a House to Flip
Above I wrote that we’re 90% sure we got a new house to flip and you might like what? Why aren’t they sure? How can’t you be sure if you bought a house?
Well we found this house on Xome.com, an online auction site for buying and selling real estate. We’ve purchased from an online site before (just not this one) and we’re familiar with the way things work but this experience was unique.
Here’s the short story of how we probably “won” this house to flip.
The house was found on Xome.com and it was also listed in the MLS and being a real estate agent I was able to schedule an appointment to get inside. (We aren’t at the point in our real estate investing that we buy sight unseen, so getting inside is crucial to us.)
We liked what we saw, came up with a budget and presented it to our investor. She liked what she saw and okay’d us bidding on the house.
The bidding started at $120,000 and made it’s way up to $160,000 before we started bidding. The bid increments were still pretty high at $5,000 and the reserve price wasn’t met. (From experience, I believe the bid increments decrease the closer you get to the reserve price.) Reserve price is technically “the lowest price the owner will take for the property” but you’ll find out next that isn’t always the case.
So we were sitting as the highest bidder at $187,500 with the reserve still not met and I got a PHONE CALL from a representative of Xome.com asking if we’d come up to $190,000 if he reduced the bid increments to $2,500. He called me with 2 minutes left on the timer and I actually ran out of time to even get an answer from the investor since that was over the max purchase price.
In the meantime, after he reduced the bid increment to $2,500 “someone” bid it up to $190,000 and I was devastated that we lost the house!
Well wouldn’t you know it, 10 minutes after the auction ended I got an email saying the highest bidder was not proceeding and we were now the highest bidder. And of course they had to remind me that the reserve price still wasn’t met. So we had to go back onto the site and re-submit our offer of $187,500. I have a feeling the someone who bid was the bank just trying to see if they could eek that much more out of us. But I could be wrong.
It took a few days but we got an email saying our bid was declined and that the seller “would consider” a bid of $190,000. We reluctantly upped our bid, essentially bidding against ourselves since it wasn’t a true counteroffer, and didn’t hear anything for a week.
We received the contract a week later and found out that if we used our own title company there were all kinds of extra fees we weren’t accounting for, is that even legal? So we were kind of forced to use their title company.
On top of that, we also found out we pay all of the transfer tax which meant an extra $1,900 we had no clue about and that was not accounted for on my excel spreadsheet (total spreadsheet nerd here.)
On top of that they required the signed contract and proof of funds within 24 hours (we received it at 6:15pm on Friday evening) even though they don’t work weekend. Insert huge eye roll here.
So on Monday we were told to put our complaint in writing and they would “probably” draw up new paperwork. What does that mean? Are they taking the $1,900 off the sale price, are they paying transfer tax? Probably!?!
And today is Saturday and we still haven’t heard anything. And that is why we’re 90% sure we bought another house to flip which I’ll tell you all about next!
The Flip House of Loyal Socks
You know how all the TV shows have nicknames for the houses they flip? It’s because most of the people I know actually do name the houses. In most cases it’s simply the street name… so we’ve flipped Grosstown, Mansion, etc. because they were on Grosstown Road and Mansion Avenue, get it?
So where did the flip house of loyal socks come from? Easy! It’s on a street called Loyalsock Drive and on the drive to check it out I just kept repeating the street name in various ways and cracked myself up when I got to “The Flip House of Loyal Socks” – probably because I said it in an English accent as well, and it just stuck.
3,200 Square Feet…
The house is a biggie at 2,200 square feet plus a finished 1,000 square foot basement which has two additional bedrooms and a full bathroom. With the finished basement the house is a 6 bedroom 3 and half bathroom with a formal living room, dining room as well as family room!
The home was built in 1998 and there’s tons of stuff we can salvage, save and reuse. The best part is the kitchen cabinets are still in great shape and just need a good paint job… maybe.
I say maybe because I’ll be over on Instagram and Insta-stories asking for all kinds of opinions on things like should we paint the cabinets or keep them. Should we re-use the fixtures in the bathrooms or go a little more high end? Do we do dark hardwoods or lighter ones? I’ve also budgeted to add decorative trim like crown molding, shadow boxing and other upgraded touches that scream WOW when you walk into a house.
Built in 1998…
The home is in a beautiful little neighborhood with other 2,000-3,500 square foot homes. I mentioned above that the home was built in 1998 which is one of the newest homes I’ve ever flipped or helped others flip! But I think it might just be the perfect age for a flip house.
If you think about it, people usually get the remodeling bug after about 20-30 years and with trends changing faster than people can keep up with it’s definitely time for this builder grade home to get a facelift!
If you follow me on Instagram, you’d know it took us 6 long months to find the flip house of loyal socks (don’t forget the English accent.)
One major reason it took so long to find another flip house is we needed to partner with an investor this time which means splitting profits, so we needed a little more room than other investors flipping on their own.
Why did we NEED an investor? Well, most of our money is tied up in the multifamily fixer upper we’re currently house hacking and brrrr-ing! (I’ll link to an article I wrote on the topic below.) But we were offering a pretty good deal for an investor, they provide the financing to purchase and fix up and we do all the rest of the work like finding the deal, actually fixing it up, managing the project and listing the home when we’re done.
After we sell and make a profit (or loss) we’ll split the proceeds 50/50. Some of you might be wondering where to find investors and I’ll go into more of that in a later post but to be brief, I found one on the biggerpockets forums and one is family!
If you liked this post check out these favorites:
What the brrrr strategy is and how we plan to use it
How to find a house to flip, 5 ways you might not know of
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