I’ve been eagerly waiting to sit down and write this post but I didn’t want to jinx anything.
If you follow me on social media (which you should be) you saw I posted we put an offer in on a house. For anyone that’s keeping track, you may have been wondering ‘what’s going on with the offer’ (or not, that’s okay too.)
I didn’t want to jinx anything by posting anything too early but no news is usually good news. (And with all the glitches on that house, you guys would have been on a roller coaster ride anyway!!)
But now I have so much news I don’t know where to start….
The Four Important Points
First, I’ll start with the main point – we got the house and we’ll be referring to it as Main Street House. It wasn’t easy dealing with a HUD home but we finally have a signed agreement and we close in less than a month!
Secondly, I should share that Main Street House actually won’t be a house we are going to flip (GASP). We’ve run some numbers and decided to keep it as a long term investment because of the future rental income potential.
Third, because there’s a one bedroom apartment above the garage, we’ll be renting it out as soon as we can finish the renovations on it. So yes, we will be landlords again soon! (Know anyone looking for a one bedroom apartment?)
Fourth, The house is a perfect starter home for us so, in the short term, we’ll be moving into Main Street House and renovating along the way (and I’ll be blogging about all the those renovations too).
Main Street House | It’s Ours!
Although it’s not nearly close to being my dream house (hello 30+ acres and an old stone farmhouse), it will do for a few years. We decided that we can’t pass up on something that is the perfect stepping stone towards our big future goals (hello multiple rental properties and flipping).
On that note let me introduce you to our future house and rental property.
The Stats
- 1,210sqft (with ability to add about 200sqft by finishing off the attic)
- 3 small bedrooms
- 1 tiny bathroom (check out the renovation here)
- Gigantic 2 car detached garage
- Only .24 acres but it’s a nicely laid out lot
- 1 bedroom / 1 bathroom apartment above garage
- Front and back porch
- Deck (which will be the first thing coming down)
We’re Not Flipping Main Street House
What’s happening short term: We’re living in the house and renting out the apartment
One of our future goals is to have a few rental properties under our belts for monthly passive income and this house is the perfect stepping stone! Once we rent out the apartment and the house is in livable condition, we’ll be moving in and finishing up the renovations as we live in it.
Depending on how busy we are, we might refinance Main Street house and buy another flip (I love the power of leverage). But we are only two people and we do most of the work ourselves so that might not be possible… speaking of, know anything looking for a job?
Down the road we’ll move out of the house (and hopefully into my dream home) and rent it out so we’ll have income from the house and the apartment. We’ll also divide the gigantic two car garage with a dividing wall and rent out each bay which will bring us to a total of 4 rental units.
But this all can’t happen without renovating EVERYTHING.
Planned Renovations
We’ve already started discussing renovation ideas for the house, apartment, garage and backyard. The biggest renovation we’re thinking about taking on is finishing off the attic space in the house and making it a master suite.
Master Suite Renovations
We would add a dormer on the second floor for a second full bathroom and create lots of built ins for storage.
This would make the house a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom which is much better for re-sale should we ever want to sell (way way way down the road). And I have yet to do market research but I suspect we’ll get more in rent and recoup most of the renovation expenses over the course of a few years.
Living & Dining Room Renovations
I also really want to open up the living room, dining room and kitchen to get a more “open layout” feel but we’ll see if that’s even possible — ya know, because of a thing called load bearing walls. But we’ll add over a foot and half of ceiling height after we take down the drop ceiling that’s all over the entire house which will make the place feel more open and bigger.
The house is about 80 years old and has some unique features which I’d like to try and save. So after refinishing all the baseboards, we’ll restore the old beautiful trim around all the windows, doors and ceiling in order to keep a lot of the character of the house.
Bathroom Renovations
Something we won’t be keeping is the tiled ceiling in the bathroom. Yes, someone tiled the ceiling with white 4×4 tiles. But that’s not the biggest renovation we’ll be taking on in this room – we’ll be expanding the bathroom at the expense of two closets in a bedroom, but the bathroom is so TINY it’s almost unusable.
The one project I’m looking forward to most is trying out concrete counter tops. We’ll try it out in the apartment first and if we like it we’ll do it in our kitchen… so stay tuned for a tutorial on how to do your own concrete countertops! — Depending on how they turn out.
The Backyard
Lastly, the backyard will be a long term project because I DO NOT have a green thumb, although I’m trying, I still seem to kill or burn plants (Recently, I mixed too much fertilizer and when it dripped on the leaves they burned up!)
But a few things we know we have to do include tearing down the deck – which was built on top of the turnaround for the driveway, grade one side of the house with dirt – which is perfect because there is a huge dirt pile next to the garage that we didn’t know what to do with and cut down some oddly placed arborvitae – which is also blocking a lot of natural light in the living room.
Besides all those renovations, we have the standard stuff to do like a new kitchen, refinishing floors, painting and new windows.
So wish us luck!
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