Ok, well some of you guys here know I am in the Real Estate bizz and things are slow all over the country. Well, I never liked listening to all the propaganda around and always feel there is a way to turn a negative into a positive. 2005 and before, buying and selling homes was relatively easy. Now things are a little more difficult. But there are alot of foreclosures and alot of homes on the market not selling. People are scared to buy but willing to rent. So You can buy homes cheap and rent high. HMMMMMMM!!! Well we stopped selling and started buying and then renting. But we buy where homes are increasing still even in a slow market. We befriend the guys behind the scenes in each township and learn where the city's money is being spent then buy there. An exapmple is a home we bought for only $38,000 dollars. We are almost finished with the home now. We sat on it since October (I was screwing around with some other homes and did not get around to getting this one done) Our appraisal ( for after fixed up value) was $97,000. Our estimate on fix up was only $12,000. That is a $47,000 profit. Not bad.... Well this home should have been finished in a month too but as I said above we screwed around too much. We are finishing it up now, will be done next week. We had the home re-apprasied this week for $120,000. A $23,000 gain in value in only 6 months. We are putting (cheap) granite in the kitchen, high grade carpet ( I buy at a discount), nice tile, new windows, completely new framed huge bath with a tile that looks like marble on the floors and half up the walls. I could still sell this home in a slow market at $100,000 but know the value will continue to increase, so I plan to rent it for now. May rent it contract for deed to get a higher rent and money down (already have someone wanting to do this). We will finish the work and refinance the home using the $120,000 appraisal and take $100,000 out of the home (tax free, borrowed money). We will reinvest some of it in 3 other homes I currently have under contract to buy. The money that is borrowed could be kept tax free until I actually sell the home then they can get us for capital gains on the profit, well unless I do whats called a 10-31 exchange and hide it (legally). The cool thing is we weven get tax insentives and abatements to buy the homes from the city that allow us to avoid taxes too.
The reason I am writing all this is that some of you guys watch these shows about the process of buying homes and people tell everyone how hard it is. It is not hard to make money these days. I LOVE MY JOB, and a lot of people dread going to work everyday. I get to ride my bike to work to scout for properties and can take any day off I want to. Anyway, here are some pics of the house, as it has been being worked on. Do not have new pics yet.
Ugly house worth $120,000 bucks.....
The reason I am writing all this is that some of you guys watch these shows about the process of buying homes and people tell everyone how hard it is. It is not hard to make money these days. I LOVE MY JOB, and a lot of people dread going to work everyday. I get to ride my bike to work to scout for properties and can take any day off I want to. Anyway, here are some pics of the house, as it has been being worked on. Do not have new pics yet.
Ugly house worth $120,000 bucks.....