My contractors are all pretty good, so they don’t need me watching over them all day. When I’m not flipping houses, I’m usually looking for the next flip or rental to add to the portfolio. Well, actually I should say when I’m not physically at any of the properties… Of the houses I saw today, this property looks like a decent deal. The asking price was $69,900 and has been reduced to $53,900 in just under a month! The details are as follows:
Although this is techinically day 14 , these pictures are from day 10. The first floor tray ceilings are in and they look really good. We dropped the ceiling by 6 inches and created a 10 by 10 box in the middle. The then cut a 2×6 and nailed it in each corner to create an octagon look in the ceiling. I like to use this design in all of the houses that I rehab. Flipping houses can be fun when rehabbing the property. You can use all kinds of creativity that adds your own touch. Most house flippers in the area seem to have their own trademark that they use in all of the properties. This tray ceiling is one of mine.
As a real estate investor you need to be well versed in tax laws. Well at least if you are not well versed, youde better have a good tax accountant. Tax deductions are available on your rental properties and also for your house flips. The tax laws are fairly straight forward when renting property. Typically maintenance and depreciation are the main deductions. What about those of you that own second homes for vacation getaways or just another place to go fishing on the weekends? This is where the tax laws get a little trickier. The IRS classifies additional homes as either Investment property or Personal property.
I’ve been attempting to get my head around this thing for a while. How could banks have been so reckless, all the while knowing what the future held? As we all may know by now the Feds have done it. Last week they decided they would help poor little Bear Sterns from a messy collapse. It may not stop with them either. There must be a line at the Feds doorstep by now. After all its not the banks fault for their poor practices and questionable ethics. It must be the taxpayers fault, since we are the ones who will pay for this in the end. What this says is that banks are basically allowed to use poor standards and practices , jeopardize the economy and be bailed out in the end. When it comes to large banking institutions, it seems they are.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against what the Feds and JP Morgan did to help Bear Sterns. I believe that the ramifications, of allowing them to fail, would have been huge. Poor performing Securities would have been dropped and written down by every institution on Wall street. But maybe in the end that is what needs to happen before the economy will begin to fight its way back. Can the government bail out every institution facing trouble?
I’m a little behind on the pictures but I will attempt to show them in chronological order. This first shot is of the first floor stairwell (empty), going up to the second floor. The stairs have been ordered and should take one week to be delivered.
I said before that I was not going to go into detail about the hassles that I have been receiving from certain individuals responsible for overseeing the large development project going on around this property. At this point, I am not going to use the names of the organizations or persons. I’m simply going to vent a little (really just a little, I promise) about the continued harassment of myself and my contractors, especially when this organization is at fault for the current situation to begin with. But that’s a story for later.
What kinds of things are they doing you ask? Things such as telling my guys that they don’t have permits when they do. Attempting to find fault in processes in order to make it appear to be something that it is not. Taking pictures of an item in an attempt to make the situation appear to be something that it is not. It’s ridiculous how callous these people can be about other people’s lives, when there is something to be gained. I’m sure the games will continue so be sure to stay posted as this could get interesting.
On a lighter side, things are moving along with the construction. We should have the roof framed by Monday and some of the interior framing is in progress as well. I forgot my camera today so I used my phone camera, and the shots don’t look so good. I will upload some good pics tomorrow.
The lesson for today is to be persistent and move in a straight line until you reach your goal. Don’t allow setbacks to halt your progress!
Well the guys only worked about half of a day today on the Hopkins house because Home Depot decided not to leave the delivery like they normally do. Actually my contractor should have been there but that’s another story. He says they delivered at 6:30AM… Flipping houses is fun when everything goes well but when it doesn’t …. well you get the picture. They say they made some good progress today anyway (I don’t know because I didn’t make it to that site today). The days are a little longer now, so that’s a plus. I’ll surely be checking up on them in the AM.
I consider myself to be a nice guy in this game of house flipping. Almost every other investor/flipper I know is aggressive and, well… not so nice. I guess it’s something that comes with too many years in the game. Just dealing with tenants and contractors alone can drive a sane man crazy. I ran into an investor friend today that is one of the worst. This guy is a cross between Vince Vaughn and your cranky old granddad . I can’t take too much of him in such a short period of time, so I made up an excuse and kept it moving. I had too much on my plate today anyway and now I need to get back to work. It’s 5:47pm and the second half is just getting started.
Installing a water-saver flush kit in your toilet can save you thousands of liters of water per year. Replacing large-volume toilets with 6-litre-per-flush models saves at least 70 percent of the water used.
Showers
An energy-efficient shower head or flow controller conserves energy without affecting water pressure. A low-flow shower head saves as much as 60 percent of the water used by a conventional fixture. Dripping taps can waste 9000 liters of hot water each year. Replace leaky washers and save the hot water for when you really need it!
Progress is right on time. We ordered the second delivery of lumber including the front and rear exterior doors. The team has done quite a bit of demo work including the rear exterior wall, fireplace, and more interior brick work. They are moving along nicely and I’m really satisfied thus far. We did a “no-rain dance” today so hopefully it works. Luckily the only rain has occured over the weekend however, the interior still becomes fairly wet. Once we get the roof framed, we won’t need to worry as much about the rain. Sorry about the size of the pictures but I don’t have my image editing software with me in the field. Flipping houses requires a lot of hours spent outside therefore, I typically post from my laptop.
As you can we did not demo the existing footings but we will need to repair them and add more concrete and do some brick work. We can rebuild the rear of the house on top of the existing footings and avoid a major expense.
Some folks have requested pictures of the project at Johns Hopkins biotechnology park. I’ve decided to create a series of posts, naming each of them according to the project. The first project of this series will be titled ”framing day(n)”. Today is day one of framing and things went fairly well. The lumber was delivered at approximately 7:30am. The guys were running a little late but the driver delivered the materials anyway. They did arrive shortly thereafter and began to unpack the lumber.
I said before that I was not going to go into detail about the hassles that I have been receiving from certain individuals responsible for overseeing the large development project going on around this property. At this point, I am not going to use the names of the organizations or persons. I’m simply going to vent a little (really just a little, I promise) about the continued harassment of myself and my contractors, especially when this organization is at fault for the current situation to begin with. But that’s a story for later. 
