An Increase in Activity

While we haven’t yet gotten any offers on The Corn House or The Second Chance House, interest in both has picked up considerably in he past few days.

I attribute this to two things:

1. The Market: While it’s still a tremendously depressed market around here, that segment of buyer that we target — first time home-owners looking in the $100-150K range — are seemingly starting to become more and more active. Perhaps it’s the time of year (now that the holidays are over), or perhaps potential buyers have decided that they are ready to start jumping on great real estate opportunities, but whatever it is, we’re seeing more potential buyers out-and-about now than we have in the past six months.
2. Networking: My wife is doing a tremendous job of networking with all the agents she comes in contact with. She realizes that every agent who walks through the doors of one house is a potential candidate to sell any of our houses, and uses every opportunity to upsell all our properties, including those that haven’t even come on the market yet (she’s already working on getting potential buyers interested in The DIY House). It doesn’t hurt that both the houses on the market are fantastic rehabs, and when an agent sees one of them, they are always receptive to seeing another that’s “just as nice.” Just this weekend alone, we got three people to visit The Corn House after stopping by our Open House at The Second Chance House. Cross-marketing may very well play a huge part in our future success at selling houses.

Most importantly, we continue to get great feedback on both houses. And given this feedback, I’m comfortable that one or both of them will see offers in the next couple weeks.

In the meantime, we’re preparing for the closing and start of rehab on our next project — The DIY House…