The buyer for The Flood House completed her inspection last week, and we received a copy of the Inspection Report yesterday…
As suspected, the inspector found a few minor issues (9 to be exact) and nothing major. The nine issues consisted of a couple contractor mistakes (hot/cold water lines reversed on two faucets, tub drain installed incorrectly, a piece of insulation caught in an HVAC register), a couple oversights (old plumbing hole not caulked, gas line entry into house not caulked, condenser insulation need to be replaced) and a couple cosmetic issues that we knew about but chose not to repair (a small hold in the vinyl siding and a hole in the front yard where a dead bush was removed).
The buyer sent an amendment requesting that all nine of the issues to repaired. Of course, we were happy to fix the contractor mistakes and the oversights, but the two cosmetic issues we refused to fix, as they aren’t safety concerns, they aren’t substantial and we chose not to fix them in the first place. So, we sent an amendment back to the buyer with our changes, and are waiting to hear if it will be acceptable to them.
We’ve actually already fixed the seven issues that we agreed should be fixed — our plumber came out first thing this morning and realized that the hot/cold supply lines were mislabeled on a couple of the faucets, resulting in them being reversed (this was before the new hot water heater was installed, so they weren’t tested), and my projects manager fixed all the minor stuff, including caulking the holes, cleaning the registers, and replacing the condenser insulation.
The first appraisal is scheduled for tomorrow morning, so I’ll post an update on that later in the week…
Sounds like the deal is humming along! Good work.
Good Job, hope they agree on the cosmetic stuff so that you can get this one sold and move on to the next one.
Great staging pictures for this house. In looking through all of your staging pictures I noticed on some houses you put in hardwood floors in the living rooms and some you don’t. Is this just a “gut” feeling from house to house?
John –
For the types of houses we do and the areas where we invest, hardwood flooring isn’t so much a necessity to sell as it is a “nice to have”…
So, we’ll typically make the decision to add hardwoods based on the following criteria:
1. Where are we with respect to the budget? If we’re under-budget by a couple thousand dollars at the end of the project, we’ll strongly consider hardwoods in the shared living areas;
2. What is our competition like? If there are no other decent houses in the area at our price point, hardwoods are less necessary. But, if we’ll be competing with one or more houses at our price point, hardwoods is a great selling feature that the other houses probably don’t have (and if they do, it’s probably older hardwoods, not new);
3. How quickly do we want/need to sell? If we really want to get out of a project quickly (we have a loan we want to pay off or we need the cash for other projects), adding hardwoods generally makes for a much quicker sale;
4. Do we need a wow factor. If we have a house that is otherwise pretty bland and there is nothing about it that stands out, adding hardwoods that can be seen as soon as the buyer walks in the door is a great wow factor and creates a great first impression that hopefully will stay with the buyer throughout the entire house.