The family and I have been on vacation for much of December, which is why I haven’t posted much this month. But, we closed on the sale of The Waffle House yesterday (see all the financial results below), so I wanted to post a quick final analysis of the deal.
This closing snuck up on us — we weren’t supposed to close until the end of next week, but the lender, agent and buyer were all pushing to get it done this week, so we figured out how to make it happen while we were away. Ultimately, this may have been the smoothest closing process we’ve ever had, but perhaps that’s just because we really didn’t have to do anything up until the final 24 hours.
Anyway, here is the full final analysis for this one…
Timelines
Here are the key timeline milestones:
- Purchase Offer Date: 9/19/2011
- Purchase Closing Date: 10/12/2011
- Rehab Completion Date: 10/27/2011
- Sale Listing Date: 10/28/2011
- First Sale Contract Date: 11/19/2011
- Final Sale Contract Date: 11/19/2011
- Sale Closing Date: 12/22/2011
Financials
Here is the breakdown of financials for this project:
Our profit on this one was nearly $23K. We were pleasantly surprised that the appraisal came in at the sale price ($103K), given that there hasn’t been much retail activity in the area, other than our recent sale of The Drought House, which sold for $5K less.
Final Statistics
Here are just some of the final statistics that I’ve been tracking for all my projects, and that summarize the success/failure of each project pretty well:
- From Offer to Purchase Time: 23 Days
- Rehab Time: 14 Days
- Selling Days on Market: 22 Days
- Selling Close Time: 33 Days
- Total Hold Time (Close to Close): 71 Days
- Total Profit: $22,974.14
- Return on Investment (ROI): 32.27%
- Annualized ROI: 165.90%
Great job J! I think its worth mentioning that you have netted an additional 81k (27 x 3k) by being the listing agent on these deals. Great work and excellent info on the blog! I enjoy following!
Hey Brad –
Actually, doing a quick report in Quickbooks indicates that over the past 25 houses that we’ve acted as our own agent for (the first two we used another agent), we’ve earned/saved $101,025 in commissions, even taking into account the amount we lose to our broker (“commission split”). This assumes that we would have paid 3% to another agent for selling our properties.
That averages to about $34,000 per year in earnings/savings, which is a significant amount…
There is definitely no need to hire an agent while you can do it yourself ($34.000 per year is a pretty huge saving). Thanks for the awesome and transparent updates Scott
M Mark
There is just nothing wrong when you walk away with $23k profit on a 2 week rehab 🙂
Being your own agent is beneficial in many ways. Obviously there is the money but even more important is the access that being an agent gives you. You don’t know what you don’t know.
It is nice to have you back. I saw what you said above and I must admit that it is big amount of money.
Hey J,
Your holding cost on your utilities is low. Do you keep them on the whole time your properties are for sale?
Thanks!
I find that my rehabs use a lot less utilities than I thought they were (unless you have a busted water pipe 😉 ).
I guess when you have a vacant house with a new HVAC, no water use and new fixtures that are off most of the time your utility cost really goes down. However, when I have a house on the market I keep the AC nice and cool in the summer and then warm and toasty in the winter so potential buyers see how well the HVAC works. Still, does not amount to a large cost…
Hey Oscar,
We keep the utilities on the whole time. When we’re actively showing the property, we keep it warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but otherwise, just warm enough for the pipes not to freeze and cool enough for there not to be any humidity issues. Part of the reason the numbers seem low is that I usually write my Final Analysis posts before I receive my final utility bills, so that’s not factored in (I normally mention that fact in my post as well).