Update for 6/9/2009

Juggling lots of houses right now, so thought I’d give a quick run-down on the status of everything going on:

House #1: The Corn House

We received our second rent check from The Corn House tenants, so at least they’re off to a good start.

We also had the tenants check in with our mortgage broker to get an update on their credit situation (they’re scheduled to purchase the house by the end of August). While they don’t yet qualify for an FHA loan, they’re in a better position than they were three months ago when they first came to us, and we’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to close on this property by August.

We actually visited them a couple weeks ago, and they are well settled into the house. They’ve done a lot of landscaping and decorating, and it’s clear that they really want to own the house. I figure worst case, if they pay their rent on time every month, in about 8 years they’ll have paid enough rent to pay off the house, and perhaps I’ll just hand them the keys… 🙂

House #6: The Red Garage House

We’re now several weeks past our original closing date, and the buyer’s financing is still in underwriting. At this point, I’m fairly convinced that they will not get the loan, and that this deal is going to fall through. The mortgage broker has a call into the FHA underwriter, and we’re hoping that we’ll know one way or the other by mid-week, so we can start looking for other buyers, if necessary.

Actually, we’ve already started looking. We put the house back on the market this past weekend, and got a lot of activity. We told all the potential buyers that the house was under contract, but that we didn’t think it would close, so they knew that they’d essentially be putting in a backup offer if they chose to make an offer. We didn’t get any other offers, but all the feedback was great; the only downside to this house is that the neighborhood is a bit sketchy (especially with all the teenagers off school and hanging out all day), so that may make it a bit harder to sell this one.

That said, we got a full-price offer on it the first time around in about a week, so maybe we’ll get lucky again…

House #8: The 16-Bid House

It’s now been over 12 weeks since we got this one under contract, and we still don’t have a closing scheduled. For some reason, the title company just can’t seem to clear that one final lien from the title, and until they do, we can’t close.

I’m no-longer sure that I even want this house (for reasons I’ll go into in a later post), so I’m in no rush to push this through closing.

We have a contract extension through June 15, so we’ll figure out in the next week or so whether we want to extend again or let it drop.

House #9: The Hat Trick House

This one is on the market as of last weekend, and we got a good bit of traffic through it on Saturday and Sunday. It’s in the same neighborhood as The Red Garage House, so the neighborhood is going to be a slight negative when it comes to selling this house, but again, I think it’s priced right, and I’m hopeful we’ll have a contract within a few weeks.

Regardless, we can’t sell to an FHA buyer until July 20, so there’s really no rush on this one anyway.

House #10: The Deja Duplex

We are expecting to close on the duplex later this week, and immediately plan to put it back on the market to sell to another investor. I think we should be able to make an easy $5K on this one (perhaps a good bit more), and I’d rather just sell it than rehab it, especially given all the other projects we have to work on right now.

The listing agent who is selling us this property keeps telling us that she has buyers who are interested in buying it from us as soon as we close, but she’s yet to bring us any contracts. I guess we’ll see…

House #11: The Sunglasses House

This one was also supposed to close later this week, but we got word today that there’s a title issue, and that it likely won’t be closing before Friday. It’s a shame, as this is a huge rehab, and we have our contractors lined up ready to start early next week.

Hopefully this won’t be drawn out issue (like The 16-Bid House), but we’re going to prepare our contractors for the worst, and then hope that it’s not delay very long. Given the complexity of the scheduling for this one, any delay is going to be a real pain the butt for my project manager, and for our contractors.

House #12: The Mini House

We’re not doing an inspection on this one, and have already put together our (small) Scope of Work. Hopefully, it will only be about $8K in rehab, and we’ll be able to turn this around in less than a week. The question then remains, what are we going to do for three months while we wait for the FHA seasoning to expire?

Maybe we won’t rush the rehab on this one, especially given that we have 4 other properties to work on.

The Unlucky House

We’re waiting on the final contract for this house, and as soon as we get it, we’ll get the utilities turned on, get our inspector in there, and start working on the Scope of Work.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I have a bad feeling about this house (and no, it’s not because it’s #13 — I’m not superstitious). As I mentioned to a couple readers, this is going to be a tricky rehab; our budget isn’t big enough to do everything we want, so we’re going to have to be strategic about picking and choosing the right renovations and upgrades. (Update on this one)

Hopefully I’ll feel better about this one once we dig in and start putting together the Scope of Work.