Posts Tagged ‘buying a foreclosure’
Beware Renovation Cause and Effect
As I have written in the past, the lure of buying a junker bank-owned property and fixing it up yourself to save money can be both exhilarating and crushing–sometimes all at the same time!
Here is an example of how easy it is to entangle yourself in all the many elements of a renovation. These are all changes we’ve made to one of our current properties. No doubt the future buyer will be ecstatic about all of the lovely changes and updates we’ve made…but before you buy a fixer upper, ask yourself whether this is something you can handle on your own. If so, more power to ya! If not, why don’t you give us a call to see what already-renovated properties we might have available.
14111 Mount Pleasant Drive, Woodbridge
It’s been a while since my last post with all that is going on. Been looking at a lot of junker bank-owned properties lately, and we are hard at work on a 4-bedroom single family home at 14111 Mount Pleasant Drive in Woodbridge, VA.
Like a lot of homes that went to foreclosure, it was in really rough shape when we first took on the project. But the repairs and renovations are going well, and I’m very excited about how it will turn out. It is a pretty well-constructed single family home, and homes in the area were selling in the peak a couple years ago in a range of $250,000 to over $300,000.
I have got to post some of our project photos, so you can see just how much work goes into renovating one of these foreclosure properties! I keep talking about how taking on these repair and renovation issues yourself is a huge and inconvenient endeavor, but a picture speaks a thousand words. Our construction crew is very skilled and professional, but I still wouldn’t want to live in the house with all of this work going on!
Check back next week for photos…
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Case Study Part 3: Buying a Foreclosure
At the closing, we handled all of the legal and financial doings and Jan was the proud owner of a nice, affordable property. She paid a little more than what she would have from a bank-owned foreclosure. But, the property was ready for her to move into, allowing her to focus on her work and life instead of breakdowns, renovation, and repairs. When we got finished at the settlement table and shook hands, she actually gave me a big hug. I was taken aback by this and a little embarassed.
She then said the words that will stick with me for the rest of my life: “Thanks for selling me your property. I looked at a lot of houses before finding yours. Every one I saw had too much wrong with it for me to handle with my situation of available cash, approved mortgage amount, and housing need. You gave me the chance to put the housing part of my life back on track with no major worries.”
Wow.
Case Study Part 1: Buying a Foreclosure
As someone who has fixed up a lot of properties throughout my career, I sometimes take for granted the real difficulty of it, thinking that it’s not such a big deal. Just don’t ask me to load songs onto an iPod or software onto my computer — that is as traumatic for me as things could possibly be!
Well, over the past year I realized that not everyone has had the good fortune of cleaning up really nasty properties and transforming them into vibrant, nice homes for a new owner/family. What really opened my eyes was the experience of working with the buyer of one of my investment properties.
Let’s call her Jan: a single woman in her early thirties who was going through a lot of life changes at the time we met. After selling her beautiful home to move on to a new life, a few things happened that drastically changed her plans. One major plan was to find another home to live in. She had temporarily moved in with her parents after these unfortunate incidents occurred, but we all know how difficult that would be after being on our own for a while.
