Flipping Houses–The “What Lies Beneath” House

The What Lies Beneath House

The nick name for our next house might get you thinking you are about to hear a horror story. With all the terrors you hear from veteran house flippers about mold infested foreclosures, sinking foundations, and roofs caving in…  But every now and then we get lucky. Here we found a little diamond in the rough that is not only a simple and easy rehab, but even contained a little surprise to sweeten the deal.

We found this HUD foreclosure on the MLS. If you have an investor-minded realtor, they are hound dogs for sniffing out good deals on the MLS and can be the key to being a successful part time real estate investor flipping houses. Keeping to our lunch time schedule, we drove to this property, walked through in 15-minutes, filled out our property repair estimate sheet, and emailed our realtor the offer amount easily before their 1:00 food coma set in.

The Plan

Kitchen Before

As normal this house needs the basic rehab plan we try to stick to with our investments: carpet, paint, and kitchen and bath rehab. It also needs a little landscaping to add curb appeal.  At 1300 square feet the target completion time from start to finish should be no longer than 2 weeks.

During the demo phase of this rehab while ripping up the carpet, we discovered nice hardwood floors underneath, hence the nick name. “What Lies Beneath.” Typically we replace all carpet but instead we will sand and refinish the existing hardwood floors to make it really pop.

Nice Hardwood floors underneath old carpet

Furnace

While the hardwood was a pleasant surprise, we received an equal offsetting surprise that the furnace had a large crack and was un-repairable.  This is a great example of what happens when you don’t activate power at the property for your home inspection and the inspector is unable to diagnose the mechanicals.  Lesson learned – have the utilities activated for an inspection!

Addition on back of house

Lastly we noticed this house had an addition that was being used as a family room, but had a full bath and could easily be converted to a master suite. This will definitely help sell the house!

We bought this house because of its good location and its combination of good schools, low crime, and convenient access to shopping and interstates. At the same time it will be affordable to the 1st time home buyer—your target audience because they represent the biggest pool of buyers.

Stay tuned to see what our progress on The “What Lies Beneath” House!

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Erik Hitzelberger has been Real Estate Investor since 2007. While learning the ropes in the market down-cycle, he now teaches others how to use his systems and leverage other people’s expertise to achieve their own goals.

Erik Hitzelberger – who has written 194 posts on Part Time REI.

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