Success Story: Flip From Kuwait/Qatar

[Steven Laub]

Hello I was asked to provide a bit of feed back on how my first flip form the middle east went.

I have been overseas since 2005 first with the US Air Force and now as a contractor. I have been in Germany, Qatar, and Kuwait) the first/last deal that I completed was almost all completed while being overseas.

I had the drive to accomplish the flip and that is what got me going. I connected with an old boss/friend from when I was a kid. He used to own a roofing company and then switched to being a realtor several years ago. So I lucked out he has the construction background and the licenses to help out on the buy and sell portion of the deal. I started to search all of the realestate sites that I could (zillow, Realtor, Trullia) looking for what looked like good deals based on comps around the area and (sqft vs. price) From their we found several possibilities. The first one we bid on we were screwed a bit by the listing agent who sold it to another investor in the area for a lesser price than what we bid (dont think the sellers were ever shown our bid), we later saw it on the market fixed and flipped.

During this time my mother was facing a difficult time paying for her home so she was going to let it forclose so we were going to purchase a home for her. We found a Short sale for an 1850 sqft house that had been half way remodeled and was selling for 139k. We got it for 130k. We did all of the paperwork through email and set up an investment loan through a bank in the US. This fell through at the last minute of course so I actually went to a bank in Qatar where I was living and took a loan out for 100k and it took about 2 days to finalize. I then wired the money to the escrow and just happened to be flying back to the states for a vacation where we signed the closing papers.

My mother moved in and lived there for a few months then a tree fell on the house that she was going to be letting forclose and insurance paid for all of the repairs on it and the bank came back and took 40k off the principal and reduced her payments by 40% so she moved back into her original house.

We then had this house that we purchased and had been remodeled sitting empty. We had probably put a bit too much of the high end furnishings and done some upgrades that were not necessary due to the fact that it did not start out as a flip. All in all it cost about 30k in materials and the labor for the upgrades (sheetrock, carpet, lights, bathroom, kitchen, windows, and appliances) and the person that we are working with did it for a very reasonable cost about 8k total due to the fact that he got a commission on the front end and also on the sale end.

Then we listed the house in August and it sat then sat some more. As I said before the house was not originally purchased for a flip so it was a little more high end than the area generally warrants we should have been looking for houses in with an ARV of 140-180 but we were sitting with a sales price of 250k which fell right in with the comps for a 4 bed 2 bath on .5 acre. We finally had an offer in October and then we started moving on the paperwork which was all through email until the final siging of the lease which needed to be notarized. This proved to be a challenge we had to find someone who would be willing to be the notary for us while we were overseas. We did do that and we shipped the signed documents off to be notarized but it was during the holiday rush so it took far too long for them to reach the notary. Just as the buyers were talking about pulling out we found a notary here in Kuwait and had is signed and sent fedex to the US $100 and it arrived on time but the recorder did not like that document so she declined it. We then had the other set of documents arrive in the US got signed and sent overnight only to find out that the recorder wanted another paper notarized as well. We were able to get that one notarized 7 states away and back in time and literally closed on the final day before the buyers were going to lose financing.

All in all the hardest part of the flip was getting this notary piece accomplished but now that we learned our lesson on that we should have no problems for the next deal that we find.

PS. when I started the flip I was living in Qatar and have since moved to Kuwait had a baby started a new job and stood up an entire new operation for work in a country that we have never done business for. No excusses guys!!!

I hope this success story helps people believe that if you really want to flip a house you will find a way and get it done.

Cheers from Kuwait,

Steve