Flip report - Sinkhole (56k go home)

[Aaron McGinnis]

Well, some of you may recall that some months ago I posted a flip blog for the Heart Attack house. We bought two houses, side by side, on a street in a developing area. The Heart Attack house was a gut-out renovation.

The other house was a complete tear-down. I've been meaning to post the pictures and story on that one for awhile, but things have kept me busy... so here it is, belatedly.

This house was listed on the market for a couple of weeks before we took interest in it. Usually, houses don't last long... the fact that this one had been up for so long meant that there had to be something really, really wrong with it.

We weren't disappointed! The house was actually occupied by a very sad-looking addict who had made a habit of leaving blood-soaked cotton balls and bandages throughout the house. The center of the house had fallen in on itself and virtually everything was oozing and decaying front wood rot, termite damage, water damage, copper theft, and virtually every other form of abuse a house can possibly be subjected to.

We picked the house up for what was virtually a song - under $25k. We knew from the first time we stuck our heads inside that the house used to be beautiful, but needed to be completely torn down.

Closing was... interesting, to say the least. The owner was a very nice but very old lady who came dressed as though she was going to church, resplendent in a large hat with a lot of decoration. She complained the entire way through closing that we were "stealing the house from her" (as she signed document after document) and that she should be getting the full purchase price (Even though there was more than $12k in unpaid taxes and utility bills), and that the house was "beautiful" and that we could "just move in"

All in all, pretty funny in retrospect.

Anyway, here are some of the "before" pictures...

Front yard -

Back bedroom -

Weird back room that someone DIY-added somewhere in the distant past -

Another of that same room -

Kitchen -

Bathroom -

Hallway -

Front bedroom -

Dining room -

Front porch -

Living room -

Front of house -

Back of house -

Back yard -

Side of house -