SOLD! $73,000 Profit! Bought Labor day when others on Vacation

[Tarl Yarber]

Hey Bigger Pockets!

Once again, I'm being horrible at posting on BP and its getting harder and harder to sit down and write anything on the forums.  Just know that I am investing a ton, and I post when I can.

As for this house! Lesson here, buy when everyone else is on vacation or taking time off.  I have always found deals during the holidays.  This gem snuck onto the MLS the Friday before labor day weekend, and by Monday (labor day), I had already submitted my offer, and Tuesday I had it tied up before anyone else bothered to compete (not technically true, one other offer went in that fast).  In my market of Seattle, a house on the MLS that is priced right for a rehab gets LITERALLY 15 plus offers on it in the first week, and almost always goes to the bidder with the least experience, meaning they paid way too much because they cant calculate rehab and are hoping the market will save them later when they sell.

The Deal:

I had to submit an aggressive offer in order to get accepted.  It was a home owner going through a divorce and listed on the MLS.  In this area, there are very few flips.  Its a hot area, with a lot of home owner to home owner sales, leaving little room for house flippers.  I got lucky on this one (Sammamish house for all the Seattle folks out there).  This house was mainly cosmetic for me, but we did have to open up all of the upper level in order to give it that large Grand awe experience.  This required adding the railing that you see in the pic above (was a solid wall), and adding that 10ft island in the kitchen (was a solid wall separating the kitchen and living room).  In addition to those items, we fully updated the baths, all the flooring, rebuild the backyard deck (no pic), sheetrocked over the wood ceilings, tile everything else, etc.  There were no surprises for us on the rehab, all straight forward and best of all, ON BUDGET!

NUMBERS:

Purchase: $405,000 (cash)

Rehab: $68,000 (budget was 70k)

Staging: $2000

Holding costs: $3000 ish

Selling costs (commission, WA excise 1.78% tax, escrow etc): $48,000

Sale Price: $600,000

Total Net Profit: $73,191

This was a very easy flip for us, and it went very well and so smoothly.  We closed on the Re-Sale today, starting the new year off right.  Big lesson on this house for me is that it was on the MLS.  I ended 2015 with over 40 acquisitions, and THIS house was the ONLY house I even bothered with that was on the MLS.  I have it in my head that there is nothing worth looking at on the MLS here in Seattle, and I still believe im mostly right on this, but when no one else was looking, I got lucky on labor day weekend.  I now believe that since the market is so hot, and everyone and their mother is an "investor" right now, I need to start diving into the MLS more again and aggressively pursue every deal if I want to keep my volume up. Happy 2016 everyone, and good luck to all out there!  Email me your deals!