Rehab #10.1, Stoneham – 1st Contract

As I mentioned in previous post, we listed this property on September 2nd and held off showings until the open house on September 7th. I anticipated having a good level of interest in the property since it’s a complete rehab priced at the lower end for this town, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the 60+ parties who showed up at the first showing! Neither was my wife, Lauren who held the open house, but we were both thrilled!

In the end, we had a lot of positive feedback and by Sunday night we had two very strong offers. After going back to both parties for highest and best, we went back to one of the offers and told them we would accept if they pushed up the closing date from the first week in November to October 20th. They agreed and we signed the papers.

The buyers scheduled their inspection for that Thursday and I had my contractor meet him down there to make sure he doesn’t overstep his job description (speculating on building codes, etc.). I knew this company was notorious for scaring the pants off buyers and killing a deal. In the end, most of the items on the buyers’ punch list were easy fixes, but there were a couple big ticket items including sistering the ceiling joists in the basement and the roof rafters in the attic. Basically, they wanted me to reframe the whole house. I felt this was unnecessary considering the house has been standing for over 100 years and we properly supported everything up to the building inspector’s recommendation. After over a week of back and forth with the buyers (and a lot of nitpicking over the wording of how I was going to correct all of the items), we settled with me adding joist hangers on some of the ceiling joists in the basement and collar ties on every other roof rafter. This exceeded what the building inspector required, but I felt these fairly easy fixes would calm the buyers’ nerves and make them happy.

The P&S was signed once we were all in agreement, and we are looking to close on schedule. Other good news is that the radon test came back well below the maximum exposure, which I thought would be questionable due to the amount of ledge in this area.

Once we close, I’ll have the final numbers but it’s looking like a very profitable deal!