Buy it Right Sell it Right?

Everyone knows that if you buy anything right, you can sell it right. This goes for virtually everything, from cars to boats to...? Is Real Estate exempt? I don't think so, but there are still some trap doors to watch out for.

1. Location Location Location! I know when I was in the ad business and worked with retail clients location, location location was a big thing for many of them when contemplating the opening of new stores or restaurants. You put it in the right location and they will come! Does the same apply to real property?
2. But, then Godfathers Pizza came along (remember them from the 80's and 90's? The Godfather in the white Fedora) and blew that idea out of the water. Their basic philosophy was to locate their stores in C & D locations saving money on rent, then take the money they saved and pump it into advertising! IT WORKED! Advertising led to top of mind awareness, which led to traffic which leads to making the cash register sing. It's a shame that Pillsbury did not recognize this, because when they bought Godfather's the first thing the pencil pushers did was cut costs including advertising! And of course Godfathers Pizza is not the same anymore :(.
3. So how does this relate to a flip. Simple. Earlier this year we bought a short sale town home for way below market. Hey this is a slam dunk! The day after we close, I go visit the house to put on the lock box and set the rehab in motion. Apart from the shower of bugs that rain on me as I open the front door, I notice the fellow across the street is cursing up a storm because someone smashed out the windows of his SUV, DURING THE DAY!! To make matters even more surreal, we find a gun in the garage. Turned out not be real but scared the living day lights out of me. 
4. My partner comes in my office a few days later and tells me that the rehab crew refuses to work there at night and that the lock box had been broken open and one of the guys found a guy sleeping in the house! Apparently the neighborhood was an F and maybe we should have checked out the crime rate before buying. While we rehabbed the house it had been broken into at least three separate occasions and it was not until we made a point of talking and befriending our neighbors did the break ins cease. Our strategy very quickly became, spend as little as possible and sell it as quickly as possible. Once we were done I quite frankly was thinking that we would be sitting on this project forever. Good News, we received an offer ten thousand dollars below our asking price, and have it under contract. Even better news, we may even make a little bit of money on this deal. I won't tell you where it is for fear of Hexing the deal, maybe I should not even post this until after we close in a couple of weeks. In this instance we lucked out, once we knew the area is iffy but it worked out because we bought it right and watched our rehab budget and rehabbed it to the market standard if not slightly higher.