All Forum Posts by: Mark Rogers

I think many, if not most, use the civil statute and not the criminal one anyway, so I don't see it as a big deal.

The Prosecuting Attorney for Pulaski County issued a press release indicating that his office will not enforce the new criminal eviction statute and will not issue the 10 day Notices to Vacate.  I had no plans of using the statute but wanted to pass the information along.

Prosecuting Attorney's press release

If the ceilings are white, my wife likes to use white ceiling fans to try to make them blend in a bit more.  You can find inexpensive white ceiling fans most anywhere.  

Welcome @Jesse Pierce! BP is a great place to learn and connect online. Your timing is also pretty good in that the next monthly meeting of the local REIA is next week (CARREIA), and the speaker is supposed to be excellent.

Hurley & Whitwell is a law firm in North Little Rock that is involved in helping investors buy a LOT of tax sale properties in Arkansas and that files a LOT of quiet title actions to clean up the titles.  They probably handle more quiet title actions than anyone else in the state by a large margin so would probably be a good starting point on finding out costs and recommendations to do that.

Thanks!  My wife is the talent on the design side of things.  I find potential deals, and she decides whether they have potential and makes them look nice. I only have a few low quality phone pics of the before, but it was in pretty good shape when we got it.  On the neighbor, the water meter and shutoff valve were a bit crooked in the hole, so it was difficult to turn the water on and off, and the neighbor didn't want to go to the trouble of turning it off and on when he needed water.  He was also "that" neighbor with the overgrown lawn and peeling paint.  Luckily, his spinning water meter convinced him to hire our plumber, and we convinced our plumber to get it fixed right away. 

It was cigarette smoke.  Both previous owners were smokers, and it wreaked badly initially.  Scraping the ceilings, replacing the flooring, and hitting it with a coat of Kilz before a second coat of paint did the trick. We also changed the air filters twice.  Once up front, and once after the rehab.  We didn't use an ozone machine or anything like that.  There were some great custom drapes that we just threw away because they smelled so bad that we didn't think we could get the smell out in a cost effective manner. 

The flooding left a muddy mess, but nothing too bad.  Still, we panicked a bit at first with an Open House two days away, so we put down some gravel, dirt, and sod in a small area on the side between the houses.   

Thanks!  The house was in pretty good shape structurally but wreaked of badly of smoke.  We scraped the popcorn ceilings, replaced all flooring, painted the interior, added granite countertops and a tile backsplash, replaced most of the lighting and hardware, replaced the deck, made a few minor repairs, and cleaned up the landscaping.   We hated to replace some of the flooring that was almost new, but they had used two different faux wood patterns/styles that clashed, and it looked somewhat cheap and plastic.  We went back and forth on whether to use engineered hardwoods but decided that the neighborhood didn't demand it, so we went with a high quality snap and fit vinyl that looked like hardwoods.  We also went back and forth on whether to update the kitchen appliances and add a refrigerator but decided that we could get it sold quickly without adding those expenses. 

My wife and I closed on the sale of our first flip this afternoon and are pleased with our first effort.  We bought a 3/2 sfr at a courthouse auction for about 124,000 on April 11, had to file suit to evict the former owners, put about 25,000 into the rehab, sold it for 202,000 (98.5% of list price) after 10 days on market, and closed today, June 28.  We probably would have sold it in a day or two, except the uphill neighbor had a busted pipe, flooded our yard, and refused to turn off his water.  We had 9 showings the first two days with a flooded yard.  After accounting for all costs, we cleared about 40,000 for a 24.5% return over a 78 day period.  My goal from the first of the year was to flip our first house for a profit by July 1.  We hit that with 3 days to spare.  Now to meet or exceed our next goals of one more flip and one buy and hold in 2017.   I greatly appreciate BiggerPockets and all of you who share your advice and experience as beginners like us deal with steep learning curves. I LOVE this stuff!

Welcome @Courtney Michael!  BiggerPockets is a great place to begin your education and journey.  My wife and I are just getting in Central Arkansas and hope to close on the sale of our first flip house this week.  CARREIA (www.carreia.com) is also a good place to network and learn in Central Arkansas.   Best of luck!  Mark