All Forum Posts by: Thomas Martin

Russell, thank you very much for your detailed response.  The information was very helpful.

What expectations do you place on a realtor when you are selling a property?

Open houses?  Color flyers?  Anything else?

 Very good working relationship with a local broker that knows our area better than any other.  Gave her the parameters of what we were looking for and she came through for us.

My understanding was this was the only way the bank would sell it to us.  They wanted a cash-only buyer and we had to convince them to let us finance it.  We almost lost the property and the earnest money and we were glad just to complete the transaction.

Over Christmas break last year a buddy and I decided to purchase and flip a house.  We each liquidated several retirement accounts and began researching foreclosed properties and talked to several guys in our area that had flipped homes.  It took some time to get all the money in hand, but eventually in April we purchased a foreclosed home on Homesearch and bought a duplex owned by a bank.

The house is a 3 bedroom/2 full bath, brick, cape cod with a one car detached garage in a good neighborhood.  We had a contractor that we had worked with in the past put in all new windows, but otherwise we did all of the rest of the work ourselves.  The best surprise in the deal was how great the 3/4" oak floors looked after we refinished them.  They had been covered with a terrible linoleum for years.  Otherwise, the interior simply needed a lot of cleaning and painting.  The exterior work consisted of replacing an old fence, residing the garage, installing a new garage door, and rebuilding the front porch.  I listed it with a local realtor and it sold in about 4 weeks.

We decided to try to wholesale the duplex essentially "as-is."  After going in and cleaning it up and repairing a couple of minor plumbing issues to pass inspection, we listed it on Craig's List for a week and had four interested buyers.  This is a property that I know in a few years we will say, "Damn, we should have held that one and rented it out" but right now our needs are to pay down personal bills before we can buy/hold.  At any rate, we got a full price offer and sold the property.

After all was said and done, we earned $32,000 on the house and $31,000 on the duplex, before taxes.  While we learned a lot in the process, we didn't make any major mistakes and I am looking forward to buying and flipping two more in the near future. 

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Makes a lot of sense.  Thank you, Shawn!

Thanks, Brett.  I have a good connection at Meridian.  I really appreciate your response!

I searched the forums but came up empty, so I thought I'd post this here:

Is there any legal considerations or penalties to worry about in buying a duplex and then selling it immediately?  Is it possible to do a double closing, one in which I take ownership and then immediately following close on the sale?

I have an out of state buyer for a property that I am purchasing and would love to turn it over immediately.

Thanks for any help!

Hi, my name is Tom and I am from just outside of Gary, Indiana.  I flipped my first home 15 years ago and have spent the intervening years improving the home in which my wife and kids currently live.  With a daughter facing the daunting costs associated with college, I have liquidated some investments and hope to flip three homes in 2015 and three more in 2016.  Depending upon how that works, I may delve into rental properties, but for right now I am looking to turn a profit with properties as quickly as possible.

I currently have a bid in on a small, single family home and will find out today whether it was accepted or not.  Additionally, I have an offer (with a partner) on a condo for which we already have a buyer lined up.  We also have leads on two larger ticket items which have been foreclosed but are not yet on the market.

I look forward to benefiting from the wealth of knowledge on this site and also contributing occasionally if I can add anything of value.