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Tag Archives: rehabbing

Oakridge Progress Update

I stopped by Oakridge, our only curent rehab in progress, yesterday, to check on the progress (and change a couple of light bulbs). For one thing, I noticed that there was a new roll-off dumpster out front, which meant the contractors had already filled the first one. The tiles I had pulled up were all gone, as was the carpet, paneling, and parts of the drywall and non-load bearing framing. Our contracting team has taken over and is getting stuff done!

Here’s a sketch of how the kitchen will look. It shows the cabinets, too, like the walls are lying flat.

It was surprising how much smaller the master bedroom looked without the carpet and the kitschy room dividers. It will also look a lot more like it’s part of this century, not the last. (See the gallery below, it’s the room that is very clean and plain.)

What We Are Doing

The plan is to open up the wall between the kitchen and the living room, and add a nice island to divide the space.

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Old Lady Taylor and Her Furry Friends: An Update

Initial Therapy Sessions

The front of the house after landscaping cleanup.

In my last installment, Old Lady Taylor received a life-altering exterior facelift, transforming an ugly duckling into a swan. Since then, the old lady has been undergoing therapy to beautify her interior state. The first phase of this type of therapy is demo—tearing down the old and sad to make way for the new and improved.

Because we needed to change our exit strategy to respond to market pressures, I scaled back our original scope of work from a fairly significant demo and rehab to something much less involved. The revised demo scope of work included pulling down the vinyl wallpapered plywood sheets that covered perfectly good sheetrock walls in the downstairs bedroom and pulling up purple, blue, and red carpet and linoleum in various places throughout the house, revealing a could-one-day-be-beautiful hardwood floor in the master bedroom with literally thousands of nail and screw holes. These holes were matched by the literally thousands of nail and screw holes in the walls and doors left by previous occupants. In phase 2 of therapy, prep, the holes in the walls and doors have been carefully patched and primed and are ready for paint.

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Exit Strategies and Taxes

A cartoon house with exit strategies: walk away, refer, wholesale, double close, prehab, rehab, hold (rent), owner finance, and homestead

Our eight…er…nine Exit Strategies. When you’re evaluating a house, you must always consider what you’re going to do with it after you have it.

As I’m writing this post, it’s been exactly a year since I posted our eight exit strategies. You may notice there are nine thought balloons around the house in the graphic. I’ll get to that later.

Exit strategies are simply plans to get out of your situation. When I was writing on tax day, I got to thinking about how our tax situation affects which exit strategy on any given deal or series of deals. That’s what caused me to add the ninth strategy to the list.

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Our Eight Exit Strategies

Highway Exit 8

Sorry. There isn’t an Exit 8 in Texas.

I’ve mentioned “exit strategies” in a few posts. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss the exit strategies we use at Hermit Haus Redevelopment, LLC (HHR). But first, let me define the term “exit strategy” as we use it in the redevelopment industry and more specifically at HHR. Simply put, an exit strategy is a way to get out of a deal once you’re involved in it. Each of the exit strategies I discuss here can be applied in various parts of the deal cycle.

Okay. Let’s get down to it. Here are the eight exit strategies we use:

Before Going under Contract

  1. Walk Away from the deal.
    Believe it or not, walking away is the most important exit strategy you can acquire. Most of the deals you see won’t make you any money. You have to recognize these bad deals quickly and not just walk, but run away. And you can walk away at any point of the deal cycle. You just have to be aware of the consequences, especially if you have already taken title to the property.
  2. Refer the seller to a Realtor®.
    Many of the deals that come your way are really retail sales. There is little value you can add to the property, and the owners need more money than you can pay. Period. These deals can help you maintain a good relationship with your Realtor by referring the seller to your listing broker, who can help the seller get the seller get the most for their house. Since this is another form of walking away, you’ll only refer out a deal if you can’t do anything else with it.

Under Contract but before Closing

  1. Wholesale the contract to another investor.
    You have to have an equitable interest in a property to sell it without a real estate license. In most states, the contract to buy the house is an equitable interest that you can sell for a few thousand dollars. At this point, all you have invested is your option and earnest money. So if you have $100 down and assign the contract for $10,000, you can make a tremendous return on your investment without ever owning the property. A couple of caveats:

    • Wholesaling is not legal in all states.
    • It works best when you already have a list of buyers who might be interested in the property.
    • In the states where wholesaling is legal, you must have a valid contract to sell.
    • I recommend you always use an attorney when wholesaling.

After Taking Title to the Property

  1. Double close on the property.
    Although this is technically a type of wholesaling, you actually take title to the property. Because of the cost of closing twice, you would only want to double-close in a few situations:

    • Traditional wholesaling is illegal in your state.
    • You’re making enough money on the deal that you can afford the double close.
    • You don’t want one or both parties to the wholesale transaction to know how much you’re making on the deal.
  2. “Prehab” the property.
    Prehabbing is doing the extreme minimal amount of improvements to a property needed to sell it to another investor. (Yes, you could call this another type of wholesaling.) We haven’t had the opportunity to prehab a property yet, but the most common example I’ve encountered of other people prehabbing is with hoarder houses. A friend of mine bought a hoarder house for $45,000. He then spent $500 to have the garbage hauled off and sold the house to another investor for $70,000, making almost $30,000. The investor who bought it put another $30,000 into the house and sold it for $150,000. In my books, that a win-win-win.
  3. Rehab or redevelop the property.
    This is our bread and butter. At this point, all of the properties you see described on this site is a rehab or a redevelopment project.
  4. Buy-and-hold (and rent) the property.
    Holding rental properties are a great way to build wealth. You use someone else’s money (mostly) to buy the property, and your tenant makes the payment for you. HHR doesn’t hold rental properties. We do, however, sell redeveloped properties to our sister companies to hold.
  5. Owner finance the sale.
    To owner finance the sale, you must have sufficient capital to absorb the risk. I have to say this is one of the riskiest exit strategies you have, and it is fraught with drawbacks. First, you have to pay taxes on the capital gains without having the income from the property to do so. Then you have to assume the buyer will continue making the payments you rely on either for income or to make wrap payments yourself. And finally, it eats the capital you would need to continue your investment business.

So that’s it: Eight different exit strategies to keep in mind on any deal. We use one of these strategies every time we look at a property. By far, the one we use most often is to walk away.

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