http://www.fliperati.com Cheese-Free Real Estate Investing Blog Focused on Flipping Property in the NY/NJ Area Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:07:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Key Magazine, the quarterly real estate publication from The New York Times, features a great article on flipping houses in its Spring 2007 edition.  It focuses on the intersection of the entertainment industry and the house flipping phenomenon in modern America and it does not present the typical glossy overview of the renovate-to-riches dream.  I ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/18/a-deeper-look-at-flipping-houses/ I was going to continue telling the story of finding buyers for my flip and closing on the sale, but that chronology is getting a little boring so I thought I'd break it up with an overview of the project from an investment perspective.  Or, in short, an answer to the ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/16/roi/ Based on my descriptions of the Realtors I met over the course of selling my first investment property, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I hired someone from outside the circle of agents who had already visited the house.  I'm not sure if I discussed this before, but ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/08/internet-marketing-wins-the-listing/ Okay, the term "Real Estate Agent" is a mouthful, so I'm going to shorten to "Realtor" for the purposes of this post, even though I generally avoid that word because it's apparently copyrighted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and generally requires that little trademark symbol to be written correctly.  ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/06/a-parade-of-real-estate-agents/ As you might guess from my out-of-exile post on 2/27, I don't like to walk under ladders and I get nervous when a black cat crosses my path.  However, the quirks I've already described are pretty much the extent of my superstitions, so I was caught a little off-guard when my grandma insisted that ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/01/more-on-superstition-and-real-estate-investing/ So what happened after the November buyers fizzled out?  Well, losing out on a good deal is never pleasant and I took this loss particularly hard.  This was the first time I had ever tried to sell a property and it was beginning to feel like an impossible feat.  The fact ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/03/01/november-buyer-fallout/ As you may recall, I was quite happy to report that I had a full price offer on my house back in early November from the couple that had initially inquired about a lease option.  Granted, this was after I had reduced the asking price from my original pie-in-the-sky level, ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/02/28/what-happened-to-those-november-buyers/ I of course have to open this post with a very sincere apology for leaving everyone hanging in suspense for so long.  It's been over three months since I posted my last update and I realize it wasn't fair to simply drop off the face of the earth like that, ... http://www.fliperati.com/2007/02/27/the-post-youve-all-been-waiting-for-sort-of-5/ It seems like most investors were too busy defrosting turkeys or wrapping up deals in advance of the holiday to submit posts for this week’s Carnival of Real Estate Investing because only a handful came through.  Also, CoREI is still in its infancy, so I’m sure it will grow fat ... http://www.fliperati.com/2006/11/20/carnival-of-real-estate-investing-2-%e2%80%93-pre-thanksgiving-distractions/ I recently stumbled across a really nice service for people who sell stuff (houses, cars, baseball cards, etc) on the internet.  It’s called vFlyer and it’s a very simple (and free!) tool for turning boring online classified ads into very attractive electronic “flyers.”  My favorite application is the ability to ... http://www.fliperati.com/2006/11/13/looking-sharp/