The beginning

OK…Here's the blog.  Photos coming soon. Mostly this is for me, to remember things.  Later, maybe I'll share it, but maybe not. Several months ago, Greg mentioned to me that he's looking at RE, mainly the vacants to value program in Baltimore.  I took an interest.  Baltimore is a crazy city.  The population of b'more is about 620,000. And the city estimates that there are 16000 vacant buildings.  So we bought a vacant.  While considering the V to V program, we found a house that had suffered a kitchen fire that had basically destroyed the kitchen while leaving the rest of the house intact. The list price: $10k…The listing agent claimed that there was interest from several investors, but we got it for asking. These are the things we did to make our offer appealing:

• We brought a quick cash offer: People wanting to sell distressed properties usually want out fast!
• We offer a quick settlement
• We didn't muck around with a home inspection, but did do a structural assessment with opportunity to walk away.
• We clearly stated that the seller didn't need to clean the house before settlement. They probably wouldn't anyway, so why not just say it? 

Within a week our structural assessment was done. Settlement is next Friday. After settlement, our challenge is to take this 2 BR, 1 Ba house to make it 2 BR 2 1/2 Ba house without stealing space from other parts of the house.  The current layout: