Donald Trump is a household name.  Most people think of the name as representing wealth.  Others might think of all of the failed businesses and bankruptcy filings.  Either way, he is a guy that takes risk and is rewarded.  Trump bought the house shown below for $41 million.  It is a 60,000 sqft ocean front home that sits on ~6 acres.  He then flipped it for over $95 million dollars.  I am sure there is a little room in there for profit. 

So that is crazy in and of itselft.  What makes the story a bit more crazy is, Trump wanted $125 for the property.  But the rumor is the buyer, Rybolovlev one of Russia’s richest, is wanting to tear down the house and start over on the property.  Story from Palm Beach Post.

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Kelsey Grammer is flipping homes.  Here is a house he picked up for $13.7 and is trying to drop off for $19.9 million.  The house looks great.  I don’t see any before pictures so I am not sure how much he put into the house.  And to be fair I am not sure how much work he actually put into the house.  Either way, there is room for profit there.  Some people are content, some keep hustling.  Check out more here, and check out the pics below.

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It does not help the game when people put out information that is false or misleading.  I do not like wasting my time and it puts a really bad taste in peoples mouths when you go out of your way to mislead.  I went to check out a small house with renting it in mind.  Here is the web description and picture. 

“All Brick Ranch with fenced in backyard in established neighborhood. Many improvements include:All new vinyl and carpet, fresh interior/exterior paint, new doors, blinds, range and kitchen countertops and cabinets. Enjoy patio view of mature cherry tree. Refrigerator and outside storage shed convey. ”

I was good with the description until I saw the house.  The following statements are where things got kinda weird for me, “new doors, blinds, range and kitchen countertops and cabinets.”  There may have been 2 new interior doors in the house.  All doors were not replaced, which is not really false, but misleading.  There were no blinds in the house at all.  Maybe they were going to put in some new blinds, but they were not in when I stopped by. 

The flyer in the house said “Newly installed range,” and the web description allude to a new range.  This was interesting as well, because the range was old.  It might have been new to the house but it was not new.  The countertops were new and not misleading at all, which was a welcomed thing to see.  The cabinets on the other hand were not new at all.  They were however painted recently, but not new.

 I felt like I had gone to the wrong house and double checked the address a few times.  The flyer had a disclaimer, to the effect of “Information provided by sellers, subject to independent verification by the buyer.”  When people mislead it gives the impression that they are not trustworthy.  You never know what to believe when you deal with them.  I was considering this house, but have since decided against the house, just based on the lies/misleading information. 

Honesty goes a long ways…

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So I put in bids on two houses Friday.  Both went into bidding wars, per se.  I put in a bid, then the realtor comes back and says there are multiple offers, we want your highest bid.  They give you nothing else, like what other offers are out there or what you should try to achieve.  Unless you have to have the property, the rule is, let the current bid ride.  For some reason people are not playing by the rule. 

It is like in blackjack.  You play using the strategy card, not only to increase your odds to win, but not to screw over the next player.  If you are not going to play by the rules, get your own table. 

There are lots of things that are probably going on in this market.  The first I am sure of is that many buyers are coming to Raleigh to buy real estate.  Many markets have been hit hard and buyers are looking for stable areas.  Raleigh has been pretty stable, so now I am competing with out of town buyers that are not playing by the rules. 

I have a third house that is in the mix, that I might not have gotten beat on by bids.  The others are gone to the wind.  I will post what I did to make my offer “appear” more attractive if the things I tried worked…

Anyhow, if you are starting to play the real estate game in Raleigh, we do not play the highest offer game.  We let the bids ride.  We are all here to make money, do not screw over yourself and others.  I am just ranting and could go into this more, but I will let it ride.   Thanks and have a great day.

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I got motivated this weekend and was a bit busy.  A bit too busy.  Here is some of that motivation for you.  I saw these posted on BadCopNoDonuts.  I have gotten a bit of motivation from that site in the recent.  Any how check out the videos.

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I am sitting at an open house right now.  Things are a bit slow.  I was hoping to not have to do any open houses, but it might be worth it in the end.  It is giving me a chance to gather my thoughts.  I only had one person come thus far and they came with a realtor.  I will be able to use this as a “command post” for getting everything else I have going on straight.  So I guess the update is that the house is still on the market. 

 The market is not great right now.  Interest rates are good.  I am not sure how that will help me directly.  Percentages are good, but someone still has to come here and buy the house.  I will be doing another open house next weekend as well and potentially a few more weekends, though I would like to have it sold.  This time to “stage” the house, I mopped as soon as I got here, baked cookies and got the lighting in the house looking good.  I of course burnt the first batch of cookies (as I am not used to baking f’n cookies), but the second batch turned out okay.  I did not do balloons this time, but probably will next time and have bottled water for visitors.  After the break are some new pics, nothing new, just newer pics (and the time stamps are ugly).

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So I am looking around for new houses to buy and flip.  Here is a small little hustle web tip.  There are a few places to get foreclosure list.  RealEstate.com is a decent site for finding homes.  In Raleigh if you do not want to subscribe, you can just click on the links.  A majority of the links have pics from Raleigh tax records.  The tax record photos have the tax Real Estate ID on them at the bottom.  With this ID you can search the Wake County Real Estate Search for the homes.  This will give you more information than you will know what to do with.  It has info from deed history, current owner, maps, etc…  Basically you will find out all the information you would want to find out from the paid membership.  You can check out the house and generally the house will be locked up and have notes on the windows with contact info.  Once you make enough flipping you can afford a monthly fee to see things for free, but until then you can use this method to get your feet wet and see if you want to start flipping.  Let me know if this works for your area. 

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I have the house I have been working on, on the market, with pictures.  These pictures show opposing views of the downstairs area, family room - kitchen - dining room.  Hopefully we can get it to sell quickly.  I am looking into other things now but not sure which direction to head.  It is either to the ghetto or a ritzy neighborhood.  Depending on how this how works out I will be making that decision.  There is another picture after the break. 

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Well I have been waiting two days to make a post about the house.  I had the realtor out on Wednesday.  He came back on Thursday to take pictures to put online.  I am waiting for the MLS number to post pics here.  I have not heard back from the realtor though and do not see the house on any MLS search I have access to.  Building a network of people you can trust is extremely important to all aspects of life.  Not to mention that communication is key.  He might be trying to sell the house to clients he has before listing it on MLS or something of that nature.  It might be that my MLS search sites do not update immediately.  Who knows, I do not? 

 I am using the realtor based on recommendations.  Generally that is good and it might prove to be good, time will tell.  I have four realtors in my family that I am not using on this house because of this recommendation, plus the house is a bit outside of their markets.  We will see how this works. 

Anyhow this week is not the best to be putting a house on the market with reports of the housing market slipping 6.7% in October.  I am trying to make money and those types of percentages cut deep into profit and move towards loses.  My lawyer and Realtor have a fixed price, unfortunately I do not.  This is a slow time of year as well for the housing market.  Hopefully I can prove all of this wrong and make some loot.  Will post some pics soon and do updates as I get them.  As of now though the house is for sale and there is not much more for me to do other than wait…  Let me know if you know of a good Raleigh realtor

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I am close to getting the house on the market.  It has been a long few weeks.  I have enjoyed it though I have been exhausted.  The timing is extremely ugly.  I would recommend not putting a house on the market 1-2 weeks before Christmas.  We will see how it goes though. 

I have a few last minute chores to get done before throwing the house on the market.  I still am waiting on the new counter-top, but that will be in when it gets in, can not really wait on it any longer.  I also have a few holes in the wall to re-repair.  I guess I can say that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel finally.  Tile and paint still officially suck.  I have two new projects coming up that should be addressed here soon…

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