✨Just Sold✨Hamlet Farm House

The first time we stopped by the subject property was on the way home from visiting some friends in Charlotte. Hamlet is located about an hour and a half from Charlotte and an hour and forty minutes from Raleigh. Although it’s a bit out of our territory, we figured what the heck… might as well check it out. As we rode down the dirt driveway and pulled up to the house, the first thing we noticed were multiple vehicles in the driveway. There were already investors on site viewing the property (on a Sunday, no less). This didn’t give me the warm & fuzzies – I really didn’t want to get into a bidding war over a property being offered by a wholesaler. I was SO uninterested at this point, I decided to stay in the car while Craig walked around the house briefly. We chalked it up as a waste of a drive; however, it was kinda fun seeing a new place we’d never even heard of before.

A few days later we received a call from the wholesaler asking what our final offer would be. We reran our numbers to confirm, what we thought at the time, our After Repair Value and renovation budget would be. It was difficult to come up with an ARV for the property since it was a large single-family home on 10 acres in a small town. There weren’t ANY comparable homes to use for our calculations. We made a conservative assumption that we could likely sell the property around $275k. Our offer of $145k was substantially lower than the price advertised by the wholesaler. We were shocked to find out none of the other investors who walked the property were interested, so we were the only legitimate offer he’d received. The wholesaler was actually out-of-state and had no intention of closing on the house, so we communicated with him on how we came up with our offer price, ARV and repair numbers. He was able to take this information back to the seller and negotiate a price that worked for everyone. We officially had a property on 10 acres in Hamlet under contract!

Repairs Needed

The very first thing we did was get the house measured because it felt much larger than what the records showed. For some reason, the previous tax records showed the house being only 1800 square feet. However, the new survey showed 2553 square feet of total living area! Ok, well this brought some mixed feelings – we could potentially get an extra 750 SF in value but how would this affect our repair budget? We held our breath and crossed our fingers that we’d still be able to stay on budget, even with the extra materials and labor we’d need to finish this big ol’ house. 🤞🏚️

Once we closed on the property, our main priority was to get the roof replaced. Clearly there were some issues with the roof that were left unaddressed for years which caused leaks in multiple areas of the home. The worst spots were in the kitchen and upstairs, close to the attic access. Once the roof was replaced and we were confident the leaks were fixed, we began putting the house back together. We got a new HVAC system installed, repaired the damaged sheetrock, added fresh paint, refinished the hardwood floors, installed new LVT in the bathrooms and laundry, and new carpet in the bedrooms. I even found a double-sink vanity on sale at Home Depot for the primary bathroom. It took 3 guys and a forklift to load the 400 lb. vanity into our truck. As far as getting it out of the truck and into the house, you can see how well that went in the video below 🙂 It took Craig & I almost an hour to unload it but luckily we didn’t damage anything or ourselves in the process! I love how the new cabinet turned out!

The last item to contend with was the enormous in-ground pool out behind the house. We weren’t sure if it would be better to try and repair the existing pool or just fill it in. We obviously couldn’t leave it in it’s current state, seeing as it looked more like a swamp than a kept-up swimming pool. Our realtor gave us a referral for another real estate investor who had a lot of experience with properties with pools. His best guess to repair the pool was around $12k but that didn’t include any extensive plumbing work, if it was needed. He recommended filling it in and moving on. We found an excavating service company out of Fayetteville who quoted us $5,700 and could tackle the project within a few days. We signed on that dotted line as quick as we could and truly couldn’t believe it when the excavating company sent over the completed work photos. One day there was a massive swamp *feature*, and the next there was no sign of it ever existing! We were super happy with our decision to fill it and move on!

Listing the Property

Now that we’ve put all the finishing touches on the house, we were ready to list it on the market. There still weren’t any comps to use for valuing the property so we reached out to our realtor to see what she thought. Remember, we were using $275k for our ARV before we found out the property was actually 750 SF larger. We figured the extra square footage would yield some additional value, although, we really had no idea what to expect. Our realtor recommended us listing the house at $360k. Needless to say, we were floored by the possibility of selling it at or even around that price!

We had more interest than I thought we would considering the location being in a small, rural town. We had buyers inquiring from out of state and a few showings from people who were looking to relocate to a property with acreage. It wasn’t until a local couple scheduled some repeat showings that we really started to feel like we had a serious buyer. They loved the house, loved the land, and already lived in the area. This was the perfect opportunity for their family and we couldn’t have been happier! We were thrilled at how excited the buyers were about the property and the full-price offer didn’t hurt either! We were under contract after just a couple of weeks from listing the property. Things were really running smoothly…

Sale Closing

LOL😝 … if getting the cabinet in the house was the biggest issue we’d encountered thus far, we shoulda known that something was going to go awry with the sell of the property. This was going to be the first time we’ve ever been cleared to close early: inspections and appraisal were complete, the buyers had their loan approved, and we’d resolved or negotiated the due diligence items. Now all we had to do was wait to hear back from the closing attorney to see if we could close a couple of weeks earlier than expected. No dice. As it turns out the title did not come back clear, which was a real fail since this issue should have been cleared up when we purchased the property. *Note to self to NEVER use the wholesaler’s closing attorney/title company.

When the title search finally came back, we discovered an open home equity line of credit attached to the property. The original owner opened the HELOC with Truist bank many years ago and unfortunately for us, never closed it before she passed away. At this point we felt stuck. We were scheduled to close the following week and now this issue MUST be resolved before we can proceed. Since our name isn’t on the Truist account, we weren’t able to speak with anyone at the bank. We weren’t able to get in touch with the heir, who could close the account either; even if we could, how do you ask someone to graciously spend their time at the bank just for us to be able to sell it to the next owner? Anyway, after a few days of patiently waiting for any information that might help us move forward, we finally received word there was a balance on the account. The balance was $.59. Let me tell you, we couldn’t get to a Truist branch fast enough and you better believe we paid it in exact change! We sent a copy of the receipt to the closing attorney and she was able to request a satisfaction letter from the bank. Although closing was delayed by a couple of days, we were able to get everything resolved and the property sold! We found out later the wholesaler’s closing attorney WAS in fact able to get the heir to go by and close the account, as well. It really takes a village, sometimes! we are extremely grateful for all the assistance we received to get this property sold.

How did we do?

Interestingly enough, we did better than we ever expected. Especially considering how little we were interested in the property in the beginning. I will say, the more time I spent in the town of Hamlet and at the house, the more I started to really fall in love with it. I could *almost* imagine us buying this house ourselves (if it just wasn’t so far from Raleigh). However, we’re so excited for the new owners – they bought a gorgeous farm-style home on a beautiful piece of property in the sandhills of NC.

We purchased the property for $145k and sold it for $358,500. Even with the additional square footage, we still managed to stay on budget with the repair costs. This has been one of my favorite flips we’ve done so far!

✨check out the before & after pictures below✨