Note to family who usually check my blog: this is not a usual post. :) This is information for folks in Springfield about the house we hope to sell. It was easier to put it all in a blog post that we can direct people to...
We are going to sell our investment property on 1114 North Limestone Street sometime in the next year. It has been a great house that has helped us out a ton. We need the equity/funds from the sale to help us pay for adopting 2 kids from Haiti, and make it easier on us since we are living out of state now.
The house has a 2 bedroom unit on the bottom and a one bedroom unit on top. We have GREAT renters in the bottom who would really love to stay there there until at least November of 2016 if possible. We have rented the bottom out for $475 (you could possibly get more - like $500-$525) and the top out for $300 (or sometimes cheaper to help out friends) and had good experience with renters. We've never had trouble with the neighborhood. We hope to get $65,000 for the house, which will give the next owner several hundred dollars of profit per month.
Like I said, this house has been a solid income stream for us and helped us have extra money coming in each month. I don't think we've ever had a unit empty for more than a couple weeks at a time. It can also be used as a ministry, and could very easily be turned into a single family dwelling. It was a great first house to live in. (We stayed in the bottom unit until we were ready to have our third child and rented out the top to help with income.) If there is a single person or young married couple who would want to live for free, they could live in the top unit for a while, and the income from the bottom unit should cover mortgage, tax, insurance, etc of the whole house. Or if someone wants to buy it purely as an investment property and not move into it themselves, you've got guaranteed renters for the first year who would pay the mortgage and the top unit would just be pure profit. Our motto has been to keep it in good shape, charge "lower rent," and try to make it a win/win.
If you are interested, just let us know!
Here are some pictures of the house. These are a few years old, from when we lived there, but it gives you a good idea of what it looks like. I'll also list improvements we've made over the years (and when I say "we", I mean we helped our much smarter friends who knew what they were doing!), and the couple of cosmetic things we know need repaired:
We fixed the balcony roof and added the railing. The lead department also did some work on the house, inlcuding new doors and soffiting.
One car garage, but room to park two (smaller) cars side-by-side. We put a new roof on the garage.
Big fenced-in back yard. (This is what it looked like when we lived there.) I know the bushes/trees could use a good trim right now.
We also own a strip of land across the neighbors yard and we could technically run a driveway from the side street to our house, but we never did because we didn't want to mess with the nice yard.
The entry-way to the upstairs apartment.
We put on a new back deck a few years ago.
Downstairs living area and doorways into the two bedrooms.
Once we had a second kid, we put a dining room table in the living room area, but there is a spot in the kitchen where a small table (2-3 people) would fit. We put down the tongue-in-groove hardwood oak floor when we moved in.
One cosmetic thing we know needs done in this room: a few years ago, the renter upstairs let his sink overflow majorly and it stained the ceiling in the downstairs living room. Our current renters (who plan to stay until November 2016) don't mind the stain and said we could just wait until they move out to fix it.
We totally gutted and re-did the kitchen when we moved in. There is a sunlight we had sealed the same time we had the chimney repaired.
Beside the fridge (where the cupboard and bookshelf is), is where a small table fits.
Looking from the kitchen in through the living room and into a bedroom.
Bedroom one
Bedroom two. This room is pretty big... and messy in these pictures. :)
Downstairs bathroom and laundry. One repair that needs done in the bathroom: we replaced the old toilet last year, but there in a hole in the wall behind it that the new toilet did not cover. It just needs patched and painted. Another thing the current renters don't care enough about for us to hire someone to do it until they move out.
Little storage room off of the bathroom.
Stairway (from the outside entry way) that leads to the upstairs unit.
Small living room area upstairs. You can't see it, but there is room for a futon against the right wall and there is a doorway that leads out onto the balcony.
Tiny kitchen. The stove and fridge come with it. (We bought a new fridge last year for it.)
Bedroom... we put the same hardwood floors in here.
Bathroom. When we bought the house, we replaced all the subflooring and put in a new shower.
The top unit does not have central AC but is cooled easily by a window A/C unit. We put a brand new furnace and central air in the bottom unit a couple years after we bought the house. Both the upstairs and downstairs water heaters have been replaced in the last few years.
We were told the roof was about five years old when we bought the house in 2004. It does not have any leaks that we are aware of. Sometimes if there is a very strong wind and it is raining, there is a spot under the balcony door that leaks down into the unit below, but it is not a major leak and is infrequent, and I don't think there is much we can do to fix it without removing the entire doorway out to the blacony.
Carpet probably needs a good cleaning or to be replaced, but besides that and the couple of small things I mentioned with the pictures, we aren't aware of any other repairs or problems!
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