We bought this 160 year old uptown house in New Orleans

We bought this 160 year old property in Uptown New Orleans. The way we bought this isn’t typical and it has a very personal backstory. The house is in great condition, the owners did a gut renovation about 5 years ago. They had been AirBnB’ing and renting it out as they lived in Chicago. The burden of managing the property was getting hard as they had busy lives in Chicago and they were concerned about making the note payments if they were to lose the tenants. They could have sold through a realtor but since this is a $700,000 property, the realtor commissions would have been significant and it may have stayed on the market for a long time.

The twist to this story is that our founder Steve Keighery and his family were leasing the property at the time. They had originally taken a 5 month AirBnB on it when they first came to New Orleans for a vacation. When they figured out that they wanted to live in New Orleans for good they had leased out the property. After a couple of lease renewals they were going to buy a house of their own but started speaking to the owners and figured out they were concerned about they would do with the property once they left. Steve’s experience of solving homeowners problems kicked in and they ended up doing a lease option purchase where Steve and his family would continue paying rent for 2 years but take over responsibility of the maintenance of the property. Some of the rent would count as equity and the sale price to be executed in 2 years was agreed. This was a win-win as the owner avoided expensive realtor commissions and a long time on market when they would be getting no rent. They locked in the cash flow from the lease payments over the next 2 years and no longer had to worry about the maintenance of the property. For Steve it was great to lock up the property his family had been living in without locking up all that cash so it can be deployed into other income producing properties. This is quite a sentimental property for Steve, as his family went from moving into a AirBnB for a vacation to actually owning and still living in the property years later.

While Steve generally won’t lease your home for his family before he buys it, he does love to problem solve and come up with win-win solutions for property owners who want to sell. If you are thinking of selling a house in the Greater New Orleans then reach out to Steve and see if he has a good solution for you.