We bought this house 13 months ago but this is the first time I have seen it

This is a house we bought 13 months ago. It was a deal that we partnered on with Courtney Fricke as the seller wanted a creative solution to make the deal work for them. There was actually 2 properties involved but we had sold one off and are now figuring out what to do with this one. Check out the video to hear what Courtney and Steve had to say about the deal or read the video transcript below.

Video Transcript

Steve: Hey guys, Aussie Steve here from Home buyer Louisiana. I’m here with Courtney Fricke. We’re at a property we bought about a year ago now, right? Just a little bit over a year ago inside. We bought the house next door as well over here, which we bought at the same time a year ago. But this is the first time I’ve seen the property actually. So me and Courtney partnered on it. She had seen it before we closed on it, but I haven’t been there. So I’m actually here for the first time.

There were tenants in place, and they’ve been in the property since we bought it. But they just moved out. So now we’re coming to have a look at it, checking it out, and seeing what we’re going to do. Interesting story how we bought it. Maybe I’ll get you to tell the story, Courtney

Courtney:  Sure. An investor friend of ours reached out and said, “Hey, look, we’re having problems. You know, in order for us to, you know, we have these two properties. We can’t sell them unless we put more money into them.” Very specifically, they were on the same well, and unless they separated the well, which is $7,000. So unless they put $7,000 plus they did more work into the houses, they weren’t going to be able to sell them. This property had a loan on it that one they owned free and clear, and they’re like, “We just want our money out of, you know, all of our money is left in this one house, right?”

So they were struggling because in order to get their money out here of this house, they were struggling. They didn’t want to have to go get another loan, and they wanted their cash out to go use it for other things. And they honestly, these properties had work that they needed to put into them, and they didn’t want to do that. We were able to help them. We bought that house for cash. And actually, the way the deal worked out here is they did have a loan on this one, and so we were able to buy this property subject to their existing loan, but in doing that, we paid them more in that one than we normally would with our cash offer. In essence, we were able to buy this one with maybe some creative financing and then that one traditionally with cash.

So we’re able to help them, help them get what they needed. This is why not every transaction is the same. Another thing is we were able to keep the tenants in here. Like I said, they lived in here the last year, and then they moved out because they had somewhere else they wanted to move to. And so we were able to help with that. But during that time, I mean, we had both Steve and I were not here locally. We both were out of town when multiple things happened on this one. And we said, “Okay, immediately go fix them.” And those things happen with rental properties. And so we know maybe you’re a landlord and you’re struggling to keep up with the repairs. Not to mention the insurance rates going up. Not to mention maybe your taxes are going up. Not to mention, you know, this interest rate environment. The market is slowing down. I just saw a report from Redfin the other day saying that, you know, New Orleans is one of the slowest markets. No is the slowest market in the country because it takes over 70 plus days just to get someone to make an offer on a property, you know, to go on a contract, and so we do a lot of different things with our properties. You know, sometimes we buy them, we fix them up, and we resell them. Sometimes we buy them and rent them out like we did with this one. And then sometimes what we do is we’ll buy them and then we sell them on a rent to own to families who are just close to being able to be homeowners themselves. And because we do all those different things, we can help serve so many more sellers who need options because if someone’s just a flipper, if they come in and the house maybe doesn’t need as much work, you know, that might be difficult for them, or if it’s a rental, they come into it and it needs a ton of work and it may not make a good rental, you know, there’s a lot of things where because we do multiple things, we can solve more people.”

Steve:  “So, Courtney, question for you. What are we going to do with this property? And just, just a little side note, the reason I’m asking is ’cause I have no idea. So we’re figuring out now, we’re here to discuss what we’re going to do now, now, now the property’s vacant, you know, we bought it over a year ago, and now we need to decide what we want to do ’cause there’s many options and we’re pretty flexible. So, you know, we’re actually not sure what we’re going to do next. We have multiple options. So, Courtney, tell us, what are we going to do? ‘Cause I want to know.

Courtney: I think we have to do a little homework because the market is changing, and that is something that we have to, to play into account, but we haven’t stopped helping people, which means we haven’t stopped buying. And so with each property, we have to reassess and we have to go look, what is the market doing? And, you know, what would be the best scenario? So I think Steve and I both have some homework to do to figure out what we can do, but know that I was hoping she was going to do my homework for me then, by the way, guys, that failed, right? So there’s a level there, though, is if you’re a seller and you’re looking at selling a house in Louisiana, know that the market is impacting our options right now. And so those are things to keep in mind. We’ve got to kind of do some homework. Not only do we have to go look and see, you know, what’s going on in the neighborhood, we also Pro might talk to some professionals and say, “Hey, you know, what are these things look like?”

If you’ve owned a rental for a long time, you know, you should always talk to a CPA. What’s going to be my tax ramifications for selling? Because if Uncle Sam’s going to, you know, put his hand out and want a large chunk, that’s, that’s going to impact your view of the results of the sale. It really, it really will. And honestly, if you’ve owned anything for over 5 years, you should.

If you know anyone selling a house in a house in Louisiana let them know that we are buying. We are particularly focused on buying houses in Baton Rouge, Greater New Orleans, Metairie,  the Northshore and the Westbank at the moment”