"The Flip is Dead . . . "

Where: 4906 Old Cedar Lake Road just south of 100 & 394 in St. Louis Park

What: 3 BR/1 Bath rambler built in 1924 in very rough condition

How much: asking price $89,900; sold price $78,500

When: listed 3/26/2010; off-market 4/21/2010

. . . "Long LIve the Flip"

Where: 4906 Old Cedar Lake Rd.
What: completely rehabbed, 3 BR/1 Bath home with just over 1,000 FSF
When: on market Sept. 3 (Fri.)
How much: list price = $189,900

Flip-flop? Not!

Spring Foreclosures Make Their (Re)Debut

Sorry for the Dr. Seuss-inspired headline (guess who's got little kids they read to?).

My point was, enough time has now elapsed since this Spring's flurry of deeply discounted foreclosure sales that several are now re-appearing on the market as for-sale rehab's. And selling -- quickly.

A good example is this Cape Cod-style home in Minneapolis' Powderhorn Park.

It came on the market in early April for a ridiculously low $88,900, and immediately attracted more than 15 offers (my client's was one of them).

Ultimate selling price? $121,500.

The Buyer, apparently a real estate agent (at least, the same agent represented the Buyer and now-Seller) put new roofs on the house and garage, refinished the hardwood floors, and cleaned up the Kitchen.

New asking price: $199,900.

Did she get it?

Yup, and then some: it just closed for $213,000, which it fetched almost immediately after coming back on the market in July.

Public Loss, Private Gain

So all's well that ends well, right?

I think it's good for the housing market that foreclosures are being absorbed, fixed up, and re-sold.

And it's certainly good for the foreclosure Buyer cum Re-Seller who made a quick $50k (my estimate -- let's hear it for the profit motive!).

And it might even be good for the Buyer's Buyer, who got a nice, cleaned-up house (having been through with my client twice, I can attest to its quality).

So who loses?

All the taxpayers -- us -- who effectively ate the loss on the defaulted mortgage, and never saw the upside on the re-sale.

Add nine zeroes, and that's what just happened with taxpayers and their multiple bailouts of Wall Street investment banks.

Fern Hill "Flip"

Latest Chapter in Fern Hill Foreclosure

Where: 26xx Kipling Ave. South (St. Louis Park's Fern Hill Neighborhood)

What: 3 BR/3 Bath; almost 2,800 FSF home

How much: $429,900 (Pending)

Market time: 2 weeks

This home caught my eye because: 1) it just went pending; and 2) I didn't recognize it -- and I know the area extremely well, having sold numerous nearby homes.

Further thickening the plot: the current owner closed just four months ago.

In fact, the home has been the subject of two previous posts on this blog: "What's Selling: Fern Hill Foreclosure"; "Multiple Offers and $40k Over Asking."

If you haven't already figured it out: this one was a flip -- a supposedly extinct (or at least endangered) species in today's housing bear market. The owner won a wild bidding war, paying $40k over the $165k asking price back in February.

They then did a gut remodel, adding more than 1,000 FSF (mostly in the basement).

Did they make money?

You'd certainly guess that they did.