Number Three

Temple (magenta circle) is pretty far north of Hermit Haus’s focus area (magenta glob).
 

Here is the house with the pile of ashes featured.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2016-03-11.

My mentor Phill Grove always says, “Your Net Worth equals your NetWork.” Here’s an example.

A few days ago, I got a call from Dominic G, another redeveloper working in Central Texas. He was checking references on a General Contractor with whom I’ve worked for many years. As we chatted, we found out we have a lot in common, including the back office system both our companies use. Then Dominic mentioned he had a house under contract in Temple. Since Temple is well outside of his normal range of operations, he wanted to know if I would be interested in buying the contract from him.

Now Temple is also pretty far north for Hermit Haus to go. We don’t usually get much farther north than Georgetown. But the numbers looked good on the surface, so I said I was.

Last month, I met yet another redeveloper at the Houston Summit who has done roughly 20 houses over the last 20 months in the “Greater Temple” area. We’ve been chatting a bit, so I called Larry and asked if he’d like to JV (form a joint venture) with Hermit Haus to get the deal done. He did. We did an onsite evaluation with Larry’s lead contractor, revisited the numbers, and came to an agreement on how to proceed. Hermit Haus is now under contract to buy its third house since December.

We’re calling this project “The Ash House” because the previous occupants appear to have heated the house with a lovely wood-burning fireplace for several years. Unfortunately for the neighbors, they just dumped the ashes in a flowerbed until the pile is at least 36 inches tall and a couple of feet in diameter. One of the first items to clean up on the list!

Everybody wins!