All of our properties have personalities. We start each project referring to the property by some part of the address, but fairly soon after the clean-up and demo day, the personality starts to break through. Every house has a personality and I feel like part of our job is to discover it. One of our new properties is on 25th Avenue in Vero Beach and we are currently calling it 25 or 25th. We purchased it in really bad shape, but it is turning into the cutest little cottage, very near downtown Vero Beach.
Price points in Vero Beach are much better than in Cocoa Beach and we wanted to diversify, so Vero Beach is an area of interest for us. If this particular property were in Cocoa Beach it would list for a minimum of $600,000, but we were able to purchase it for less than $250,000. Granted, it is further from the water than our Cocoa Beach properties, but not by much (10 minutes instead of 2 minutes).
The numbers work on this property for a buy-and-hold or an executive rental, but flipping is always an option. Our biggest obstacle for flips is ourselves. We have so much fun working on these homes, designing and decorating them and they turn out so beautifully. We just can’t help falling in love with them. It makes us want to keep all of them forever. This one will probably turn into a furnished, longer-term rental because the neighborhood is not super open to vacation rentals, even though it doesn’t have an HOA.
Early on we thought we would add a bedroom and bathroom to make this property a 3-2, but the cost for the plumbing was prohibitive. This area is full of one-bathroom houses, and the comps for adding a bathroom did not affect the value enough to proceed. So we are sticking with 2-1, but we are going to enclose and finish out the carport area to make a workout room/indoor laundry room. We are enhancing the outdoor space in the backyard and may put in a cowboy pool in the future, adding a water feature.
We have given most of our Florida properties beachy names, because of course….beach! We will keep you posted on what we end up naming this little cutie. Feel free to send suggestions. I would love to hear from you.
Living our best life,
Karen Conrad