I bought a house as a "quick cash sale" - basically I pay 75% of value of house to homeowner but offer it to close nearly immediately. If title is okay can usually close in 5 days or so. Does not work often but often enough to run the ad in newspapers on weekends and all the cheap magazine type buy swap sell type places and on Craigslist. Sometimes to close an estate or avoid a tax forfeiture it works and I get a decent property priced to where it can be sold for a profit and turned quickly. These are the places that I usually do some fast upgrades on as well because most often they had been on market in past and just not sold for some reason or another so the upgrades are what makes it sell when it would not before.
This house was actually relatively nice considering how I acquired it. It was only 25 years old, aside from new carpet and paint did not need a lot inside. Under $5000 total to have it ready to go but there was a big issue. It had a very large yard (over ¾ acre and out in the country) that should have been a selling point but because it was at the base of a large rocky wooded hillside the yard was more swamp than grass for 2 weeks after every rain storm. When I looked at it the first time looked like yard just was not well maintained and in serious need of some grass seed and weed killer. When I went back 2 weeks later after had been purchased and new paint and carpets done, (coincidentally after 5 days of rain in between) was 2 inches of scummy water on 1/3rd of lawn and was a mosquito hatchery.
Now was clear why was nothing but huge mowed "lawn" with no real landscaping or even bushes planted. Being on a rural road there was no real drainage ditches on sides of road to run a drainage tile into and nestled into hills that was the only place one could run a drainage tile. The only answer I got when asking around involved hundreds of loads of gravel and rock recovered by top soil - but even then raising the lawn would then make everything drain towards the house, an even bigger problem.
I was reading and searching for an answer when somehow I landed on an answer - put in a pond. A little bit of research and a couple hours getting the permit from the town office and the excavator was on the way. A bit of advice from the extension office at Cornell University went a long way in making sure it would be big enough to collect even spring runoff at snow melt and they helped find the spring that was just below the surface of the ground contributing to the problem as well. I did also have a large pond pump put in and took the dirt excavated from it to build a berm with pond liners in them to hold the spring waters off the rest of the yard. Spent $5000 on a huge deck with a small "fishing pier" and a fountain in the middle.
It went from being a large featureless lawn/swamp to being a country home with its own small private pond of about a quarter acre with an entertainment deck, and even after increasing the price of the property $20k from what had originally planned to not only cover the costs but add to the profit, it sold with less than 3 weeks on the market and a larger than expected profit. Sometimes creative thinking pays off.
This house was actually relatively nice considering how I acquired it. It was only 25 years old, aside from new carpet and paint did not need a lot inside. Under $5000 total to have it ready to go but there was a big issue. It had a very large yard (over ¾ acre and out in the country) that should have been a selling point but because it was at the base of a large rocky wooded hillside the yard was more swamp than grass for 2 weeks after every rain storm. When I looked at it the first time looked like yard just was not well maintained and in serious need of some grass seed and weed killer. When I went back 2 weeks later after had been purchased and new paint and carpets done, (coincidentally after 5 days of rain in between) was 2 inches of scummy water on 1/3rd of lawn and was a mosquito hatchery.
Now was clear why was nothing but huge mowed "lawn" with no real landscaping or even bushes planted. Being on a rural road there was no real drainage ditches on sides of road to run a drainage tile into and nestled into hills that was the only place one could run a drainage tile. The only answer I got when asking around involved hundreds of loads of gravel and rock recovered by top soil - but even then raising the lawn would then make everything drain towards the house, an even bigger problem.
I was reading and searching for an answer when somehow I landed on an answer - put in a pond. A little bit of research and a couple hours getting the permit from the town office and the excavator was on the way. A bit of advice from the extension office at Cornell University went a long way in making sure it would be big enough to collect even spring runoff at snow melt and they helped find the spring that was just below the surface of the ground contributing to the problem as well. I did also have a large pond pump put in and took the dirt excavated from it to build a berm with pond liners in them to hold the spring waters off the rest of the yard. Spent $5000 on a huge deck with a small "fishing pier" and a fountain in the middle.
It went from being a large featureless lawn/swamp to being a country home with its own small private pond of about a quarter acre with an entertainment deck, and even after increasing the price of the property $20k from what had originally planned to not only cover the costs but add to the profit, it sold with less than 3 weeks on the market and a larger than expected profit. Sometimes creative thinking pays off.