BiggerPockets

What is the most you have had to spend on a rehab? I want to hear all of the horror stories. Please share...

Tiara,

Its not the amount of money you spend on a rehab that is causes the horrors.

Its when you spend too much relative to what you can get out of the property that causes the horrors.

When I say "spend" I mean money and time too. If you can sell a house in good sturdy shape in a few weeks, don't spend 12 months "making it perfect". This extra time holding the property costs money too, in missed opportunities for example as well as carrying costs.

We do many remodels for folks who spend 200K putting in a kitchen, powder room, and HVCA. These folks bought their less than perfect houses at a great price, and the renos make sense given current values.

When we do spec flips, we usually aim for sturdy long lasting upgrades with a little bling here and there, or nice ROI potential in the sales price, to make the house stand out from the others on the market.

We have a lot of experience working on older houses. The money making upgrades are kitchens, at least 1 nice bathroom, AC, modern windows, and paint.

Best
Diane Menke

Hi Tiara,

I'll lay my cards on the table here. During rehab of a house I have in Mobile, Alabama we discovered a water leak under the house. The plumber crawled under there and fixed it just fine but the next day we found we had no water whatsoever. Turns out that copper pipe thieves had stolen all of the plumbing. That first night they didn't have the right tools so only managed to damage the pipes, not remove them. But the next time they came prepared.
So we had the copper piping replaced with PVC which is legal in Alabama and everything worked just fine.
We finally got someone interested in buying the house that was able to qualify for a loan. They had an inspection and noted that the gas water heater wasn't working. Sure enough, we sent our contractor out to the house to find that the thieves had returned to steal the GAS lines! So now we are in the process of getting those installed quickly so that we can finally sell this house before the price for used shingles gets to the point where people will be willing to steal those!