Looking for guidance - rent or sell
Hello!
I bought a property in South Florida at the peak in May. It turned out it has polybutylene pipes among other less serious problems. The total cost of fixing everything will be about $50K. I have already invested about $15K to take care of some urgent issues.
If I sell now I would lose about $50K in commissions and lower selling price.
I have read horror stories of how it took some people over 12 months to fix polybutylene pipes due to a combination of bad contractors and delays in getting permits and inspections. I am worried that if I take on the task of repairing it may take longer than the 2-3 months I can afford.
A third alternative is not to fix the polybutylene pipes and just to rent as is - but I am worried that it could lead to a big problem with the renter and me later.
Does anyone have experience dealing with these types of issues? Any advice regarding this will be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Jeff
Most Popular Reply
@Jeff Miller Were you not expecting a rehab of around 50k at purchase? 15-20k additionally if the plumbing wasn't planned for, but that is a lot less than a 50k loss on sale. If you are going to do other rehab's I would just get started ASAP and be saving funds where you can and cutting back to stretch that 2-3 month run way out.
12 months seems extreme to rehab a house. 2-3 months possible if you don't have vendors lined up nor have done remodels before. It sounds like you are looking worse case scenario and starting to freeze/ look for an early exit instead of sticking to your plan of rehab and rent. If this is a long term play a slight change in value today should have no impact on if this bad deal today and was a good deal a month ago. However you are 3 months into it I would start picking up speed before you miss peak rental season.