South Philly SFH Row full gut and then some rehab, with video!
A family friends parents inherited this place twenty years ago and since it was in such a bad neighborhood (at that time), they just shut the door and paid the taxes for 20 years. They started getting violations from the city for a broken window and some other odds and ends so they stopped by to check on the place. That’s when they discovered the roof was mostly in the basement. The roof had caved in years ago, which took out most of the second floor and part of the first. There was a huge tree growing out of the foundation that ultimately required taking down two of the four foundation walls and the first and second floor walls and roof along with those foundation walls.
The friends parents called me to see if I wanted to buy it and I said “I can’t pay you what this house is worth (my niche is new construction multis, I don’t do many single family rehabs these days) but my wife will list it for you (she’s an agent) and you should get around $60k for it”. They said “no, it’s too dangerous to list and we want rid of it, either you buy it today or we’re giving it to the neighbor for $1”. So I said “I won’t take your house for $1, what do you want for it” and they said $10k, so I bought it.
Between Covid delays for permitting, construction delays to keep bringing the inspector and engineer back in as we found more and more structural issues, then amending the plans and waiting on them to be approved by the city after each amendment, plus a GC I hired that lied about his level of experience and took forever to finish plus ignored every material selection I made and ran with his own finishes that were mostly bargain basement closeout garbage, it took a year and a half to get this from acquisition to stabilized.
I got this email from the bank regarding the appraisal. When I bought the place ARV might have been $185k, then as time went on we crept up to $225k on a good day and that's what I was hoping for, so when the appraisal came back at $285k, I was pretty excited. I'm all in for around $160k with purchase, rehab, holding, financing, architecture, etc. and it's rented at $1500/month. Long journey on this one but well worth it in the end!
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