Rental Property Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2019 · 212 posts · 149 votes
I'm planning to buy a multifamily/single-family home in Vancouver, WA within the next year. I do not have a construction, repair, nor any handyman skills. Some beginner q's:
1. What are tips for hiring contractor to do garage ADU conversion?
2. What are the timelines for start to finish on an existing garage-to-ADU?
3. What should I look out for to avoid getting ripped off?
4. What is your favorite way to finance a garage-ADU conversion?
Most of your questions were things I overlooked while working on my ADU so I'm glad you're asking now vs. learning the hard way like I did
1- Get referrals... like a lot of referrals. Once you start with one contractor it can be tough to switch so make sure you choose wisely. Ideally you would find a highly recommended general contractor that has their own quality people so you only need to find one good person. Also, remember that the lowest bid won't always save you money over the course of the project.
2- Depends. Months to a year seems typical.
3- Get competitive bids to make compare prices and don't pay for services/materials you haven't received. Have a well documented payment schedule with milestones would be helpful to keep the project moving.
4- HELOC or cash out refi if you would benefit from a refi regardless. I think the better question would be lease favorite, for which my answer would be hard money loan. You don't want high interest debt that's dependent on a refi after the completion of the project.
In that case you might be interested in the listing of the address below. Although it's not in the neighborhood(s) of your choice the listing is leased by the room and currently does about $5600 a month minus shared utilities. I spoke with the agent that happens to be the owner/property manager and looked at the lease agreements. Maybe not the situation for you but could serve as a template to what you are trying to do.
Rental Property Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2019 · 212 posts · 149 votes
6y
@Account Closed: Pretty neat that the detached ADU increased value of property by over 2x.
@Matthew Forrest: Could you explain more on the answer for number 4? To be able to do a HELOC or cash out refi to finance a new ADU, I would have to already have a paid off property that is worth more than cost of building a new ADU.