Real Estate Debacle

[Samuel Pierre]

Greetings, 

I purchased a property back in 2022 for myself but with hopes of rehabbing and renting it out. The process unsurprisingly ended costing more than I planned or anticipated. My current issue though is that my mortgage and insurance have gone up to where it no longer seems like it would be valuable as a rental. Aside from that there are now other issues that need to be fixed. One of the issues is that the floors were replaced as part of the rental in 2022, but months later they began to feel soft. Something has occurred causing floors to begin to grow mold. The hired leak detection company states there is no leak, the roof has been replaced as a result, and the crawl space has also been encapsulated. All these repairs were made with the expectation that the problem would be corrected. I didn't expect the floors to be as good as new but I did expect there to be a stop in the progression of the problem. The floors have continued to get worse. At this point I do not know where/what to do. I am not financially capable of continuing to throw money into this home and I don't know how I can somehow make this property beneficial. Should I repair it and rent it out? Should I just let it go for whatever I can get? Open to any suggestions. Creative financing, I just don't know what actions to take or where to go at this point. The contractor who put in the floors is not following up on phone calls or promises to review the work he did and see if something was done wrong. Other contractors hired to look at the property are saying something was not done correctly. I don't know what to do. 

[Cory St. Esprit]

There's a lot at play here - but if you don't have the money to repair the problem, you most likely need to look at selling the building and getting out from under it. If you own it outright you could do creative financing, but more than likely selling it the typical way would be easiest/best IMO. 

You could look at filing a complaint against the original contractor - realizing those don't often go anywhere, but it's something. It at least affects ratings on Google and Angies List, maybe saving people in the future from a similar issue. 

[Derrick E.]

Is this happening to all of the floors in the house or just some of the rooms? If it’s only some of the rooms, are they above ground on 2nd floor, ground level, or below ground?

What type of floors did the contractor install? 

[Mark Fries]

This is really a common problem happening all over.. Flippers, rehabbers, contractors, everybody wants to install LVP flooring... But right on the side of every box of this flooring, it says to never install on a subfloor, which is what I presume you have. As a contractor in Jacksonville we are seeing this issue popup almost weekly, almost like an epidemic. 

Heat and moisture gets trapped under the house and the heat wants to rise but the LVP creates a vaporlock, thus inhibiting the mold growth. 

Who ever picked the LVP and didn't read the box is at fault.