HVAC payoff on old vintage buildings

[Zack Reder]

Hey All,

I have very few comps because of how different my local market is from the rest of Oak Park so I'm not able to easily look at comparable units w/ and w/o HVAC in my area. I know that I'll cut down on my payments for utilities with an HVAC system - but I wanted to hear from everyone at BP. What cashflow successes have you seen with installing HVAC? Cutting costs or increasing rents? I'd love to hear some stories.

I'm currently evaluating making this improvement as I could get a fairly large grant to do so (covering 75% of the cost).

Thanks,

Zack

[John Warren]

@Zack Reder I have a 19 unit where we did this in Berwyn, and not having a boiler is so, so much better. Most of the time, the boiler adds anywhere from 5-10% to the operating costs for a building. That might not sound like a lot, but it really is. In addition, when the main boiler goes down you have a bunch of angry tenants because this always happens on the weekends when it is freezing. When one furnace goes down the whole building isn't without heat, so the unit isn't unbearable after a few hours. It makes managing these types of headaches a lot easier. 

One additional consideration is that almost every hvac person can work on furnaces. Boilers are trickier, and finding a good boiler tech can be hard.