Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2016 · 161 posts · 221 votes
My wife and I had been interested in purchasing a rental property for about a year with the intent of making this a business. She's a teacher, I'm an engineer and we have little faith in the future of Social Security / 401k stability. So bring on the house viewings! After many viewings we decided to look at a 'slightly' downtrodden 1954 ranch with the right square footage.
Notice the fancy red-white-blue spray painted garage windows! Seems like we may have an artist on the premises (more on that). After viewing the place twice, researching the rent comps and recently sold comp values for the area we decided to purchase it. Here is my wife after closing...inspecting her snazzy new $60,000 purchase (so much better than an escalade).
Your wife and I are kindred spirits. If things don't work out between the two of you, please give her my number. She and I would be a match made in heaven because clearly she knows what hell looks like.
So nobody likes to admit they don't know what they are doing, its embarrassing when you make an obvious mistake. Don't stain floors when its 85F inside the house and always always use a smaller pad and never cross the board lines.
Room 2 was finished before I realized my mistake. What can you do? It's a rental so I'm not resanding but it took my father-in-law stopping by (he's an actual wood worker) to stop me from sanding it all off in a fit of rage.
@Ryan Huggins; HA! I love it, I can't imagine what you've seen if this one isn't that bad. I'm still 'fingers crossed' that I'll find drug money tucked up in a basement ceiling tile so I can pay somebody to finish this project.
LOL!!!! I'm still waiting for that too. I've gotten a few treasures over the years, but never anything fun like money.
@Lee Fahy , 40 years ago, they used to say "if a couple can hang wallpaper together, without a murder, the marriage will survive. Your wife would have a lot in common with mine (mine is a keeper too; not sharing contact info!)
PS: it would have been funny if this thread was titled "how I met your mother" [sorry, couldn't resist :) ]
@Steve K. ; I think that would have been a good title as well. Funny little side note, as we did the skim coating on the walls we began to see highlighter coming through the mud in room three: "SEX IS THE BESTEST" and it would NOT go away. It took three or four coats of KILZ to finally get it gone. So Investa-Brothel seems fitting. Haha
So in between the mud work, floor work, cleaning and trim I did some baby carrying while mom was sleeping (which she manages to get about 45 minutes at a time).
Alas, I had to return to work (actual work) and then my side gig as well. Here are the new ceiling fans with dimmer lights and a remote.
Anyway, that's probably it for my posting pictures today. I'll grab some finished pictures tonight when I head over there to continue the basement demo. I have a roll off dumpster showing up in the morning.
@Linda Weygant; If things weren't going to work out with my wife I'm pretty sure it would have been the night we put sheetrock up on the ceiling of Room 2. We made it through that and didn't speak for 24 hours after.....so I think we are going to go the distance. If not though, I'll PM her contact info, haha. She's a keeper.
LoL. A rehab DIY project will let you know real quick if you're going to stay married.
Yeah, me and my boyfriend made it solidly through 4 rehabs. The fifth kinda did us in for a while. Then we got back together and decided to do two at a time. Pretty sure now we can make it through anything.
@Chris Purcell; The comps for the area are pretty difficult for a duplex, single family homes in the neighborhood with similar rooms/bath/sqft are going for 120-150k. My ARV that I used was 115K as I plan to BRRR this once the basement is finished.
Similar houses are renting for anything from 1000 to 1400 in the area, I plan to advertise at 1250 and hope for the best.
I didn't realize Bigger Pockets was a thing until a couple months AFTER I bought this disaster. The calculator they have is AMAZING. Here are the numbers, I don't mind sharing everything because I already realize how clueless I was when I started this project. So why not go down in flames.
@Linda Weygant; ...................two at a time. My God. You are what I aspire to. Kim and I are linked for life now, rental property and a cute little money sink hole who turns two months old in a week. It'll be a miracle if we can remain solvent between the duplex and the rugrat! haha.
OHHH, Forgot to say this house is an hour and ten minutes from our primary home so we commute over and stay with my in-laws.....no big deal, except it's taken a year to get this far. I love my in-laws thank God but sleeping two wide on a twin bed is really getting old.
@Chris Purcell ; it's actually worse than that, 25K of rehab cost was estimated. I also used the lowest ARV possible because I want to assume the worst and hope for the best.
Here is a map of the recently sold in my neighborhood.
And yes I was ok with being heavily out of pocket because I was totally clueless about anything and everything. I'm less so now, but probably still clueless to a large extent. Haha.
Excellent job on the rehab so far! Great progress, it's finally coming along. Good humor too in the posts, always gotta stay positive and have fun with it!
What's your outlook on this project at this point? It sounds like you still want to refinance and rent it. What do you think you will be out of pocket all said and done, and are you ok with it?
I'm in a similar boat of nightmares, although much different. Trying to stay positive but it is rough
Chris Purcell ; well the actual ARV is going to likely be in the 130 range so I feel ok. My actual rehab costs will probably be 25-30k and if I come out short on the BRRR then I'll chalk it up to a lesson learned.
I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky person so if it costs me 5-10k to get a duplex up and running then fine. If the next one costs me that much then and takes over a year, not ok, it's a business and I need to be better than that.
@Chris Purcell; I hope your situation isn't too much man. For me I understand that I'm in deep and nothing is going to change it, staying positive keeps me married and motivated to get the job done.
There have been some rough days of hammer throwing and swearing, mistakes made and money wasted. I just try to avoid crawling into the main level bathroom tub and curling up into the fetal position and crying myself to sleep. Haha
OHHH, Forgot to say this house is an hour and ten minutes from our primary home so we commute over and stay with my in-laws.....no big deal, except it's taken a year to get this far. I love my in-laws thank God but sleeping two wide on a twin bed is really getting old.
I think I know how you ended up with a baby in the middle of this.