All Forum Posts by: Darren Lenick

Welcome @Mike Lorence!

The Delray meeting is a great place to get started.

Boca is a great area. I’m moving my family there soon as well.

The only advice I can offer regarding your primary residence, is be careful of the communities with mandatory club equity memberships.  The home prices are well below what you would expect because it costs up to $70k for equity and a yearly membership fee of anywhere from $12k to $20k+. They can also be difficult to resell for this reason.

@Rosie Geller let me start of by saying I was in IT including live broadcasting of International tennis tournaments, so I have experience in security and security cameras.

The problem with using security cameras are:

- the resolution at night usually isn’t good enough to make identification unless you buy REALLY good cameras which will cost more then the AC unit you lost.

- even if you get an alert, the response time of police isn’t fast enough and your equipment is long gone. See above point as to why the police won’t catch whoever took the equipment.

If you’re looking to protect expensive equipment like AC units, then you likely have power at the house. Better to put up motion lights even at side of house as that puts a spotlight on the people trying to steel your equipment. Also alarm the house and transfer the monitoring to the new owners when you sell.

Lastly, MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE NEIGHBORS! Give them your cellphone number. I’m stressing this as this should be done from the day you buy the property. They are your best source for information. They want you to renovate and sell the house so that you help keep their property values up and give them good neighbors.

I’ve had neighbors give me the lowdown on other neighbors including a house that had a guy arrested for breaking into the local houses. They also alert me of suspicious people/vehicles or if the power went out.

In some cases, I offer to do minor repairs to their house, or at a minimum have my maintenance guy clean their yard or cut their grass for free. It’s a plus for me as curb appeal of your neighbors also affects the value of your property.

@Meg K. Those charges don’t seem out of hand to me but I’m in a different area.

If he’s experienced enough, he shouldn’t have to research going rates and should know what’s competitive in his market.

On the positive side, he’s not charging hourly. At least you know how much each item costs to install. Unless you’re very hands on normally, he probably got it done much faster then you could have, with the right tools, and since time is money, it probably was worth it based on your 2 hour commute.

Example: I’m very hands on and have all my own tools, but I’m flipping a house 3 hours north of where I live and because of that, I’m paying a little more to local contractors to get the job done. I’d rather spend my extra time looking for new flips then driving 6 hours round trip and hotel stays.

Just my 2 cents.

@Brian Ton thanks for the info.

We moved here from Toronto in August of 2017 and love it. I bought the property based on similar information expecting to fix and flip it. It was flagged a nuisance property before I bought it and the city was really cooperative with me on removing it but another property I have in Apopka has been ongoing for 2 years so I decided to sell 42nd Street and concentrate on my other one. It’s ok though as I grossed $14k and netted about $9k after holding it for 8 months. Couldn’t earn that in the bank so it was a decent place to park some cash.

Now we’re looking to buy our own place in Boca as we’ve been renting in Wellington until we got to know the area better.

@Brian Ton how is it working in the Northwood historic district? I had a property on 42nd Street that I was going to rehab but resold at a profit instead.

@Sonja Regis it’s no better here in Florida. I’ve gotten so frustrated that I’m working towards my own GC license.

It’s too late now, but I recommend including penalty clauses in the contract for missing target dates. Many contractors have penalty clauses for clients who are late on payments, so this makes it go both ways.

Contractors make sure they always have work by overloading themselves with projects. I think many are just poor at time management and don’t really do it to screw over clients, but you have to protect your investment as every day costs you money.

Call him and let him know you intend to cancel the contract and seek a full refund if he falls behind the schedule that he created.

@Bert Isidore I agree with @Matthew Bailey but would add one more item from my experience. Make sure it’s not in any protected land space. I got caught with 2 1 acre lots left to us by my father in law and they were both in an agriculturally protected area which made it excessively prohibitive to develop.

We wound up selling both lots eventually but didn’t make any real profit as the land didn’t appreciate much in the 20 years my father in law owned it because of its protected status.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know enough about real estate when he purchased it and was intending to build his retirement home on one lot and sell the other.

@Dave Vona I’ve used both handymen and GC’s. Typically, a GC is required under their license to maintain both liability and workers comp insurance. A handyman who typically works alone doesn’t carry workers comp as he is usually exempt being self employed.

In any case, I ALWAYS buy builders liability insurance for my properties under renovation to protect myself against injury lawsuits whether from trades or just visitors.

A typical policy here in Florida runs me about $350 for 3 months. I buy it quarterly so I can cancel easily once the property sells.

@Will Gaston it would take a lot of people jumping in a single spot to break that joist unless it was faulty to begin with. It’s possible it was sub-par and had a crack already running through it.

If you really want to fight it, you’d have to hire an engineer to look at the beam and determine if it was flawed as well as how much force it would take to break it. In the end though, would it be worth it? It would likely cost more in legal fees then it will to repair. Leasing to college kids is always risky and you should have costs built in for things like this.

I would at a minimum modify your student lease agreements to restrict party sizes. It’s hard to enforce without neighbors reporting but most clauses are a deterrent more than anything else.

Hi Alex,

I live in Wellington. I moved here from Toronto in August 2017.

Like Jon Huber said, if you can get to the Delray Beach coffee meetup, it's a great way to meet people.  I've only made it to a couple but I have met some great people.

Either way, I'm available to meet locally in Wellington if you like.  I'm not far from the Mall.