All Forum Posts by: Derreck Wells

I have a deleading job coming up where the apartment building was deleaded in 1990 and was issued a lead certificate. The current owner's potential tenant's funding source (section 8, CTI, etc) required a new inspection. Of course some new violations were found, not a big deal, easy to fix most of the time. Except... at some point since 1990, someone found a some gray paint in the basement and decided to paint everything in the rear, 3 story, common area. Floors, ceilings, stair treads, risers, railings, risers, doors, window frames... everything. The stairs had been covered with rubber mats during the original deleading process; even these mats were painted gray. Unfortunately, the paint they found was lead based paint. 

So some time in the 90's the back halls and stairs of all three floors were painted with lead paint that was banned in 1978. The actual risk isn't limited to houses built before '78, but at this point, the law specifies '78.

That's another reason they used lead in the paint, it made it stay usable in the can forever. It wasn't just durable, the stuff just didn't go bad.

@Dina Fantegrossi  , I say daily, but I pay at the end of the week. I had one guy working for me that I had to pay at the end of the job, not on Friday, or he'd be up drinking until all hours and wouldn't get up for work on Saturday. He was a good worker, so I kept him on for a while until his binge drinking got to the point that I wouldn't see him for 3 or 4 days after payday. Unfortunately, in the construction trades, we get a lot of those guys. Once you weed them out though, the daily salary works well and it's easier to track what days your guys were in rather then how many hours each day. 

@Cal C. We should talk.

For the record, I pay my guys by the day, not hourly. If I pay them hourly, what's their motivation to get the job done quickly? They're not going to work harder for the same hourly pay. If they get $X daily and I tell them "We need to get this, this, and this done today and we can leave." They're busting their asses to get it done quick because it increases their hourly pay if they can leave earlier in the day. I've tried the hourly thing before and found guys just work slower and want to smoke more.

Let's say for example I pay them $12 an hour. That's $96 per 8 hour day. If I pay them $100 per day and they get to my stopping point after 6 hours, they'll be making $16 per hour. Its amazing how many fewer smoke breaks they take and how much shorter lunch breaks are when I pay them like this. It also makes the guys more loyal. They're willing to work 10-14 hour days if I need them to because they think they make out on the short days. Its my job to balance the long and the short days so that they think they're getting the better end of the deal. They think they're getting a bonus because they're getting out earlier, but the reality is they did more work in a shorter time then if they were stopping for a smoke once an hour and taking a half hour lunch.

The point here is that your investor should look at your percentage as a salary. It motivates you to get it done quicker, thus increasing everyone's profits.

First, your investor is making out on this deal and should be wiling to bend over backwards for you.

Second, getting the hourly work down in a contract is just smart business.  Your investor will probably trust your judgement a little more for showing intelligence. I'm assuming that you have a standard RE contract for the RE transactions at both ends. It's not personal, it's business. 

Third. It sounds to me like you're GCing the project. Be aware that some states require a license for that. Usually there's a loophole where if you own the property you can GC without a license. 

I would use the loophole and buy the properties in your investor's name and in your name. Now that you've worked with the investor in the past, they should trust you to do this. Instead of getting paid hourly, how about a percentage of the profit? This all serves 3 purposes; 1) You're legal to GC. 2) Your name is on the deed, investor can't just not pay you, you own a part of the house. 3) Your name is on the records as having successfully flipped "x" amount  of houses, buikding your credibility in the industry.

You can use 1 & 3 above as reasons to your investor for changing the terms of your previous deals to a percentage of profit with your name on the deed. It gets it into a contract without saying to them that you dont trust them. It also tells the investor that you'll be going for the largest profits you can squeeze out, since you get a percentage. It motivates you to get the properties done faster and cheaper.

Good luck,

Derreck

P.S.

I'm looking for an investor to do just this sort of deal. Got my eye on a property I'd love to flip before spring.

And you're right on that @Rumen Mladenov , you can leave it in place as long as it's intact and not an outside corner that a kid can get his mouth on, or a movable surface.

@Chris Volkers People use heat guns to strip wallpaper all the time (see link below). I'm not saying it's intelligent, but obviously, all people aren't intelligent. They like to make things up and not believe the evidence in front of them. What are you gonna do? People get set in their ways.

 https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=heat+gun+to+strip+paint&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=heat+gun+to+strip+wallpaper

Wow. Sealing the walls with an encapsulating paint isn't going to help. As soon as she takes a sledge hammer to those walls she wants to remove, then the lead is out.   

I wan't going to comment on the Radon, I have a Lead License, not a Radon one so I haven't been educated in Radon, but a simple Google search of "radon risks" brought me to the  EPA website where I read this...

'The United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) says that radon is a worldwide health risk in homes. Dr. Maria Neira of WHO said that "Most radon-induced lung cancers occur from low and medium dose exposures in people's homes. Radon is the second most important cause of lung cancer after smoking in many countries."' (emphasis added)

The World Health Organization and The Environmental Protection Agency aren't "credible" in your humble opinion? Or you just didn't really educate yourself before posting that reply?

It goes on to say "Radon is the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, according to EPA estimates. Overall, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer. Radon is responsible for about 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year. About 2,900 of these deaths occur among people who have never smoked. On January 13, 2005, Dr. Richard H. Carmona, the U.S. Surgeon General, issued a national health advisory on radon." (emphasis added)

So the US Surgeon General isn't a credible source of information either, huh? 

People come on here asking for professional opinions. Granted, most of us are not lawyers or doctors, but a lot of us have licenses to do various aspects of construction. We have taken classes to get our licenses and have to take "continuing education" classes yearly (or ever couple years depending on the license) so that we stay educated in our respective areas in order to keep our licenses. We come on here for various reasons, to learn new things, to help people, to get new business, because there's nothing on TV worth watching, etc. 

Is what we say heresay? (noun information received from other people that one cannot adequately substantiate; rumor.)  No. It's not. Everything is verifiable if the person takes the time to verify. Just like I verified that you, Chris, were falsely claiming that lead paint and radon are merely legal and not medical issues. (Since you don't have M.D. after your name, I didn't really think it would be hard to verify.) 

Over 1,000,000 kids in the US have lead poisoning (25,000 of which are in your state) and 21,000 cases of lung cancer are caused by Radon exposure annually. Seems medical to me.

Absolutely Chris, don't worry about it. The CDC says that in Indiana, only about 25,000 kids have lead poisoning. But don't worry, there are 522,000 kids in the state, so you have plenty of healthy ones. 

It's not the paint chips that are the problem. It's the dust. If a movable surface (door jamb, window, etc) has lead paint on it, it releases dust when the parts move. That dust then ends up on a kids hand as she crawls or plays on the floor, or waits at the window watching for daddy to come home from work. Let's say this kid has a snack while waiting for Daddy and uses the windowsill as a table. I'm sure it happens a lot. I know my kids used to eat on the windowsill and watch the birds all the time. 

But, hey, don't worry about it, it's not your kid.

@Jeff S.  It's not an oil based primer that encapsulates the paint. It's an encapsulating paint, such as Lead Block and it can only be used if the existing paint is adhering well enough to the wall. You need to do an "X" test with duct tape before you can use it. The results need to be recorded on a specific form. It also needs to be put on to a specific thickness, with a gauge. 

It's not a racket, the additional regulations add a ton of labor and expenses to the job. There are regs that determine how thick the plastic on the floor has to be and even how thick the trash bags have to be. Those costs get passed to the end consumer. 

Welcome Dave. I'm right up the road in Pelham! Let me know if you need anything!