All Forum Posts by: Dutch Langley

I would love to get $2 a sq foot.  Does that also include materials?  I generally pay about $3.25 or so for mid level....$4.25 and up for higher end.   I'm assuming that is walls, ceiling, trim, doors, etc.?  

We pay a project manager who has his own company but works with us on a lot of renovation projects (we are a GC) based on a split in the profits.  Of course, some of our projects might be pretty high end and last 6 months, so he needs to get something along the way.  I'm pretty good at estimating what it will be, so if I think his total take in the profit at the end of the job is going to be 50K and last 5 months, I might figure out that it is safe to budget 6k to pay him as we go along.  I of course am always monitoring the income and expenses of the job to see if our profit percentage is going to still stay true.  

We will attend!  Looking forward to it!

This was great!  Your posts and pictures were hilarious.  

@Erik McKenna  Yes, I have tried both.  It might just be me, but Xero just seems to be more intuitive and easier for me to work with.  It was cheap enough on a monthly basis that I just tried it for a month to see what I thought...that was about 3 years ago.  

Do you have a contract with the contractor stating the scope of work, completion requirements, timeframes and what has to happen before payments can be made? 

I use Xero for my accounting and Builder Trend for my renovation software.  The greatest thing about Xero, Quickbooks, etc. is having your bank account hooked up to your software so it automatically downloads all your income and expenses.  Then it is just a matter of going in and categorizing each expense and income.  My builder trend software lets me track every renovation project and most of our subs get paid via echeck...again automatically connected with Xero.  Keeps me from manually entering in every expense.

We have done renovations like this on multi-family properties that were tenant occupied...mostly all month to month.  A lot of them were good long term tenants.  We decided to do it in phases and that of course the units needed to be empty..so..the owner had a notice sent to the tenants that we would be renovating the complex and that if the tenants were willing to move out they would receive a monetary amount to do that.  (they were given a 60 day notice).  Or...they could move them to a newly renovated unit with the increase appropriate increase in rent.  

1/3 moved out, which gave us the opportunity to rehab 1/3 of the units...then we had 1/3 of the existing tenants move into newly renovated units with the increased price, rinse, repeat.

Otherwise, if you have to renovate a unit when someone lives there, it is much more difficult.  We have moved people out to a hotel for a couple of weeks if needed.  

Also, look at tile stores that will give you up to 25% discount purchasing materials as a contractor.  We do that on a number of jobs.  Occasionally for cheap rehabs we have also found stuff at Habitat Restore.  You  can also sometimes find materials being sold by someone on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, etc.

@Johnny Situ  My husband and I live in Matthews...so just down the road from you.  We are looking at rehabbing and flipping and perhaps getting into some multi-family rentals.  Great to hear such an inspiring story!