All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

I don't have a price to give you for Houston, but I'd ask you to consider that drywall guys there are probably in great demand right now and that demand is likely to be sustained with, of course, no increase in the supply. I would expect to pay through the nose, which means at least $2 per square foot for materials + labor.

There are quite a few proven ways to make money in real estate that don't get much play on this website.

@Liz Lawson

In kitchens and bathroom, we always do impervious porcelain tile in rentals and flips, most definitely not natural stone, nor hardwood. There are sanitary considerations that trump everything else. My wife works in health care in Pittsburgh and a very large percentage of our tenants are also health care workers (health care is very, very big here in Pittsburgh). If you're renting to anyone from that that population, their infection control awareness is usually way up there and they pay close attention to the floors of their rentals.

Yeah, I also like that riftsawn white oak, @Joshua Crossman, even at the seven to nine bucks a square foot it costs. And 9 oz. of that miraculous Odie's Oil costs an eye-popping 40 bucks from Rocker. You remind me of my mom watching cooking shows. Every time the TV chef broke out the lobster or the steaks, Ma would start to snicker. "Come on...we can all do it that way, honey. Show me a two-bucks-a-plate recipe that'll knock my socks off, come on, can't 'cha?"

For the record, my guys and I are not too shabby at installing and finishing hardwood in place ourselves, but for rentals, we tend to stick with $2.99/ft2 plain-sawn No. 1 red oak on sale and three coats of oil-based poly at $100 per five-gallon can.

But even if I could get the kind of ultra-high end oak flooring Joshua's talking about cheaper than PEI 5 impervious tile, I would still do the tile in kitchens and bathrooms. I would sooner do it than a marble or granite floor, both of which I have also laid in my time (always 'umble, very 'umble).

Once again, the sanitary considerations of impervious porcelain tile in bathrooms and kitchens trump every other consideration for much of our target rental market, and most likely yours. The cold issue, by the way, is always a non-issue once the tile is nice enough.

@Francesco G. points out that tile is more durable than hardwood in the long run. I'm not too sure about that, especially with the kind of clowns I've seen put in tile here in da Burgh.

I'm sure the tile floors I lay down with my incredibly talented and supremely skilled  two good hands are nothing short of perfect (always 'umble, very 'umble), but about two months ago, we pulled out about 350 square feet on No. 1 three-quarter-inch white oak tongue and groove flooring that I dated to circa 1928. The bathrooms in this place were done in thick-bed mosaic tile in 1945 and are cracked in places today.  The hardwood I pulled out had never been refinished and was still perfectly serviceable...but it was in a kitchen and pantry, and so it had to go.

Hope I've helped convince you. Good luck with the job up in Ann Arbor, Liz!

You live in Massachusetts, and Massachusetts is a strange place for foreclosure auctions, with rather a idiosyncratic legal structure for getting things done. This is not necessarily a bad thing for you. However, you also live in Worcester County, which further complicates things. According to Wikipedia, there is NO actual county government, which would ordinarily be the first place to start. Again, this might end up not being a bad thing for you -- it stands to reason that the higher the bar to entry, the fewer players there are.

What I would do is call a lawyer in your area who loudly and proudly announced on his website that he deals with foreclosures and ask him where you should start learning about the foreclosure process in Worcester County.

New Hampshire's even more interesting. Please take a look at this site:

http://www.homehelpnh.org/understanding-your-situation/the-foreclosure-process/

@Amr Taweel

I know it looks bad right now, but one day, this duplex (I read your profile) might become a golden opportunity for you to learn how to lay ceramic floor tile. Lay the vinyl plank flooring over the peel-and-stick for now, but when you're ready, there are plenty of people in the BP community who can teach you how to lock down those kitchen and bathroom floors for decades with waterproofed tile installations.

@Jamie Dietz @Andrew Medici


40K eight-unit multifamily "near Pittsburgh."

Why, what could possibly go wrong?

Here are my top three guesses:

North Braddock
McKees Rocks
Wilkinsburg

So you agreed on the work, the guy has bought the materials, and now you're firing him because a late offer undercut his bid after you had made an agreement.

Now you want him to eat his expense and use the materials in another job or jobs. Until that job or jobs roll around, you want him to eat storage costs on the materials. Actually, you don't care, as long as it's not your problem.

After all, if he expected you to keep your word, he should have insisted on it in writing with a penalty clause for breaking it.

I don't think he's going to write nice things about you on the bathroom wall of his favorite bar.

@William S.

Amazing how much dancing around the reality of what you've pointed out has happened in this thread.

No, it's not possible to generate significant passive income out of SFH rentals in B-class neighborhoods in a place like KC.

I'm one of the previously-mentioned believers in solid hardwood flooring finished in place with three coats of poly and heavy-traffic-rated floor tile laid by a competent installer. As I am the flooring guy of our little property outfit, among other things, this works for me. If you are not the person installing and maintaining the tile and hardwood flooring in your rentals, it will not work for you over the long haul.

All the same, I would urge you not to think in terms of the CHEAPEST finishing options for a house used as a rental, but the toughest and/or the most easily replaceable. If you don't, you're going to be right back here when the next set of tenants move out, complaining about their bestial living habits. You've made a good decision to eliminate carpet. I don't think there's a legitimate case for carpet to be made in a profitable rental property in 2017.

For now, you've received a lot of advice to scrub down your walls using TSP and to paint your exposed subfloors with oil-based Kilz. It's good advice. But they don't take into account the things you've told us about your home's existing flooring.

It sounds like you have peel-and-stick vinyl tile in your kitchen. That's a no-no for rentals precisely for this reason. However, you can install vinyl plank flooring over that floor and get rid of a lot of the smell. You'll be back where you started soon enough, but at least you'll be able to remove the plank flooring easily enough and replace it for a low cost.

You do not mention bathrooms, so I figure there are three possibilities. The first and ugliest is that they were carpeted over hardwood flooring, like much of the rest of the house. The second-ugliest is that they're just plain hardwood. The third is that they're either sheet vinyl or more peel-and-stick vinyl tile. Your solution in all three instances is to put down another vinyl plank flooring, and be ready to replace it when necessary.

Good luck.

https://www.cookcountyil.gov/service/building-perm...

This website should help you find out what you need to know.