All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

If you want to invest in doing it right, there are tankless "on demand" combination hydronic and domestic water heaters. But you do need to find that heating specialist. I've been disappointed with even some of them, stuck in old fashioned ways who won't do radiant or even use math to calculate how large a boiler needs to be.

I've found spraying big old fashioned casings and crown to be worth it. If you do it first you just have to mask off the windows, and not worry about overspray on the walls, since you're going to cut them anyway. Just bought a HVLP to try out http://www.harborfreight.com/high-volume-low-pressure-spray-gun-kit-44677.html. I've preferred a small air sprayer over a Ryobi quart airless, but the compressor for it is not portable. I would not try and paint a room with this, but brushing 5" wide detailed casings gets old fast.

That sounds crazy, there's all sorts of other non-market transfers, do they count too? what about $1 deals?

Just remember, those comps need to be arms length deals, no shorts or foreclosures. And it deosn't amtter what your neighbors are paying.

I'll shoot from the hip here: from what I see on BP compared to the NYC market, cheaper properties cashflow MUCH better than expensive ones since prices seem to have a much softer bottom than rents, but given normal economic conditions, the expensive ones in better areas will appreciate better. I can see this even in different neighborhoods of Jersey City: the places in the most gentrified part of town wouldn't cashflow, but they've gone up at least 20% this past year.

ACK! Tim, I hope you haven't done anything yet. You've made and are talking about making some serious errors. You should have run the backerboard OVER the tub flange! That way you'll never get moisture behind the wall. If you lay tiles half on the board and half on the flange any shifting of the tub will pop or compromise the tile. And NEVER use mastic, that way lies damnation. Thinset is fine for setting tiles directly on drywall.

As for the job, I'm a big believer in basic white subways, with a black course at the floor and a black 2x6 bullnose at the top. Or an Ogee molding if you want to spend more, I did on my own bath.

Amazing info resource for all things DIY tile: Johnbridge.com

I don;t know about for a flip, but I'm a huge fan for rentals, and my tenants in ~$1300 units love it. Not just is it cheaper and DIY, but it's repairable unlike slab. If a tenant managed to do major damage (hasn't happened yet) you can cut out that tile and replace it. I would stay away from light colors for rentals, too easy to stain, apparently the grain is looser than the darks.

Around here granite is still steep, and they won't touch a small counter for under $750, my own 30 sq ft counter was $2k. Tile is $5/ft, plus plywood, CBU or Ditra underlay, thinset & grout. I've gotten the edge rounded over and polished for $5 ft, but mostly just polish the square edge myself with diamond disks.

Frankly, video seems overkill when the majority of agent rental listings around here don't have more than a picture or 2. The one extra thing I do to weed out the low percentage showings, besides lots of pictures, is a floor plan drawing. Then nothing is left to imagination or explanation before a showing. Since my rowhouses have the same plans repeated, it's not like I have to do it for each unit, just one per building, with a mod for the ground fl.

I would think the only circumstance to pre-emptively replace is if you want to do something different, like an on demand or indirect, that would be much harder to do under the gun in an emergency replacement situation.

Why are you not doing the checks yourself with a svc like Mrlandlord.com? I've been using them for a decade, I think it's $15 for credit and eviction. Tenant fills in my application with a credit check release, and I run it if I think they're serious. I don't charge, yeah I've run a few extra at times, though only a few times do I recall someone I approved refusing the apt. But in the big picture it's worth not dealing with asking for a credit check fee.