All Forum Posts by: Jim Goebel

@Daniel Pitner

Perhaps eat the financing costs and just plan to refinance into an owner occupied note once you can, after closing as an investment property?

@Hari Narayanan

Everyone is going to have different 'options' : opportunity costs (other investment opportunities), and what they consider 'good.'

I don't like banking on appreciation, but if there was a large enough prospect of that occurring, I'd trade some cash flow for that.  Not sure if that's your case.

We have seen $200 to $1000 cash flow per month, per property.  We do a lot of value add.

@Daniel Moscoso

Yes, tread warily.  I'd wonder why the person needs funds if he's been doing that well.

Secondly, if you get some collateral, in first position - by lending, that'd make me feel much better.  Worst case, you take the house if you're not repaid.  If that scares him, why would it if he's going to repay? 

@Matthew Shaw

@Brad Spuhler

I'm sorry I had a typo - I meant, 'Matthew' please do not defend those that do, not Brad.

@Matthew Shaw

If you're honest about how those things break down and are efficient in running your business, they don't move the needle much.  My last post includes a very generous $1k for misc materials which more than covers you, Matthew.  I might be off slightly as there'd be a decent amount of line-set copper cost on a project like this, but other than that we're not breaking the bank.  

@Brad Spuhler

Brad, take note that we're on the opposite side of the table as folks like Matthew.  If folks like him weren't going around and bidding 20x jobs to get the 300% gross margin project, and passing on all the rest of their projects, then I'd trust those 3 bids.  In the current state of things at least in my market, the HVAC field reeks of unethical business practices.  I could share story after story of dealing with clowns.  Brad you may not operate this way, but please don't defend those that do.  The important thing for the OP to understand is that this behavior is much more common than not and there is a TON of profit built into the projects of the average residential projects for service companies, because they are by design bidding a ton of projects with the intention of only taking on a small percentage at the highest profit possible.

There's also the question here of why you went with an A/E firm from the start?  Some projects can justify this, but the product/deliverable that comes from an architect, at least on the engineering front, would often leave much to be desired and especially as you don't have your design folks involved with the hands on field engineering aspects of building, you're going to suffer with design issues.

On that subject, by the way, are you sure you're needing new units?  What's the existing system like?

@Brad Spuhler

@Victor S.

Victor's right, I jumped the gun.  I'm not sure on prices of that particular multi zone mini-splits.  

However, I see another option for $3800 for a 5 zone with the required Btu Output (see below).  So, for the units I'd estimate you'd still be below $6k.  Sometimes brand names can help but I don't buy all the warranty stuff.  We use Goodmans for a lot of our stuff because we can buy it direct; I can't speak to the mini split market.  You'd of course have some more into other misc materials (duct work, line sets, registers, etc) but I still think you'd be under $7k total for materials, and yes this is a decent size project but like

@John Warren

said, I'd be shooting for $10-12k total out of pocket from what I know.

https://www.alpinehomeair.com/viewproduct.cfm?productID=453076198&linkfrom=froogle&campaign=Blueridge_PLA&content=Blueridge&keyword=453076198&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoqDtBRD-ARIsAL4pviBAcFWPOTiZJNh3ra4RJpjHluw90HukayuIoiqQXtROR0S9GAHR_owaAvPyEALw_wcB

@Lara Ijitoye

I still use CL but as some others have suggested, it has been watered down quite a bit.

I use it to find stuff to buy, to post stuff for labor, etc.  However, lately I've had poor results.  Seems that a good % of the tools have signs they may have been stolen, and a good % of the responders to gigs/jobs there are bozos that send off 10x one sentence responses (with poor grammer) per day.  Same usual suspects, same poor results on that front.  Not across the board, of course, so I will still continue using but less and less over time.

@Jill F.

HAHA Jill.  One person's nice is another's trash :)  I'm with you; there are good midwest markets that have reasonably upward potential less than $100k, however there's also areas where values will flat-line or worse, depreciate looking out 20-30 years.  Those (2nd) areas are what'll kill someone like the OP's mentor.

@Brad Spuhler

From my experience it's about double what I'd pay for turnkey job.

Do a google search for that equipment.  I'd guess you'll be in for about $5k there.  Someone (or two people) to come in and do this kind of job in an honest week and net $3-4k profit.... That'd be about right.

Consider getting a 96% + efficient furnace in your climate.  80% is so 20-30 years ago.

Consider hiring a moonlighter or someone else that knows what they're doing.  HVAC is my least favorite and respected trade.  Par for the course, unfortunately.

@Steven Lowe

Wow Steven, beautiful.

@Tasia Turner

Steven's on point.  

Explain very clearly that you are expecting a higher level of quality but also be very specific that you will have an opportunity to put BLUE TAPE on everything where there's a quality issue before they get paid.

If they make you do it twice, explain to them that your time is valuable and you're thinking about reasonably deducting your time from their pay.  Tell them also that if there continue to be issues you will be further scrutinizing their work (ie more blue tape).