All Forum Posts by: Jen R.

Welcome, @Denzel Stovall! I'm in Tallmadge, not too far away from you, and am also relatively new to the site. The podcasts and forums have been invaluable to me as my husband and I recently started pursuing real estate investing more seriously. Best wishes as you move forward!

Electric work is finished. As always, we had some wiring mysteries to solve along the way. Probably the strangest thing is that one of the light switches in the kitchen actually operates the built-in dishwasher...can’t figure out why that ever would have been a practical requirement. The basement took a little more work than expected. When we purchased the house, the basement was partially finished with a drop ceiling and wood paneling. During demo, we tore down the paneling and drop ceiling (which were in poor condition), but left the stud walls, thinking we may finish it again in the future. However, upon closer inspection, we noticed all the 2x4s had been installed incorrectly and were not stable, so we ended up having to tear all of them down. It now looks much better, and the block walls have a fresh coat of paint.

Hoping to finish the flooring this week and set toilets and vanities in both bathrooms. I’m also hopeful that we can refinish the stair treads this week. They’re pretty beat up, but I hate the idea of re-installing carpet over them.

Bedroom 1 just needs baseboards popped back up, then we can call our first room "done":

Layout of the house for anyone who is interested:

@Carrie Giordano, the cabinets were a Craigslist find, and they're in very good condition. Bought the whole kitchen with all appliances included (frig, range, d/w, micro, and extra built in oven that we will probably sell) for $1,000, plus $75 for the UHaul rental. Install was a little tricky: we had to tear apart one of the extra cabinets in order to create some filler pieces to make them fit the space. I would normally want to put in all new appliances, just to cut out maintenance headaches, but hopefully the initial cost savings will make it worth it.

I've also found good deals on used cabinetry at our local Habitat ReStore, both kitchens and bath vanities. 

Been following the deal diary you have going on up near Cleveland; hope you can get everything worked out quickly with the city!

Thank you, @Karen Margrave!

Progress report: Roof is done, windows are installed, tile work is complete, and interior painting is almost finished.

We’ve had some cost overruns, mainly due to the bathtubs, kitchen cabinetry, and subfloors having to be replaced. Because of this, we decided to purchase used kitchen cabinets and appliances. I'm nervous that purchasing used appliances was the right decision, but the price was right, and we needed to make cuts somewhere to stay close to budget. Over the next week we’ll finish the kitchen cabinets and counters, replace the electrical fixtures, clean/paint the basement, and start laying flooring. Our initial goal was to be done in 60 days (which would be January 9th). But the extra projects above added to our timeframe as well, and we are now hoping to have the house rental ready in 2-3 weeks.

Tub/shower surrounds:

Kitchen in progress:

A little more landscaping work and the exterior will be complete:

Thanks, @Aaron Montague! We will definitely keep that number in the calculations. We plan to manage ourselves until we pay off the mortgages at retirement, but obviously things could change over the next 30 years...

At this point, the exterior is looking pretty good: painting is done, new doors are installed, concrete steps are repaired, roofers are starting next week, and windows are on order (2-3 weeks out on install).

On the interior, we had a couple more surprises. We were hoping to salvage existing tubs, but once we cleaned them up we realized that the grime was hiding some cracks and chips in the fiberglass. So, plumber came last week and installed new tubs. Also, after we cleaned and sealed all the rooms with BIN, we could still catch whiffs of cat urine in one of the bedrooms. We ended up having to tear out and replace all the underlayment and subfloor around the perimeter of the room. We also ended up removing the underlayment from the other 2 bedrooms with the old clay carpet pads, as we were concerned about odor in there as well. In other news, our drywaller should finish tomorrow and we hope to start finish painting and tiling tub surrounds this weekend.

New tubs installed and ready to tile:

Returning the ceilings to white:

Kitchen:

Welcome to BP, @Matt C.! Great to see another investor from the Akron area. 

House still in progress; here are some numbers for anyone who is curious:

Purchase Price: $77,400 (and seller contributing $1,500 to closing costs)

Closing Costs: $1,530

Loan information: 30 year fixed @ 4.875% w/ 20% down

Estimated Repairs: $25,000 (we are still on target here)

TOTAL PURCHASE COST: $42,010

Taxes: $2,500

Insurance: $730

Debt Service: $328/mo

Maintenance & CapEx: $2,100/yr

Rental Income: $1,250/month

Vacancy (assuming 5%): $750

YEARLY EXPENSES: $10,016

YEARLY INCOME: $15,000

NET INCOME: $4,984

CASH ON CASH RETURN: 11.86%

In addition, we are projecting the ARV to be $140,000, so we should have plenty of equity to tap into in the future. Also, we are managing ourselves for the time being. If we were to hire a management company at 10% of monthly rent, that would drop our yearly net income to $3,484 and our cash on cash return to 8.3%. However, at that point we could also refinance and pull out a large portion of our initial cash investment.

Will post updated progress pics soon!

Thought I’d post a progress update for the week. Demo should have been complete yesterday, but we hit a major setback with carpet pad removal. The carpet pads in the two downstairs bedrooms were old pads made of clay and rubber, which have literally melded into the subfloors. We spent an entire day attempting to scrape the pad off the subfloors, to only partial success. We have tried softening the clay with both mineral spirits and vinegar, but are still not able to remove the complete pad. We had planned on replacing the carpets with vinyl planks, but due to the conditions of the subfloors we may just give up and cover with new carpet and a thick pad. Anyone have experience with this? Anyone successfully removed these types of carpet pads?

Otherwise, things are going well. Exterior paint crew has been taking advantage of the beautiful weather (not something that you can often say for Ohio in November!) and will be finished painting the siding by the end of the week. We also changed plans and decided to gut the kitchen. Once we emptied the cabinets, we realized they were in much worse shape than they appeared. Also found mold growth along the entire length of the sink wall. Despite the added cost, I’m secretly thankful for an excuse not to degrease, sand and refinish cabinets this week. Attached a few pics of the progress.

One of the upstairs bedrooms ready for cleaning and BIN:

Downstairs bedrooms are another story; we're still trying to remove the carpet pads:

Kitchen is gutted but drywall needs to be removed from exterior wall:

New paint on front elevation:

@Joshua Woolls - that's actually just an "iron-look" screen door (which will be removed along with the shutters around it)!