All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Depends who is doing the work.

Call around to a couple of the smaller shops and ask for specifics. Plumber - How much to install one kitchen faucet. Electrician- one light fixture/change out 10 outlets. Same for drywall, concrete, siding. Get a base price and divide out to know the unit price. 

I tell them outright that it's a home we are looking to put an offer in on. If they won't give me a couple minutes of their time to throw me a couple numbers (doesn't need to be exact) then I don't have time to consider hiring them. 

Get a couple small projects going and build on that. 

To enter the inside of my thought process: Check the real estate listing, count how many rooms there are, condition of appliances, cabinets and bathroom. 

For a 3/2 1200 sq ft.  that needs appliances, flooring and paint: 2 gallons per room @ $40/gallon. $1.39/ft lvp. $600 Stove and fridge, $440 dishwasher and $230 for a microwave. Add 10-15%

Paint $520, Flooring $2000, appliances $1800.

I then would work backwards, kiss some butt at Sherwin for volume pricing, hawk craigslist for the flooring and scratch-and-dents the appliances if possible. That's if doing the work ourselves.

Can't throw much more advice on hiring out other than calling contractors. Just NEVER tell them how much you have to spend!!

Throwing a vote out for "think and grow rich", and "Estimating Rehab costs"

Also, Simon Sinek - Start With Why. Nothing to do with real estate at all. Helps identify and establish your reasons for wanting to get into whatever your doing (not for the money), and how to use those reasons to focus on the results.

New water heaters last 10-15 years at best. Someone replacing an old with a used would just piss me off as a time waste. 

From what I keep hearing on this site: real estate investing is about solving other peoples problems for profit correct? Your counter offer should reflect the price of licensed contractors correcting the repairs, and saving them the problem of losing the sale.

Seller can relist if they want to risk the damage their listing will take due to a failed sale. They could hire the contractors themselves and waste their time on it, or they could try to re-cobble everything and waste their time to end up in the same situation. 

I think you have the seller in a good spot, they know they've been caught in their half- assery. 

If the bathroom plumbing is shared on the same wall for the kitchen, the loose toilet or loose spout could be feeding the mold issue. Either way find the source. Unless your confident it's been corrected and certain that it will never get hot and humid in Texas...

I would also much rather see you end up with this home and correct these issues for a profit, instead of some first time home owner buying the lipsticked pig unaware of the situation they are about to get stuck with. Exposing their family to the issues and trying to spend their way out of a hole of repairs that they will never get out of. 

Best of luck, hope you find a way to make it work!

3/2 twinhome for $148,000. Will live in while flipping over 2 years. We have done a couple already with this being the first to approach with a carefully planned investment strategy instead of picking at projects for 2 years and guessing at the outcome. We didn't know we were flippers, just needed to make an affordable house liveable. 

Smaller 3/2 in decent shape sells for roughly 250 in this area. Being that it is a shared wall dwelling have been running on assumptions of around $200k maybe a little more due to good neighborhood, large yard and garage with mostly main level living at the end of a cul-de-sac. 

House needs mostly cosmetic. Picked this one due to lack of market options plus not needing much for drywall, studs, or other inflated materials. 

My first estimated budget for everything I would like to do is $23,000 for materials. (would only net 13.5k profits after sale) There's plenty of room to cut, and will be doing the work myself. Unfortunately the place stinks like cat pee, and I would love to change out doors and trim to get rid of the odors and 1980's look. 

Will need to do one bathroom update (vanity, toilet, floors) and the half bath will be a remod. All flooring, full kitchen remod, appliances. Maybe a furnace, driveway, a lot of cheap landscaping and large quantities of bleach, kilz, and paint. 

Struggling with which items to cut. We can clean the doors and save $1200 but would rather have new white doors with some character over hollow core cheap wood grain. White trim over veneered particle board.. Where do the lines get drawn and how can I justify those decisions with resale in mind? Have looked at so many flipped homes and the cheaply done ones are ridiculously obvious even in the listing photos. 

Read the J.Scott and other books, have been planning for months and thought I had this stuff down but as the closing date approaches I seem to have lost decision making capabilities. 

Thanks for any info!

Regular degreaser should get it, just let it soak. Keep your rinsewater and rags or mop clean. 

Magic erasers, dish soap, pine sol, WD40(slippery), any dollar store brand of floor cleaner. 

Rinse a few times with clean water to get rid of the cleaner residue.

Hi All,

Our live-in project house is under contract. We have a list of projects for the next two years which is mostly cosmetic (got lucky, no 2 x 4's needed). 

There is an unfinished area of the basement which is designated as a storage space currently. The area would be large enough to set up a home office. Thinking 3 sides of a waist height countertop with outlets above. Built-in shelving and maybe a paneling or some leftover LVP accent wall for a backdrop. Ideas to come. 

As minimalism and home officing have been trendy lately, would the overall resale be impacted up or down as bonus office, or lack of storage?

There's not a lot of storage space otherwise, with exception to closets, attic, and under stairs. 

Any thoughts are welcome!

Found a duplex. Two separate four bed one bath units on the same parcel. Neighborhood is kinda between crap and up-and-coming, great location to larger employers but corner of a busy street, rehab ready kitchen and baths. Fenced in yard with attached garage. One side vacant with a long term up to date tenant on the other side, rent on the occupied was $100 over what the mortgage payment would have been, plus the property qualified for conventional. We would have occupied the other and been perfectly capable of making the mortgage if it were to sit vacant. 

Due to my cheap assery, preferably like to keep our mortgage within 1/6th to 1/8th of take home pay, and set our pre-approval for about $50k less than the listed price (house flipping intentions). We didn't even stand a chance to make an offer. 

We could have gotten the pre-approval upped if it wasn't a holiday weekend, cashed out some equity on a car loan and hauled the change jar in for the difference on downpayment. 

This thing was 2 blocks from where we currently live and was everything we were looking for, plus an income property!

Making some phone calls tomorrow to change the pre-approval. 

Will the defeated feeling go away? 

How rare is that find and will one ever come up again?

I'm sure I'm being overly dramatic. I'm  also pretty sure there are rules on BP prohibiting me from explaining my actual thoughts right now. 

Check the caulk around the toilet base. We leave a quarter width gap in the back so that if the wax ring ever fails we know immediately from water seeping around the back of the base instead of through the ceiling below.

It's rare, but sometimes we get called back for a sewer odor. Filling in that gap solves it. 

The guy is probably full of it, or has never been self aware of his own odors. What's the next step you would take if the next tenant reports the same problem?

As I enter a residents home: I use my gloved hands to open their door, open another door to enter the room that needs the work. Set my backpack down, open it up and pull my tools out. Meanwhile EVERY surface I am touching they have touched, I am brushing up against their furniture, kneeling on their floors, and possibly touching their faucets or toilets while handling my tools. 

The resident not wearing a mask is a personality issue on their part. Full risk avoidance would require a one-time use Hazmat suit and disposable tools.

Wear your mask, wash your hands, sanitize your tools and dont eat the corners of your sandwich.

The lease is over, tenant hands in keys. Who do you rely on to make it move-in ready again?

Playing with the idea of turning my years of property management maintenance into a service offered to handle the make ready portion. As I know most owners don't want to deal with cleaning, painting and repairs... I don't want to do it much longer than it would take to teach a crew the standards of how to do it either!

What would that service process look like? 

Would the owner supply parts and paint?

How much time would you expect the process to take?

Would you do this on one type of property but not a different kind? (Low vs. Luxury...)

What value do you find in not cleaning hair out the drains, light fixtures, fridge coils. Not changing filters, door locks, leaky faucets, shower heads, smoke alarm batteries, and not doing touch up paint/cleaning. 

I know there is a demand for it, but making it worthwhile for everyone involved is my main concern.

Thanks!