All Forum Posts by: Peter Sanchez

Is it at the bottom of a hill?  Has there been heavy rain recently?  Might be bad drainage...If so, you would to install French drains or some other kind of system to draw water away from the foundation.  Sump pump?

welcome @Antonio Arias !  Florida is a great place for real estate these days, best of luck! 

hey @Kim Uhland!  I'm in DC and I'm interested in self storage too. I used to own a reusable moving boxes business and I was interested in doing some kind of concierge self storage business (Like Iron Mountain, but for household goods).   Get in touch with me if you want to chat.  Thanks.

@Stephen S. you just reminded me that I have a couple of reference books (i think they were put out by Black and Decker) on my shelf.  One is Plumbing and the other is Electrical (my achilles heel).  I'll tell my future grandkids about how in my day the internet was on paper and it'll sound like my grandpa talking about the radio being TV without a picture. 

If you lost your job, would you move or try to stay in the area?  If you would move, don't buy it.  If you would stay, then buy it and keep that extra $500 a month that you would be saving and start socking it away.  You'll have $6k after a year and you can use that to replace the furnace or make any other upgrades that you need as you go.

Don't worry about oil prices.  I guarantee you that you have no idea whether they will go up or down.  If you did, you would be so rich that you wouldn't have to think about real estate. But if you buy this house, do it in a way that making a mistake won't wipe you out. 

In other words, don't buy it if you're expenses are going to go up, or if you have absolutely no cushion for unexpected repairs (if you finance those repairs with credit cards, they will be incredibly expensive). 

Good luck.

The best tool for a DIY project isn't something you find in an aisle in Home Depot.  It's...YouTube! 

I come from a long line of contractors, so although it's not my job I am pretty comfortable with most DIY projects.  I was thinking about tackling something that I hadn't done before (tankless water heater) and went on YouTube and found a goldmine of how to videos.

If you've never sweated copper pipe, put in crown molding or rewired something and want to learn how, I highly recommend going on there. There's some great info on there for people wanting to learn how to do some projects.  I think it's also great even if you don't want to do it, because if you know what's involved in a repair (and what the building code requires) you can better supervise your workers if you hire out the repairs.  

@Cierra Seay great story!  I'm glad the one on one mentoring is paying off for you.

I agree with @Joel Owens

 and @Chris Kennedy

 said, I can't emphasize enough how important a specialist is.  Don't hire someone who does "a little bit of everything."

Something you can also do is look for CLE classes for attorneys (they have to take a few of these periodically to keep their license current). I'm not saying to take the class, but look at who is teaching it.  If the person is teaching other attorneys on their subject (like Real Estate) then they are regarded by other attorneys who practice real estate law as someone who really knows what they are doing.

Mold doesn't grow on inorganic objects.  Sorry to say, but it's probably growing in the plywood under the shingles and a cleaning isn't going to cut it. 

Looks good to me :)  

Be thankful you live in Florida instead of California.  Over there the building code requires you to "hot mop" it with liquid tar.