All Forum Posts by: Mark H.

@Bienes R,

If the tiles are loose, they all need to come out, and the backer needs to be replaced. I commented in your other thread about using cultured marble - they can do cultured marble surrounds for tubs or for separate showers, they can handle the window with cultured marble, and it's likely to cost less and last much longer than any tile job. With cultured marble, you can use "green board" instead of the more expensive "hardi-board" as a backer and it won't ever get wet.

The only point of failure on cultured marble is the caulk lines at the seams, and there aren't many of those, since you're using large sheets of material. Around here, unless you're talking $500k plus homes, the builders all use cultured marble in new builds. It's cheap, it's durable & it looks good.

FHA and VA both have lots of fees & costs, but a "regular" investor loan requires 20-25% down & that might strap you for cash when you need it most. The VA program is a little hard on the property initially, they will "nit pick" & make you jump through some hoops, but if you can handle that, the low - down payment is a winner. You need a "reserve" fund as a new homeowner, and you need a *really* big one as a landlord. You might need $3k for a furnace & $2k for a lawyer in the same month, so factor that in.

As a landlord, and someone else's employee, you already have two jobs. You won't have the time to spend three-weekends fixing a bathroom, and every day a unit doesn't have a tenant in it will have a real cost.

I wouldn't surrender my weekends & evenings so easily. You might "net" $3k, per unit, per year - which sounds great at first, but could you make an extra $10k per year doing something else that doesn't require that kind of sacrifice?

Don't sign yourself up for 80 hour weeks at less than minimum wage.

In my former occupation, I used to go through the books at car dealerships & dig into their financials, and I was amazed when I realized how many "businessmen" were putting money & massive amounts of time *into* a business & getting very little back out. One dealer had put a million dollars a year into a hole (his business!) for the previous several years, so he would "have something" to give his children.

What was he handing down? A BILL! Thanks dad!

Your time has value. Your seed money has value. The risk you're taking on ( the credit you're rebuilding) has value. So run the numbers again. Calculate your time investment again. Run it all "worst case" & factor that into your offer. Don't lie to yourself about the deal you're getting.

After a year or two of planning, calculating & preparing yourself, you will effectively have ONE "bullet" of cash. Make it count!

@Shane Johnson,

I'm glad "you guess" they have the op's "best interests" in mind.

Pretending that trusts are "magical" entities that can "protect" you from lawsuits is hogwash. Anyone can be sued, anyone can be deposed, and your "privacy" can be penetrated pretty easily. A strategy of "hiding" behind trusts, especially one concocted by a PM isn't likely to do anything but backfire. If anything, ownership in a trust seems more likely to pique an ambulance chaser's interest in you.

There are about a thousand stories on this board involving PM's that misbehave - if you make it difficult for a tenant to contact you directly in that event, you make a lawsuit more likely, not less likely.

Your best bet is a VA loan on a four-unit, owner-occupied, in decent, habitable condition. I can tell you that despite your obvious enthusiasm for rehabbing, with a full-time job, it'll get old really quick.

Rehabbing is a full-time occupation, the business-end of landlording is a full-time occupation when you're learning, and even just acquiring properties can be a full-time occupation.

Don't try to put too many balls in the air, until you've learned how to juggle.

The bottom line for you is, you want to make *money* , not make more work for yourself.

Two years to fix your credit & $30k in savings, with a decent job & a VA loan could put you in a great financial position. You shouldn't spend every last dollar on acquiring the property or rehabbing it. Get something thats already decent & maintain it well. Cheaper isn't always cheaper. An owner-occupied four-unit in decent shape will give you an opportunity to be a handyman without killing you.

It's hard to know what you don't know on your first rehab, but asking lots of questions helps.

After you've had a bad experience, and you've seen common contractor tricks, you start to ask questions at the bidding stage- how many guys are you sending to put in my floor? What hours do they work? Are you planning on working on other jobs at the same time as mine? Who is cleaning up? Who pays for the dumpster?

Paying high prices doesn't protect you from flakiness - some of the worst contractors are very expensive and slow.

Setting clear expectations at the beginning of a job helps - if you're hiring a true GC, and you want a "finished" product on xx date, make that clear that you aren't going to be the one sweeping floors and installing doorknobs the night before it goes on MLS. Then make sure that your bid includes those things, and penalties for dawdling that are sufficient to cover your expenses if you need to hire someone else to finish the job.

If your bid for flooring & a new kitchen is just two sentences, the contractor is probably playing games. Just like buying a house, if it isn't in the contract, it's not happening.

Just my opinion, but you can't afford a contractor that you have to "chase" to finish the job on a house you plan to rent out. If it isn't finished & rented you're bleeding cash while the contractor dawdles & works on someone else's job. On a $1k monthly rental, you're losing $35 per day.

Contractors can and will disappear for weeks at a time, 3 week jobs can become 3 month jobs pretty easily, and I don't think you can imagine the anger you'll feel when you get lied to about your job being finished today, then tomorrow, then next week, etc. after it happens to you one time, you'll be a lot grumpier with every contractor you deal with.

Who cares about privacy? You're about as far away from the property as one can get and still be in the US... No way a tenant will ever hassle you in person.

That's way too much power to give a pm, as if the "standard" pm contract wasn't bad enough..

Chris @ Qwik Quote

He's a landlord and an independent insurance agent - I've been using him for years for car/home/rentals & umbrella & always get great pricing & advice.

The best pricing for my rentals has been from regional carriers that I've never heard of previously. He has some of the big names as well.

$140 is reasonable for hauling away the carpet & pulling up the tack strips- $3.40 per sq foot is more than the depot charges for tile install here, so I'd be a little less likely to play along.

Given the size of the project, I'd probably pay it and tell him to enjoy the $300 "spiff", because there's no future business coming.

All he really had to do was let you know before hand, and you would have probably approved it anyway, right? I'm not saying its right, because it isn't, but I wouldn't waste a lot of breath over an overage of less than 10%.

Btw, that's really nice flooring, hopefully they laid it down right!

The whole "companion animal" thing is a perversion of the law. If someone legitimately *needs* an animal (I.E., a blind person, or a seizure warning dog), that's one thing.

I expect that the best chance for clear resolution on these rules will be the airlines, believe it or not. As the abusers of this issue expand their reach & try to skirt the fees & rules for transporting pets, one can only hope for some push-back & favorable court rulings using the airlines deep pockets for cover.

This isn't an Oregon issue.

We do a lot of tile over concrete slabs here in Phoenix, and wavy is pretty much the standard.

A decent tile guy should be carrying an 8' level when he's bidding the job & if he's using enough mortar, grinding & leveling is almost never necessary. Check the specs on the tile & the mortar - most large tiles require trowels with 1/2" notches - using a trowel with a smaller notch might "save" mortar, but the results are usually uninspiring.

I couldn't say whether I'd pay an extra $300 unless I knew the size of the job, and the rate you were paying. I can get 20" tile laid on the diagonal for about $1.10 per sq ft. If I'm doing a 1200 sq ft area, and paying bottom dollar for the install, I'd gladly pay the extra. If I was paying $8 per sq foot & doing a bathroom, I'd be foamin' at the mouth & cussing like a sailor.