All Forum Posts by: Stephen Joyner

I found property today that has five houses in the deal. I was trying to figure the best way to  analyze the deal. Should you take each one as different property and analyze on it own merits. Then put it back together, or analyze the deal as one unit. I am stuck because when looking at the sell price per unit looks good and below market. If I sold them individually I could make it work. I trying to keep them as rentals. The numbers don't seem to work out when analyzing it as one deal. I am trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong if anything. They are sfr 3+2 and they asking 825000 and are all currently rented at 1200 month. When using the 50% rule. I can't seem to get to work. In the area house are running about 200000. So I'm not sure what I am doing wrong if anything. Thanks for any help. 

I have not but I have worked with  edifice group. In woodland hills. They do a really nice product and good at working with your budget. 

Welcome to BP, thank you for your service. Good luck in your endeavors. 

Everyone so far have given you good advise on this. So you know missing a ground can not nor will it damage any electrical equipment. The ground is used incase of a small spike in electrical current. It is to protect the end user so they are not the shortest path to ground. A lose neutral in the panel or at the device could cause a problem and shorten the life of the equipment. Most electrical equipment are not even effected by the hot and neutral reversed. Most new electrical equipment can reverse polarity to protect it self from damage. A spike it in the power grid or a brown out (lower voltage) in the electrical grid could cause these same issues. The problem I see here is that your tenant is not complaining of light bulbs have a short life span. Or dimming flickering of lights. Because if your tenant was having electrical issues these things will also have issues. Loose neutrals will cause flickering, and short life span of lights. Over voltage will cause lights to be brighter and short life span of lights. Brown outs cause dim lights. I have seen when the electrical transformers fails can cause all these problems. With all this being said if you notice these issues you should have a electrician come out and take  look at the panels and test the voltage to see if the voltage is correct. 

in the senario that you have described. I would us a 16 or 18 gauge lamp wire. The reason that it is rated at 600v. Your door bell wire will work. Because the flow of power is continuous and not interminent like a door bell. You could run cat5 and do the same thing but if you do that I would use one pair for one leg and another pair for the other leg. 

the lights you are running are a stage light? As for wire size you will need to run there are factors that need to be taken into consideration when sizing the wire. First you need to know the total legnth of the runs, then we need to how many lights are on each run, and last we need to know the total wattage for each run. Then we can size the wire accordingly. So for example you have a run less the 100 feet with 10 lights at  10 watts each equaling 100 watts. In this scenario if was out side I would run 12 gauge low voltage landscape wire. But seeing you will be running it in a house through walls and a ceiling that will be insulated I would use a 10 gauge low voltage landscape wire.  This is to reduce the chance for the wire to get hot. Also make sure your transformer is rated for what you are doing and that is in well ventilated are. I hope this helps with your project. 

it sounds like you do not have a proper ground tied to the gfci. The humming is coming from the fact that the gfci was incorrectly installed and the repeating tripping of the device has caused it to start to fail. Not knowing how old this device is or how it is wired or properly being able to test the device I can not tell you for sure if this is the problem. But from my experience this is what I believe to be your problem. Replacing the device is not a huge under taking. Just be sure to turn off the breaker that is supplying power to this device before changing it. If the device has a white wire ( neutral ) going to the silver and the ground screw( or wire if it is more then 20 years old)on the old device.  a new gfci will not work and you will need to have a ground to be installed before it will work. 

As an electrical contractor I know that an rewire of a house requires hardwire smokes. If your electrical contractor is telling you it's costing you more money to add hardwired smokes, and he gave you a bid to rewire your house and you have a permit. Then he knew he had to add the hard wired smokes. It has been a requirement according to the national electrical code since 1993. And C/O and arc faults are newer addition to the NEC. Although I'm not looking at your contract nor can see what your house looks like. I think your contractor is trying to pull the wool of your eyes. 

1200 or even 900 is way out of line to wire in smoke detectors. If you are already rewiring the house. At Home Depot you buy them $30 and the c/o ones for $50. To wire them should not cost more then $35 per location. If you are paying a electrician it should not cost more then 125 each. Now if they are cutting them in and crawling through an attic to install them it may cost more. As for the wireless ones you still have to have power brought to them for the wireless interconnect to work. As far as I know you can only use them if adding them to an existing building.  Not in a whole house rewire. Such as you are adding them in place of battery ones. And they cost a lot more.  Hope this help

there many ways to look at the cost of a rewire. 

First is house gutted? If so this will be like wiring a new house. That will be around 4.50 - 10 dollar sq ft. or higher. 

Second how many can lights, outlet, ect. Will you be adding? The more you add the more it's going to cost. 

Third are you installing all led although prices have Fallen they still cost more for the trims. 

If it not gutted 

 How easy is to get to outlets do the need fish from the top or from the bottom. if your house is less then 40 years old more the likely there will be fire blocks in the walls. Means more holes. More work and a higher price per sq foot. Still will run 4.50 and up in price. 

Then there is accesablity in the attic or under the house. If there has been addition done to the house you may not be able to get from one side to the other with out cutting holes, removing floor or ceiling some where. All these are factors in the cost of the work. Your best bet is to get a lic. contractor to give you a hard bid and keep him there. Just remember to be reasonable. 

Last you are going to have permits and other fees that may or may not be in the bid. Make sure you are aware of how these are getting paid.