All Forum Posts by: Wes Brand

See, Jim up there is one of those weird carpet loving people. If I had my way I'd never have carpet in any room, ever. Would much rather have an area rug and a wood floor than a carpeted floor, and I've removed all carpet from every property I've ever owned...buuuttt if I were trying to rent to Jim, or in an area that had lots of people like him, I'd put in carpet in the bedrooms anyway, since it's more likely to rent with the proper floor coverings for the area.

There is a payback if, say, carpet is normal and wood floors are considered luxury. You may have an easier time renting it with a few high end features.

Or you may not (strange as it is, some people like carpet). You should really look at other similar rentals in the area before making a final call. You want to be better than them, but not so much better that people start wondering what the catch is.

Edit: also consider what's underneath it, you may want carpet purely to reduce noise below.

Something is wrong if you have real hardwood and vinyl at the same total cost. Is that real hardwood or engineered hardwood?

You'll want to look at what's popular in your area for that class of rental. If people like wood floors, go for the wood. If you see a lot of carpet I'd probably do that even though I hate carpet personally. It's dirt cheap to buy and install. With only $300 difference I'd go for hardwood over vinyl. I wouldn't do the stained plywood option; maybe if you can make everything else look industrial and that's a popular look, but you're dealing with C class here. Guarantee that's not normal. 

From his other posts, the partner was the money partner so...no. No chance. Plus, he got real estate commissions on the buy and sell, so he probably made out better than his money partner.

See that property type? That's the accessory dwelling unit I mentioned. So it's legit, but as an ADU, not as a second parcel.

Now you need to lookup your local laws on ADUs. In some places they're as good as a proper duplex, in others they're only allowed if the owner lives in one of the dwellings as a primary, etc.

by the way, cos = certificate of occupancy. Not sure on ceu, probably a typo.

Throw the address into the city assessor's online lookup tool. If they don't have one pick up the phone and call them. You may get shuffled around a bit depending on how your city is structured but the employees are usually happy to redirect you to the appropriate department. While you're at it, get the tax info.

'I'm looking at purchasing a property and I want to make sure everything is legit. It's two houses on one deed, the address is <blah> can you tell me if it's zoned for that? And what the taxes were last year/what it was assessed at/could the assessment change if I purchase at XXXk?' 

@Joe F. 

Before going any further or putting an offer on the property you must make sure it's zoned to be a duplex. If it's zoned as a SFH and only has one APN lookup your local laws on 'Accessory Dwelling Units' it's entirely possible the conversion was unpermitted and you'll get in trouble/have to rip out the 2nd unit if any code inspector finds out about it.

We do live in different markets. You'll frequently see all cash offers with very few contingencies here. I'm not sure it's even possible to buy something with FHA; I don't think sellers will look at those offers.

All I'm saying here is that 1/ you underestimated the ARV and 2/ you left some money on the table. It (probably) still would have sold in weeks if the market is as hot as you claim if you had added another 5-10k.

My previous post was unclear: you don't want it to sit for months, I meant you knew after 1-2 months that the market was headed up and it was worth more than you had thought. It's not like the market did something unexpected in those 11 months you held onto the property. 

Of course, if you say the market improved after 6 months and you couldn't have gotten it sold for that due to the comps after 2-3 then my point is invalid. You had said previously that it was worth ~10% more than your expected ARV to begin with.

Slice is not actually usable at the moment -- they're in beta and not talking to anyone. I signed up to join it and have heard nothing in a few weeks. I know someone else posted the same story in the other thread they were recommended it.