Live & Flip

Tale of Two Rentals

It was the best of rentals, it was the worst of rentals. Let me compare two rentals I have and share my mistakes and lessons learned. Rental 1 is a 1630 sq ft 4/2 brick with a 1 car garage. Fully finished basement. The lot is about 6400 Sq ft. Moderate traffic street, low end neighborhood. Asking rent is $1200. Rental 2 is a 1030 sq ft 3/1 aluminum siding with 1 off street parking driveway. No basement, crawlspace only. The lot is 6300 sq ft. Slightly higher than moderate traf...

Rehab costs

I need to get back in the swing of blogging. I'll update the rehab costs for the home and give you a general update on next blog. I used a template from JScott over at www.123flip.com.  Its very useful for gathering numbers.  We went about 20% over budget. To be expected for first timers. We will certainly nail it down better on the next one. Overall I'm very pleased with the outcome. Based on local comps, the house is conservatively worth $270,000 and could likely pull $300,000 based ...

Finally Back

Short Update. My internet is finally on. We finished 98% of the rehab and have moved into the house. It looks fantastic, but we still have some unpacking and trim painting to do. I will post pictures as soon as that is done. My wife would probably be unhappy if I showed our house in disarray. No worries, photos will come shortly. I'll update soon.

Why Reserves Part 2

Needing a new property manager I interviewed 5 different companies. I spent quite a bit of time looking into each. I got the names from references and internet searching. I settled on a new company around mid August. I had the agreement signed and was planning on taking the info over after work. Around noon that day, they called to inform me one of their PM's quit and they could not take on any more clients. For one, I'm glad they did and am still willing to use them in the future, b...

Why Reserves part 1

Shae over at Good Faith Investing and Julie at at Life as Real Estate Investors recently wrote blogs on reserves here and here. This post is inspired by them and will hopefully emphasize what they are saying. Every landlord has a closet full of horror stories on problem tenant, property managers, houses, cities and anything else under the sun that may keep you up at night. This is my story. Around 6 months ago, my wife and I married and were off to our honeymoon in Napa. Shhhh, that's not ...

Week 6 and 7 Progress

Week 6 and 7 have been extraordinarily busy, hence no updates. My wife and I have been painting nonstop for the last two weeks. The walls had no texture, so we called in a texture guy. In order to prepare for him, we needed to prime the entire house. We used an oil base primer. If you ever prime with this stuff, make dead sure you have a respirator. Its pretty nasty. The texture guy came in on Black Friday and worked through the weekend. We decided on an orange peel texture. The house tr...

Week 4 and 5 Progress

Rather than be several weeks behind, I decided to update weeks 4 and 5 together. Lemme tell you the huge lesson of hire out the work. We saved a bunch of money removing wallpaper and painting the house ourselves. However, the cost of time was way to high. We have worked every night at the house till 9pm for several straight weeks. I have essentially shut down all my marketing and other real estate activities until we are done. Bad plan. Lesson learned for future rehabs. I will budget for ...

Week 3 Progress

I'm a bit slow to get week three updated (as were nearly done with week 4), but the current week has me very tired from removing wallpaper from every stinking room in the house. This is the week three progress.  They completed the deck for the mudroom and outside entry to the garage, tiled the half bath, master bath and part of the kitchen, and removed all the paint from the stairs. I'm pretty excited about the deck, it adds a very nice feature to the garage. I think it came out nice than...

Week 2 Progress

Week 2 has been progressing as well as week one. One big thing my wife and I have done is evaluate our budget each week to see where we are and what we have left to spend. So far we're a bit above where we want to be, but not horribly so. The mudroom was drywalled this week and the entry door from the garage installed. The master bath was framed and backer board installed. For the limited master bath usability and objects in the way, we have made excellent use of the space. We had to al...

Week 1 progress

Although this is week 2 of the work, I'll update the week 1 progress as of Friday. The contractors are go-getters. What the two of them have accomplished this week is pretty impressive. The kitchen and all 3 baths have been demolished. All the carpet in the house has been removed, including the tack strip. The mudroom paneling and drywall removed. The plumping in all three baths has been replaced, the new line to the mudroom has been installed. The new master bath has also been framed. ...