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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Thanks for the recommendation! Amusingly enough, I'm going CA->PA I’m in the middle of a move from San Diego to Portland OR. We ended up going with ABF/UPack. We hired professional movers to packit and are hiring professional movers for the unpacking. Total cost will be around $6,500 or so. The problem for me is that there’s a number of points of error: destination franchise, origination franchise, and corporate. First, their offices only operate m-f, so if you arrive on a Friday your truck won’t be there until Monday. Second, the San Diego office never filed my billing paperwork, so the trucks been sitting in Portland since last Friday. Monday I managed to get ahold of someone at corporate to pushed the San Diego office to file the billing. I had to call back corporate to have them push the billing department to charge me. Then the ice storm hits and the Portland office loses phone service for half a day. When I finally talk to them they can’t plan a delivery until Wednesday or Thursday, pending weather. So now we’re stuck in a hotel for a couple more nights while our new place just sits there empty. If I had to do everything over again I would have just drove the uhaul with my dog as the copilot while my better half drove the car here.
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Jan 17, 2024 06:50
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Motronic posted:Like anyone would rent a good truck to be left in indiana....... Fair point.  I remember when I used to fly out of Philadelphia, a 1-way car rental from Lancaster to Philly would be like $17, but going 1-way Philly to Lancaster was $238. They'll all but pay you to drop a car at the airport for them, but heaven help you if you're gonna leave a car in Amishville. 
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Jan 17, 2024 07:05
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I will be viewing a fixer upper next week. My plan is to buy it, rehab it back to a duplex, and live in half. Please find problems with this plan. Property Info Asking price: 115k 2900 sq ft, 4200 sq ft lot. 5 bedroom, 2 bath Built in 1904 The home has had interior demolition, but the remodel stopped at some point. It was bought 8 months ago by a real estate agent. The home was listed in early December and not sold or been pending. It is in a good, but not great location, inside but on the boundary of a historic district. It is large for the neighborhood and was once a duplex. Move in ready home values in the neighborhood range from $160k to $360, with large homes selling for more. The prices for more than 2000 sqft homes sold in the neighborhood in the past year, with notes if applicable $90k, Required renovation and rebuild $95k, The property in question $110k, Required renovation and rebuild $110k, multi family, tax foreclosure, required renovation and rebuild $200k $210k, multi family, not in historic district $285k $290k $360k, Even redfin thinks this is down to $310k from the summer Asking rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in the city is $900-$1000. The neighborhood is one of the nice ones, so expect $1100-$1200. This looks like it may be a deal, properties in bad shape have sold for $90k-$110k. This one is larger than most and I expect I can bargain downward to $100-$110. After fixing it up, it should be worth north of $200k, maybe not by a lot. I will be viewing it with a general contractor who my sister recommended. She works as a property manager in the area and knows most of the contractors and construction companies around here. If he screws me over, she does bear grudges and he will lose business. Since the house is partially demoed, we should be able to see more than during most tours. Financial Info Salary: $160k, government funded scientist Savings: $10k Emergency fund, $65k Liquid Savings, $40k Illiquid Retirement Savings: $175k Traditional 401k, $50k Roth IRA, $20k HSA. Roth and HSA already maxed for 2024. Debt: $40k PSLF eligible student loan. Nonzero payments start next year at $380 per month, lasting till 2028. 10k in 529 already saved for those payments in 2027-8. Current Rent: $900 Credit Score: 800+ I can obtain home renovation loan easily, with 25% down. If the total of purchase price and renovation costs come to 200k or under, with 25% down it should be no more than 1600 per month. If it costs $250k, it will be no more than $2000.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:23
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When is the last time you "rehabed" a property as labor, management or a GC? Why do you think this property has not been bought by someone who does this kind of thing for a living?
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Jan 19, 2024 01:34
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Motronic posted:Why do you think this property has not been bought by someone who does this kind of thing for a living? This is an excellent question To make it on to the open market it was probably offered to several local known flippers who declined it, then offered to buyers off market via a broker, then when it did get publicly listed, everyone reviewed it on their automated scanning service, and declined to follow up I mean, maybe you found your unicorn, but it had to accidentally fall though a bunch of filters unnoticed until you came along
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Jan 19, 2024 01:40
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Pointlesspart said in their post they've got a GC on hand so I'm not sure why that's a relevant question. someone making $160k buying a property for $115k isn't gonna struggle too hard to make payments on that, or on a $200k loan with reno costs in, so I don't worry too much about the problems like "this will take a year longer than you thought" or "you can't find a contractor that can start till july" or whatever. The house being partially demoed already is the answer to the question why didn't anyone buy it yet, although the implication is that it's not an attractive reno-and-rent at the list price: the contractor consultant should give a quote which you can then use to beat up the seller and maybe get your $95k offer accepted. And if pointlesspart isn't looking to flip the property, but rather live in half and rent the other half, ten years of rent may well make up for whatever inefficiencies are built into them not being a professional (heh "professional") flipper.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:42
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Those sound like justifications for "he can afford to lose money on this" and if that's really the case then why bother asking the question?
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Jan 19, 2024 01:45
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You need to throughly investigate what the historic district requires regarding renovations, because that could make the entire project a complete money pit. Especially if the demolitions destroyed something original that must be replaced.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:49
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This sounds like a project some amateur got into and realized it was too big of a disaster for exactly reasons like that. Which is why I asked the questions I asked, and I have follow ups to those depending on the answers.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:53
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Motronic posted:Those sound like justifications for "he can afford to lose money on this" and if that's really the case then why bother asking the question? I mean that's fair, but I think the answer to pointlesspart's question of "poke holes in this" is "your costs might be higher than you think" and "you'll likely be less profitable than the for-profit entities in your area that chose to pass on this property becuase it seemed too risky or too expensive or both to fit their business model" and I don't think either of those things are red flags? Maybe just yellow flags. If he can afford to buy the whole house, but might be able to offset some future mortgage payments with rent, that seems like an OK plan. Perhaps the most relevant question back is: what's your alternative plan? Could you just buy a single unit home for half the price that is move-in ready now, and not mess with a distressed property?
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Jan 19, 2024 01:55
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Leperflesh posted:If he can afford to buy the whole house, but might be able to offset some future mortgage payments with rent, that seems like an OK plan. You seem to be forgetting or not know about just how unlimited costs can be for a property that is currently in a state of being uninhabitable without a C of O, in a state of disrepair/unfinished renovation and in a historic district. Again, why hasn't someone who does this for a living already snatched this up long before it hit the local MLS? There may not be a clear path to revenue generation or even living there as an owner. There may not be options to delay or defer things that the municipality and/or historic board are requiring to be done right now because they already have or are able to fine the owner for noncompliance. These are all realities I have observed multiple times directly. Not speculation. Motronic fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 01:58
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Perhaps I put more faith in this:pointlesspart posted:I will be viewing it with a general contractor who my sister recommended. She works as a property manager in the area and knows most of the contractors and construction companies around here. than is warranted, but I would hope that a trusted GC who works in this area, plus a property manager for this area, could inform OP of the potential problems both regulatory and physical.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:00
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Motronic posted:When is the last time you "rehabed" a property as labor, management or a GC? 2018, personal rehab work when my mother moved. She asked me to manage the process, so I hired all the contractors (electrical, plumbing, hvac, and interior reconstruction with refinished floors), and demoed the kitchen floor, bathroom, and an interior wall. Total cost was ~20k, not inclusive of unskilled personal labor. I still have all their numbers, in addition to my sister's connections. There are two dominant reasons I can think of why the house has not sold. Either the market has been slow and this is the slow time of year or there is something wrong with the property. In the first case, the real estate agent who bought the place ran out of money because total transaction volume is down ~20% from last year. In the latter case, I hope I or one of the inspectors I plan to hire finds the problem before I buy it. Shifty Pony posted:You need to throughly investigate what the historic district requires regarding renovations, because that could make the entire project a complete money pit. Especially if the demolitions destroyed something original that must be replaced. I have been by the property (I live in walking distance) and nothing appears seriously wrong with the exterior. The porch needs to be finished and painted, it looks like they stopped partway through that. Almost all of the city's historic district requirements are for exteriors, so we will have to keep that in mind when viewing. The house has no front yard and old google street view pics show no trees in the back, so we can rule out tree law. Probably. Leperflesh posted:Perhaps the most relevant question back is: what's your alternative plan? Could you just buy a single unit home for half the price that is move-in ready now, and not mess with a distressed property? My relevant alternative is not to buy. My rent isn't too high and other properties will come up for sale, I will wait for one of those. But they will not be half the price, move in ready homes start at 160k in the neighborhoods I care for at 40% of the size. There are also not currently single unit homes for sale where I want to buy them, either the houses are too big and expensive for my needs or not where I like. Buying means I also get most of the lifestyle benefits of home ownership, like space for a dog, painting the walls, etc. I am willing to pay for those, but not too much, which is why I want to plan for bad scenarios.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:14
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pointlesspart posted:2018, personal rehab work when my mother moved. She asked me to manage the process, so I hired all the contractors (electrical, plumbing, hvac, and interior reconstruction with refinished floors), and demoed the kitchen floor, bathroom, and an interior wall. Total cost was ~20k, not inclusive of unskilled personal labor. I still have all their numbers, in addition to my sister's connections. This is encouraging, but post-pandemic is a different world and unless you've kept in touch with your trades I'd suggest reestablishing some communications with them before bidding on this house. It also doesn't sound like you actually understand the historic board issues that might be involved, you're just assuming. You need to talk to someone on the historic board before bidding. And then you need to talk to local code enforcement for the rest of what they are aware of that is going on there.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:18
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Leperflesh posted:Perhaps I put more faith in this: yeah. OP seems like he's doing due diligence to see if there's something he hasn't thought of regarding this potential purchase. random rear end historical district construction/reno/permitting requirements: might be a thing he didn't consider! whooooooa, some flipper hasn't bought it yet, maybe there are skeletons in the closet: probably something he already considered.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:25
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You 100% need to find out what the deal with the local historic board is. Those are like HOAs in that each one is unique and you really have to figure out what the limitations they place on your property are. You could be looking at something pretty simple like not tearing down the building or radically changing the exterior looks, or you could be dealing with one that will dictate what specific building materials you use on repairs and limit what kind of restructuring and renovating you can do indoors. Just the materials issue can be a nightmare and lead to you spending a LOT more on renovations than you would otherwise. Plus this: do you know for a fact that the historical district will let you do the work necessary to turn it into a duplex? That's the huge potential show stopper and something I would get in writing before bidding. edit: note also that historic districts can have fickle boards. My father-in-law sits on one in a medium-sized southern city and holy gently caress the politics in there can get petty, and even when it's not his particular board is a bunch of 70-90 year history enthusiasts who pull in about a dozen different directions on any given issue, often with little rhyme or reason. Which is to say i wouldn't just rely on it being something that everyone thinks should be doable. Find out for sure, it would suck to own the property and then find out that some octogenarian thinks that turning historic homes into multi-occupant rental properties would damage the tenor of the neighborhood or something.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:28
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Motronic posted:This is encouraging, but post-pandemic is a different world and unless you've kept in touch with your trades I'd suggest reestablishing some communications with them before bidding on this house. I still keep in touch with the plumber and the HVAC guy, they both go to my church. Not the others, I will have to give them a call to check availability before bidding. Which is a bit away, I have not viewed the property yet and will not until next Friday (the first day the GC was available). Cyrano4747 posted:You 100% need to find out what the deal with the local historic board is. Those are like HOAs in that each one is unique and you really have to figure out what the limitations they place on your property are. You could be looking at something pretty simple like not tearing down the building or radically changing the exterior looks, or you could be dealing with one that will dictate what specific building materials you use on repairs and limit what kind of restructuring and renovating you can do indoors. Just the materials issue can be a nightmare and lead to you spending a LOT more on renovations than you would otherwise. I have some knowledge about the city's historic districts. I currently live in one and, from talking to my neighbors, they lean more toward the "use historic materials" end of things than the "HOA from hell" end. The city's historic code is exterior focused and this is a rust belt midwestern auto city, so they're not too picky about people who actually maintain buildings. But I will talk to my neighbors and call the district to get more info on turning the home into a multi-unit. The home was already a duplex once, you can see the two doors built into the property. But "it actually happened before" doesn't mean the historic district approves.
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Jan 19, 2024 02:48
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It might be a good idea to do some "what if?" Scenarios in a spreadsheet and see how it turns out for you. For example, what if you had to pay out an extra $100,000 because they found asbestos? Would that bankrupt you or would you be okay?
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Jan 19, 2024 03:04
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The last couple pages have been pretty timely. I'm in St Louis now surrounded by beautifully rundown 1800s vintage masonry buildings and think really dumb thoughts like "My parents renovated (the house I grew up in, an 1880s southern 2 over 2 in North Carolina) while working nights with a kid and no money, surely I can do the same," and ignoring that he did that cause it was literally the only thing they could afford. I picked up some skills from him but they guys kind of a freak handyman, and I remember what a pain in the rear end it was to do ANYTHING in the walls when we renoed the bathroom in high school.
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Jan 20, 2024 20:39
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pointlesspart posted:I still keep in touch with the plumber and the HVAC guy, they both go to my church. Not the others, I will have to give them a call to check availability before bidding. Which is a bit away, I have not viewed the property yet and will not until next Friday (the first day the GC was available).
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Jan 20, 2024 20:43
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Spoke with a rep from a moving company, who said that they'd need 1 day to pack and 1 day to load. Is that typical? It makes things messier for me, since that's an extra day that I need to be around to give access to the house / supervise things.
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Jan 20, 2024 20:51
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awkward_turtle posted:My parents renovated (the house I grew up in, an 1880s southern 2 over 2 in North Carolina) while working nights with a kid and no money, surely I can do the same,"
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Jan 20, 2024 20:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Spoke with a rep from a moving company, who said that they'd need 1 day to pack and 1 day to load. Is that typical? It makes things messier for me, since that's an extra day that I need to be around to give access to the house / supervise things. Depends on how much stuff you have and how many people they bring. My last move, out of a not particularly large house, took 2 days total. E: that was in addition to a guy coming out a week earlier to seriously estimate how much stuff we had QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 20, 2024 |
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Jan 20, 2024 21:29
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Our last movers packed, loaded, and unloaded a two-bedroom apartment in one day. (The move itself was only about thirty minutes.) We had some stuff pre-packed, but they still had to do about half the apartment. That included disassembling our bed (which takes actual tools, for reasons) and moving an (upright) piano. Unless you have way more stuff than that, or it’s weirdly complicated to pack for some reason, I doubt time is the controlling factor; my guess is that the packers and loaders are just different crews at that company, and it’s easier to schedule them this way.
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Jan 20, 2024 22:49
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I do the same drat thing all the time. It's awful. Then I remind myself that some things are more complex now than then (dealing with asbestos, lead paint, and things like aluminum wiring) and that they had a lot more spare time than I do. They both got home at about 4 in the afternoon from their teaching/school librarian jobs, and they felt abused if their commute was more than ten minutes. Dad graded in the evening, so it wasn't all candy, but they had hours off work during the time that businesses were open. More so than that, it just requires having different expectations about what renovations mean. My dad was a doctor. He was crazy loving busy. He still did a ton of repairs and renovations, it's just that they were all some degree of weird and janky that i never really understood until I got older. If you're OK with the tiles looking kind of  and the caulk not being a perfectly straight line and the door having a weird hitch in it then, yeah, you too can do a lot of that poo poo even with limited time. It also takes accepting that you're going to sacrifice your time off to do home poo poo. The last big project I did meant that I basically woke up, went to work, then did a shift on my second job as a handy man, then went to sleep and repeated for a couple weeks. It loving sucked. Turns out having time to do poo poo like watch TV or play video games or go for a jog or whatever the gently caress that doesn't involve Home Depot is kinda nice. But, at the end of the day, I wasn't going to pay what it would have required to get it done by professionals, so RIP my free time.
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Jan 20, 2024 23:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Spoke with a rep from a moving company, who said that they'd need 1 day to pack and 1 day to load. Is that typical? It makes things messier for me, since that's an extra day that I need to be around to give access to the house / supervise things. Yeah the packers are local kids Then the mover arrives, he's the lowest bidder and will hire some local day labor to throw your furniture down the stairs and stack the heavy full boxes on top of the light half empty boxes six high. The mover wants nothing to do with the packers
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Jan 20, 2024 23:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:It also takes accepting that you're going to sacrifice your time off to do home poo poo. The last big project I did meant that I basically woke up, went to work, then did a shift on my second job as a handy man, then went to sleep and repeated for a couple weeks. The last even close to major reno I took on was when I was intentionally between jobs for this very specific reason. It's literally a job. The more part time you do it the longer you are living in a construction zone.
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Jan 20, 2024 23:46
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Motronic posted:The last even close to major reno I took on was when I was intentionally between jobs for this very specific reason. It's literally a job. The more part time you do it the longer you are living in a construction zone. Oh god yeah that's the other thing. We really need to re-do our kitchen. Not some HGTV "this poo poo isn't trending" remodel, but the kind where I want to throw the lovely, awful, just loving badly placed sink into the nearest lake and I'm reaching the limits of my ability to keep patching the counter when water gets into the cheap laminate over pressboard and it starts to swell.* I can probably string it along another year or maybe two, loving tops, but it's got to happen. And when it does we're 100% hiring out for it. Theoretically I could probably do it myself. Probably. Like, definitely hiring people to move the counter-top in, but minus the literal heavy lifting it's all within the realm of poo poo that I either know I can do or am confident that I could teach myself the basics, with an understanding that there's going to be a little jank and some cosmetic imperfections. But holy poo poo we can not have the kitchen out of service for the 2 months or so it would take me to get it done. It's absolutely worth it to pay whatever insane, post-covid kitchen reno prices we're going to have to pay to get a crew in and just knock that poo poo out in a couple of days. *fun fact: you can repair this by carefully cutting the laminate with a chisel, chiseling out all the swollen pressboard, filling the void with epoxy and putting the slices of laminate you cut out back on, and then caulking the seams. It looks like loving hell, but it buys you some time.
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Jan 20, 2024 23:57
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Even if you hire I can't imagine it'll be a couple of days if your moving sinks and stuff. It's probably still out of commission for a couple weeks. It's never that easy.
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Jan 21, 2024 01:55
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Lockback posted:Even if you hire I can't imagine it'll be a couple of days if your moving sinks and stuff. It's probably still out of commission for a couple weeks. It's never that easy. Either way, the amount of time it will take a crew of people to do it as their actual job is a fraction of what it will take me to do it in evenings and week ends.
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Jan 21, 2024 02:15
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In case anyone cares, historic district info update. They haven't emailed me back yet, but the website was useful. The property is in the lightest level of historic district control. The street is historic commercial, not residential, which means changes to the exterior which do not affect size, style, or windows do not pass through committee. The committee is also supposed to be more permissive overall, which should make it easier to change back to a multi family. Minimal external changes would be needed, since multiple entrances already exist. I also checked the past two years of meeting minutes, thank you Arsenic Lupin for the idea. About what I expected, people complaining about airbnbs, a few property crimes, and a drawn out saga where the city sold some vacant land without telling the board first. But the most useful thing for me is that the meetings went through the vacant property seizure process in detail and it looks like they have been encouraging people to fix or demolish abandoned structures. So renovation plans on an uninhabitable property should be relatively sympathetic, several renovations on other properties have been approved over the past two years. I went to voicemail with city plans and permits, that's still open. I'm leaning toward there being something physically wrong with the property that makes renovation expensive, rather than regulatory. The historic district approved demolition of several properties based on condition and allowed revised plans after construction began, which suggests that either the city is the problem or the structure is.
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Jan 21, 2024 05:49
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I have discoveted that my counter is not stone, like I thought it was. It is also not metal, tile, laminate, wood, or plastic, and frankly I am surprised there sre other things it even could be. I also immediately forgot what they said the name of it was though, it was dumb and the description vague but it looks and feels like stone? So now I need to figure it out again unless someone knows offhand what the mystery alternative is. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 06:45
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Was it one of those epoxy + ground-up stone things? The ones where it looks like stone but heaven help you if you put a hot pan down on it?
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Jan 21, 2024 06:55
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GlyphGryph posted:I have discoveted that my counter is not stone, like I thought it was. It is also not metal, tile, laminate, wood, or plastic, and frankly I am surprised there sre other things it even could be. *snaps fingers* "I got it: asbestos! Good ol' do-it-all asbestos!"
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Jan 21, 2024 06:58
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I feel like you need to post a photo of this hellraising counter at this point considering all the hullabaloo
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Jan 21, 2024 08:07
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Sundae posted:Was it one of those epoxy + ground-up stone things? The ones where it looks like stone but heaven help you if you put a hot pan down on it? Is that what Corian is?
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Jan 21, 2024 08:26
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Tyro posted:Is that what Corian is? Corian website says it's ground quartz in resin, so yeah comparable.
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Jan 21, 2024 09:23
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pointlesspart posted:In case anyone cares, historic district info update. They haven't emailed me back yet, but the website was useful. Keep the updates coming. I know I'm more than a bit of a skeptical debbie downer but I do enjoy reading about goons getting projects like this off the ground. If you push forward I'm really curious to hear how it goes and what the major defect with the property is that's caused it to not get swept up by someone else already.
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Jan 21, 2024 15:11
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pointlesspart posted:I went to voicemail with city plans and permits, that's still open. I'm leaning toward there being something physically wrong with the property that makes renovation expensive, rather than regulatory. The historic district approved demolition of several properties based on condition and allowed revised plans after construction began, which suggests that either the city is the problem or the structure is. That sounds promising. Have you been able to contact the seller to get a sense of why they abandoned the project? It could be a novice realtor who decided to try flipping the original property into an investment duplex, but got in over their head due to lack of experience (that would be my guess). Or it could be someone who's done that kinda thing a few times who found some really expensive problems once they got the drywall off and wants out of the looming moneypit. 1904 means knob-and-tube, asbestos, and lead paint are all in play. Plus an entire century+ of renos, conversions, and assorted other changes done with varying levels of competence.
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Jan 21, 2024 16:53
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Motronic posted:The last even close to major reno I took on was when I was intentionally between jobs for this very specific reason. It's literally a job. The more part time you do it the longer you are living in a construction zone. This is the best way to do it. The last one I did was a 3/2 and we just lived in a different bedroom and used the other bathroom. I took me 6 months of nights and weekends but I did a full gut, moved walls, had to run plumbing and electric, all that. But I just closed the door and it was like we had a slightly smaller house for that time period.
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Jan 21, 2024 17:33
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