writing a book on rehab techniques

[rcardin]

Since we are going through a major rehab after our long term renter moved on I thought I would go ahead and document the process. I am taking a lot of pictures and basically writing the captions below them explaining what I am doing as we go. The house was left completely trashed to the point it took a 20 yard dumpster to remove what was left of her belongings and the demo work we had to do.

My wife and I will be doing 95% of the work on the rehab, so I can show how to do everything and the reader can decide if they are up to it.

I have a couple of ideas in mind.....

1. write an E-book and sell it via Ebay. Very low overhead and little time involved. I would make it an instant download.

2. Actually look for a publisher and try to get it published as a how to guide.

3. Start a subscription site on rehabbing and host the book there.

If you were a beginner what would you want ot know about the rehab process? Lots of step by step pictures on each phase such as sheetrock repaire, hanging doors, Tile and laminate flooring?

The only thing I will not do again is install carpet. That is really not my thing. I can never get it tight enough.

So far I am on chapter 3, sheetorck repair. Lots of pictures but not alot of commentary so far. For me it is so basic that there is not alot to say about gutting a house and assessing damage along with sheet rock repair. This particular house will be reahbbed to sell so some of the things I would do would not apply to a permanent rental property.

Looking for ideas guys and gals

 

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[kwerner]

Great idea!

Some suggestions:

* How to estimate repair costs for a rehab (I know this will vary per area, but a general guideline would be helpful)
* Costs of doing it yourself vs. hiring it out
* Tools needed for certain types of jobs
* What you will need to pull permits on, if doing it yourself
* Money saving techniques / areas you can save on
* What items are best to upgrade (highest ROI) when doing a rehab
* Best bangs for the buck

That's about all I can come up with at the moment.

 

[Chitown]

I second Kwerner -- fantastic idea. I wish you well with the book:great:.

 

[rcardin]

Preview of the beginning


Anatomy of a Rehab


An Investors story


Written by: Rick Cardin​

Background​

This is a story of the pitfalls and rewards of being a landlord. The house on the cover is our first house we bought as a family. It was an older house built in 196???? The property is a 4 bedroom 2 Bath house with a 2 Car garage. When we first bought it we paid 69,900 with payments around 750 a month. Since our credit was not perfect we ended up with an 8.75% interest rate. In 2001 this was not all that bad, but then rates started dropping. After the first year we refinanced at 7% and dropped it to a 20 year mortgage. 1 ½ years later interest rates dropped again and we refinanced to 5% and a 15 year note. The payments went up a little but so had our income. It was about this time my Father started getting into rentals after retiring from IBM.
We started doing rehab projects around the house. It first started with the upstairs bathroom since it was the least used. We put in a Jaccuzzi tub, opened up a wall for storage, new floor tile and tub surround, and new texture on the walls. It was at this point we had been bitten by the rehab bug.
In the next year and a half, we managed to rehab the 2 bedrooms upstairs. This included new texture, popcorn ceilings and knocking out a closet in each to make a study. I also had discovered using a router to make custom fluted trim out of 1x4 pine. This led to the stairs in which we textured the walls and blew popcorn on the ceiling.
About this time we got into rehabbing houses for my Dad. We must have rehabbed 4 or 5 houses for him, each one being a little better than the previous one. We had honed our skills and were pretty good at what we did. We learned a system and had it down.
Our primary residence was coming along really well. We had updated the house from the old style crow’s foot to a newer style heavy splatter pattern similar to stucco. We finished the upstairs and now was the time to do the down stairs. Problem was we lived in the downstairs area so we were confined to just working weekends since we both worked full time as teachers. The nice part was when the summer hit we had nothing but time and really started moving on the projects. We converted part of the garage which was extra deep into a laundry room next. This required building a wall and installing a door to the garage area.
Since I needed more space a 12x24 shed was built in the back of the property. It’s good to have friends who are in the construction business. We had it built in a couple of weeks working here and there. We used the shed to build the custom trim and do a lot of paint work.
We got my daughter’s room done and had started on the living room. Remember I said my Dad had gotten into real estate? He found us a much nicer and bigger home for roughly the same payments. It was a now or never deal. We still had a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room to finish. This became top priority since we now had approximately 45 days to close on the new house, get moved, and finish the remodel of the old house.
It was crunch time. As we decided to replace some windows in the master bedroom we discovered major termite damage to an outside wall. This put a kink in the schedule as we now had to rebuild a whole wall. Down came the sheetrock and new studs were installed to replace the ones that had been eaten. A 2 day project turned into 6 or 7 days. Always plan for the unexpected. We finished the rebuild of the wall and moved onto the kitchen. There was about 30 years of paint on the cabinets so it was time to strip them to bare wood. This is where I learned spray techniques when it comes to paint.
With the kitchen done it was time to move to flooring on the downstairs. We found a discount tile store and got a great deal on Italian tile, just enough to complete the flooring downstairs, hallway, and the kitchen.
By this point we had moved into the new house and weekends were our only chance to work on the old one. Since we had 45 days until the first payment was due on the new house, we had a little time to finish the old house and still make payments on it. We laid about 500 square feet of tile over a weekend. The house was approaching rentable status.
We got the work finished and started our first term as a landlord. Being a new landlord we thought we were done with rehabbing. Little did we know……. We put a tenant/buyer in the house with an owner finance agreement……….Here is what she left us with after only 3 ½ years.

 

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[khelzy09]

rcardin,
this is a great idea..
wish you luck..

Great idea!

Some suggestions:

* How to estimate repair costs for a rehab (I know this will vary per area, but a general guideline would be helpful)
* Costs of doing it yourself vs. hiring it out
* Tools needed for certain types of jobs
* What you will need to pull permits on, if doing it yourself
* Money saving techniques / areas you can save on
* What items are best to upgrade (highest ROI) when doing a rehab
* Best bangs for the buck

That's about all I can come up with at the moment.

addition: how long does the process take

 

[rcardin]

So far I have spent about 3 weekends so 6 days total and 240.00 in manual labor. We are now at the point of priming the walls and getting ready for a re-texture of the walls and popcorn on the ceiling. I should be ready to paint this weekend. After that tile, floors, cabinets.
I replaced 5 windows downstairs this weekend. I have 6 windows upstairs to replce but since the siding will be coming off I don't need replacement windows, I can use new construction windows.

The downstairs was brick so it had to be replcement windows. Figure on 100.00 per window from lowes or Home Depot by the time you buy the screws and sheetrock to redo the window casings.

If I didn't have to work I could do a top to bottom rehab in about 2-3 weeks depending on any setbacks. My wife and I did a 2 bedroom 1 bath house in about 2 weeks. We called it the crack house so you can guess what kind of condition it was in. Everything was gutted, Exterior cedar shingle siding replaced with T1-11.

Tools: be prepared to buy a ton of tools. Most are basic carpenter tools but there are a few specialty tools you will need. Off the top of my head: special wrench for bathroom drains and even then be prepared to chip the drain out anyway. Texture gun is a must. A toilet snake and a drain snake. A cutout tool for tile along with a cheap tile saw. Nail guns galore! Trim nailer, framing nailer, roofing nailer, etc. Saws, one of every kind. I know there are more and will list them as I use them.

Cost vs doing it yourself: Plan on paying between 3.00 to 7.00 on labor for every 1.00 you spend on materials. You can save a ton of money doing it yourself. Look at youtube and you can find a video on just about anything.

What you will need to pull permits on, if doing it yourself? Really depends on where you live. I personally have never pulled a permit for anything I do the the house itself. Since I own it I most likely won't need a permit for anything if I am doing it myself.

Best bang for the buck or ROI: Depends on if you are rehabbing to rent or sell. We are rehabbing to sell.
Bathrooms and kitchens. It only cost about 400.00 more to replce a tub with a jacuzzi style tub. It installs the same as a regular tub except for having an outlet for power. Tile flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms along with the tub surrounds. A Nice neutral tile will appeal to everybody.
New appliances in the kitchen. Less than $1000 for stove/oven, dishwasher, and vent a hood. I personally hold the sink in the same regard as any other appliance and look for a nice deep sink with a nice fixture.
Laminate flooring has come down to an affordable alternative to carpet and is not that much more than tile for the kitchen. Easy update.

Kitchen cabinets and texture will date a house easily. If the cabinets are old with 15 coats of paint the potential buyer will notice. Big turnoff no matter how nice the countertop and floor is, cabinets always give the age of the house away. The old crows foot texture is also an easy way to date a house. It means it also has 12 coats of paint on the walls.
Biggest return on investment: Texture and cabinets.

Sorry it got long but it got me thinking. Copy and paste to the book now!

 

[rcardin]

Ok I have been busy working on the book. 117 pages with pics on every page. Now I need to find a way to host it online for instant download. It is 37 meg in word format. Anybody got ideas for free hosting?

 

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[FDJustin]

Seems to me like you had lots of opportunity to make video products as well... Or video clips to enhance the book with bonus material, anyway.

 

[Red]

Ok I have been busy working on the book. 117 pages with pics on every page. Now I need to find a way to host it online for instant download. It is 37 meg in word format. Anybody got ideas for free hosting?

Depending on your version of Word (or your OS), you can convert it to a PDF file and save on bandwidth (and user download time).

 

[rcardin]

Seems to me like you had lots of opportunity to make video products as well... Or video clips to enhance the book with bonus material, anyway.

Looking back it would have been a great idea, but due to time constraints it was all I could do to get pictures and keep up with the progress.

 

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[Forza]

Sounds great. I don't think they allow the sale of electronic products on eBay though. Perhaps sell with Clickbank and promote it to affiliates at the Warrior Forum?