New Pittsburgh Investors looking for great contractors

[TJ Spence]

Hi BP members, My family (brother (28), sister (22) and father) and I are beginning our venture into rental real estate investing as a family business as my dad begins to ease into retirement. We have been looking in Pittsburgh for cheaper rental properties in need of minor updates (painting, flooring, etc) in order to do most of our own work and get the property turned around and rented. Our search has been ongoing for about 6 months at this point and we've scoured the market and landed on two properties that fit our model. We were set to close on our first duplex in the homestead area and were performing our final walk through when we found out the place had been completely ransacked by someone who stole the copper wiring, furnace, water heater, and destroyed the kitchen and bathroom doing so. We have since backed out from that deal as we are not handy enough to make or understand the volume of repairs that need done. Our second property is also in the homestead area and we are set to close on the property within the month. The property is an older, poorly maintained multi family that we will need to put a bit more work into than we bargained for. As such, we are looking for help in building a team of trustworthy, licensed/insured contractors that can assist us in roofing repairs, plumbing (fixing leaks), repairing plaster ceiling, along with a slew of smaller issues. If anyone has any recommendations for contractors in the Pittsburgh area please let us know as we'd greatly appreciate any help! I'm also happy to share any additional details that we have regarding our rental search, opinions on the various Pittsburgh neighborhoods, or anything else that might be of interest. For some background, I am a full time CPA with my real estate certificate (no license yet) and our family has an LLC set up to treat this venture as a true business, adding 2-3 properties per year.