Senior housing conversion

[Kevin Vandenboss]

I have an 8 unit listed for sale that's two single story buildings with 4 units each. I'm considering purchasing it myself and converting each unit to be wheelchair accessible as they become vacant. It won't take a ton of work because of the way they're laid out. It's in a real quiet area that I believe will be attractive to seniors. Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has had any success with a project like this and if they were able to raise rents enough to justify the time and expense.

[Kevin Vandenboss]

@David Ferrette @Mike Garrett @Karen Margrave @Alina Trigub @Natalie Schanne

Thank you for the input, everybody. I have already had a contractor through to look at a couple of the units to get a price and I'm familiar with what needs to be done to make an apartment handicap accessible. I think this particular area is unique in that it's a smaller town, surrounded by even smaller towns, giving it enough of a population to fill just 8 units, but still small enough that nobody else is providing this type of housing. Even after the repairs I can keep the rent very affordable for this type of unit and still be at an 11% cap. The plan would be to just turn over each unit as they become vacant. Most of the tenants are on a month-to-month with low rent so I'm sure I'll lose at least a couple pretty early on when I start the first round of rent increases. 

With all of that said, this is still just speculation and theory so I was hoping to find somebody that has taken on a similar project to see how it worked out. Maybe I'll just have to take on for the team and report back!