Investment Property Gone Bad

[Marlia Stone]

Hey BiggerPockets, I’m here for any advice that you can give me on my current situation.

I recently purchased my fist Duplex property in July 2021. The property seemed like a great investment with minor cosmetic issue to be done. Certain things in regards to the property my realtor didn’t advise me to look further into after the home inspection, such as the gas and electric bill. As I began to work on the property with my contractor. We found more and more issues wrong with the property like the plumbing and state guidelines. A month later I tried to turn the gas on and put the service in my name. One unit was successful and the other wasn’t. The service was off for a year(which I didn’t know) and the unit required an inspector. I hired an inspector referred by PGW and it failed due to it not being up to “Code”. For the unit to be up to code I had to hire an electrician and all of them were mentioning that It would be thousands of dollars to fix.

On another note I tried to put the electric in my name as well. One unit was a success and another unit was not. The repress mentioned that one unit has been off since 2017( which I didn’t know) During the home inspection, for some reason the electric was on for both units and is currently on (Illegal Electric). Being as though this was my first investment property, who was supposed to figure this information out? Was I?

These two are keeping me from listing the property and putting tenants in there. It has been almost 4 months since I purchased the property and it has done nothing, but stress me out to the point where I am considering selling and starting over. I’ve lost more money than was expected. Please share any advice that you may have or any stories that may help.