In a bit of a bind as a new accidental investor

[Ryan Mercer]

Hey BP! Discovered the BP podcast about 2 months ago which led me to this forum. The information on here is invaluable and I really appreciate what I have learnt in the past month just browsing posts.

With that being said I do want to forewarn this may be considered a long and winded post but I was never good at putting things into words.

Here’s a bit of my background. When I met my now wife of 4 years we both had a mortgaged home. She had to sell hers due to past relationship woes but it had a decent amount of equity built up, she walked away with enough for a downpayment elsewhere. My home was in rough shape (bought a fix er upper) and if I sold it I would barely break even. Our realtor at the time talked us into renting it out but didn’t give much help otherwise. I am the type to jump right in so I looked up a bit of information, calculated my costs (totally not taking everything into account) and set my rent.

Of course my rent was way too low and we where only breaking even after all expenses paid. Long story short with this rental after the third year we discovered the place was trashed by 3 large dogs (again I never inspected the home, another lesson learnt the hard way). We got her evicted, pulled a HELOC, gutted the house, and started from scratch doing a lot of the work ourselves.

After the repairs we found an awesome accountant who is also a REI, she got all of our expenses in line including CapEX, vacancy, maintanence, and even 10% to hire a PM or to pay ourselves for doing it. We then set the rent and got the property rented quickly to a lovely young couple. Current the property cash flows $20/month AFTER a large payment to the HELOC is made, once that's paid off it will cash flow about 3250-300/month. Property assessment is;

Mortgage: 200k

HELOC: 35k

Appraised at : 415k

All told, in the last 4 years we have been excited, sad, stressed, and have wanted to sell and say SCREW IT many times. I really wish I found this community 4 years ago as it would have saved us a lot of grief.

Now that thats out of the way here’s my dilemma. Two years ago my wife and I purchased a turn key business and the building it’s run from in small town Southwestern Ontario. We used an interest free loan from a family member to make the purchase of $80,000. My wife is a health care provider and business has been great from day one.

We purchased this before the realization of our rental property being destroyed and how it was slowly sucking money from our pockets (not accounting for ALL expenses). Therefor we again where playing with fire and still had yet to be burnt.

We made multiple mistakes in purchasing this building.

First was not getting a building inspection. Upon taking ownership we realized the roof was in dire need of replacement. Being an older commercial building and having a flat roof this isn’t cheap, also not going to be easy with the other co owner, which leads me to the next mistake.

The building is co-owned and by that I mean we have a shared wall in the middle of the building with a separate owner on each side. It was a mistake not meeting him before we purchased. This guy isn’t fun to deal with, I understand he has his agendas but he absolutely refuses to put money into his half. One day he’s going to tear it down, next it’s rented out to a drifter type guy who is sleeping in his truck behind the building, and then next week he offers to buy our half for pennies. His side is gutted, neglected, and quickly falling into disrepair.

Regarding the roof issue we have consulted a lawyer who says not much can be done to “force him” to repair the roof. All we can really do is repair it ourselves and bring him to court to try and recoup the costs, we do not have this kind of money on hand currently. He owns half the town and has much more experience, equity, and money than us and he knows it. I would be worried about fighting him in court.

We currently have a roof sized heavy duty tarp covering the entire roof and are at a standstill on that issue.

Last week, my wife noticed that his outside wall is separating from the rafters. The front of the wall is literally leaning 4” away from the rafters, maybe 5’ worth of the 40’ wall is like this. I have contacted the owner and he says he will brace it and make it look better. This doesn’t instil much confidence in us, specially since my wife has to work daily inside the building. Safety wise she has some concerns about being in the building. We have contacted our insurance company, a lawyer, and the municipality but none of them seem to be too eager to help us.

If you have read this far, thanks for the time. Any recommendations would be awesome. We where planning on selling this business / building in a years time so we can relocated our family to Alberta. It will never sell in this condition. I am open to all opinions, thoughts, or anything that crosses your mind.

Thanks, Ryan.