Do I rehab my San Jose condo to sell, or not?

[Shawn F.]

Hi all, I'm new to the site and this is my first post!

I live in San Jose and have found through BP that there isn't much potential for investing in Silicon Valley, but I'm in the education phase of REI, and am considering getting my feet wet doing a live-in rehab of the condo we purchased in Dec of 2015. We're planning to sell within the next year and have noticed how much more the upgraded condos in our area (Communications Hill) seem to be selling for compared to the original units.

I’m seeking advice from two camps before really looking into this idea though: people who are familiar with the bay area/San Jose market specifically, and people familiar with rehabs in general and what they do for property values.

We bought the place for $604,000 and had it appraised again about a year ago for a refi at $640,000. It’s a 2BR+2.5BT, 1057 sq ft unit. I’ve tried to look at comps in the area but being super new to all this, I don’t know what I’m doing. Zillow is showing me comps with 3 and 4BR’s and almost twice the sq ft, so I’m not even sure if they are comps… We had the condo recarpeted and painted when we moved in, and that’s still in good shape, but the last owners made some “improvements” themselves to the kitchen and bathrooms that are a little janky, so those areas would be our focus.

Ultimately, we want to know if rehabbing would be a good idea in this market, and if so, how much rehabbing should we consider? We're obviously interested in the best ROI we can achieve, but having only been looking into REI for about five minutes now, I need your help!

Please and thank you, BP Community!