Chinese Drywall Remediation (CDW)

[Bob Ebaugh]

We expect to close in a couple weeks on our 2nd flip, a 2400 sqft 3/3 Townhome in Tampa. We purchased this via the MLS from the original owner of this 2009 built home for $115K. Yes 2009...conventional wisdom would say defective or Chinese drywall (CDW) installations ended in 2007. Not so.

We were out looking at property more like our first flip, the rennovation of a home in the Historic Uptown section of St Petersburg with our realtor.   Our agent mentioned this property, his listing while we were out.   After I got home, I called a couple of my contractor friends to get pricing on hanging new drywall.   Armed with that, some basic research on CDW, I created a complete remediation estimate and made the offer.   At this point...I hadn't even seen the property, all I had was my realtors description of the property and his estimate of resale value and my legwork so far.   This was something like the 10th transaction (most others were buy and hold) with this realtor and he was an old friend, but he very much a part of my trusted team.

The offer was accepted, and we closed about 20 days later.   The contractor started remediation the same day and we finished 10 weeks later.

I decided early on to follow the current Consumer Product Safety Commision guidelines for remediation.   They seem to be the most recently updated, and recent changes to them like removing the requirement to replace all wiring based on Sandia Labs analysis of the impact of CDW on building materials made sense in my opinion.     Earlier guidelines and still followed by some, came from a Federal Court in Louisana, suggesting far more remediation.   During the project, I met a couple other guys doing similar projects, one was doing board by board X-ray testing and replacing only those determined to be defective.   I'm not sold on that yet, so we replaced every board in the unit.   Absoluety every one.   We had hoped to salvage the wet board in the baths, but found tile layed on CDW and replaced those and the wet board too.   We found CDW everywhere, ceilings and supposed "firewalls" in the garage where there should have been 5/8 board, but wasn't.

This isn't a complicated rennovation, just time consuming.   You have to pull out everything, demo the drywall, hire a drywall crew to hang new drywall, then put everything back and paint.   Beyond that, all electrical outlets and switches must be replaced, tile flooring can be cleaned, but carpet has to be replaced.   Hire an insulation contractor to replace the attic insulation.   We had to retile the baths and elected to replace the air conditioning system.

Under contract now at 205K, after its all done, we should net about 35K.   Put a full estimate together before you tackle one of these, the new drywall cost was substantial at about 10K, but represents <25% of the total cost.  If we did these all the time, we might shave 5K off the cost and 2 weeks off the time, but more I think would be wishful thinking.

We did full disclosure during the sales process, even did a write up of the process with before, during and after pictures documenting the renovation.   It's a good time now in the market, but we had lots of showings and a contract in about 15 days.

Hope this helps anyone thinking about tackling one of these.   Will answer any questions I can.

Bob