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Updated over 4 years ago, 07/28/2020
First rental rehab - before and afters!
Purchased 4 plex June 2015. All units were rented but we had 2 open up at the end of July so we were able to dive in on renovations. Just finished our rehab of the first unit. Work done includes refinishing hardwood floors, all new kitchen, all new bath, exposing original brick (who knew that would be one of the hardest parts! Not sure I'd tackle that again even though I LOVE how it turned out), updating some windows, fixing some old plumbing and electrical, and lots and lots of painting. When we purchased, this 1 bedroom unit was bringing in $475/mo and we just had the first person to look at it after renovation sign a 1 year lease at $800/mo. Renovations cost about $10k (I haven't tallied the final numbers yet) and we did 98% of the work ourselves.
... if anyone can instruct me on rotating my portrait photos I'd super appreciate it! Kind of loses some effect when you have to look at them sideways haha
Kitchen
Living room
Hallway
Bedroom
Bathroom
Looks good
Looks great! Looks like you are well on your way with this property!
Very nice. Nice bump in the rent too
- Real Estate Investor / Joint Venture Specialist.
- Crown Point , Indiana
- 238
- Votes |
- 1,571
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What tile is in the bathroom? I love it!
Thanks everyone. @Account Closed its from Home Depot. Think we got it on sale around $1.99/sq ft
love the grey with white trim! simple and modern feel!
@Ashly B. The place looks fantastic. Could you elaborate on how you did all of this for $10k? I saw that your did it yourselves (so labor was $0), but that looks extensive for that budget.
Kitchen counter are laminate? (they look like stone)
Love the painted door trim, stained trim did make unit look dated.
Awesome job, the unit looks great!
Your ROI is phenomenal, too: You should see about a 40% annual return on your money invested and assuming a cap rate of 10, you just added $40,000 in value to your property. And that's just from one unit.
Nice work and good luck with the renovation on the other units
Originally posted by @Mike Wood:
@Ashly B. The place looks fantastic. Could you elaborate on how you did all of this for $10k? I saw that your did it yourselves (so labor was $0), but that looks extensive for that budget.
Kitchen counter are laminate? (they look like stone)
Love the painted door trim, stained trim did make unit look dated.
I can post the budget breakdown once I calculate it all out but some things we did to save money were:
~$1500 on unfinished wood cabinets from home depot. Handles and pulls came from the restore and were about $1/ea
~Bought all our paint from the restore... it was quite a bit cheaper but didn't cover well so we did a lot of coats. I might splurge for higher end next time to spend less time painting. There was A LOT of wood in this apartment
~Did the floor refinishing ourselves, despite reading a lot of recommendations not it. It was fairly simple and we were able to knock it out in a weekend. Another 3 days for the poly to dry. Its not perfect but its an old house with several far more obvious imperfections. Renting the sander from HD was really inexpensive. We also got the hand sander meant for corners and edges - highly recommend it, saved us a lot of time getting along all the trim
~Found a great deal on appliances. Spent roughly $1500 for both the fridge and stove and they are nicer than what we have at my house! Drawing a blank on whether that was HD or Sears
~yes counters are laminate. we did pay to have those installed since the plaster walls aren't very straight. They did a great job. You can tell they aren't stone in person but they look really slick. I love the look of subway tile but its also very inexpensive. Backsplash cost under $150 for all supplies.
~bought all lighting on sale. Total cost to replace throughout the apartment was less than $400.
Most expensive fix we had was resizing that kitchen window and also having to replace a couple other windows in the house. Overall spent around $2300 on windows and labor.
We will at some point need to replace 3 of the 4 furnaces as well. that will be about $12k. We had it estimated and ultimately decided to wait. If the repairs on the other apartments come out to be around the same, we will be $52k in renovations (including furnaces) and we purchased for $90k so overall $142k for an apartment that brings in $3200/mo. Expenses are currently running about $1k a month (with taxes, mortgage, etc). Our final upgrade will be to turn the walk up attic in the unit we just finished into a master suite. Will make that a 2 bed, 2 ba unit and we should be able to rent it for around $1100/mo so that one unit will carry all the expenses.... but thats a ways down the road :) We decided to wait until after it turns over once so we can get the other units going.
@Ashly B. Thanks for the additional info. I understand why everyone told you not to do the floors yourself. Last time I did hardwood floors, I only saved $500 after calculating all of the materials and rental equipment. Totally not worth it (never again for me).
I have learned to use quality paint in the same colors for all of my units. I have fallen for the allure of cheap paint (Contractor paint at the big home stores) and paint color mix ups. There are two problems with that. One is cheap paint required 2-3 coats, which is a waste of labor and really doesn't save anything, and the second is particular to a rental, as you need to be able to match that paint for touch ups. If you buy a color that can not be matched, you will notice any touch ups (even if you get the color computer color match scanned). When we turn over a unit, I am able to just touch up a walls where needed.
Originally posted by @Mike Wood:
@Ashly B. Thanks for the additional info. I understand why everyone told you not to do the floors yourself. Last time I did hardwood floors, I only saved $500 after calculating all of the materials and rental equipment. Totally not worth it (never again for me).
I have learned to use quality paint in the same colors for all of my units. I have fallen for the allure of cheap paint (Contractor paint at the big home stores) and paint color mix ups. There are two problems with that. One is cheap paint required 2-3 coats, which is a waste of labor and really doesn't save anything, and the second is particular to a rental, as you need to be able to match that paint for touch ups. If you buy a color that can not be matched, you will notice any touch ups (even if you get the color computer color match scanned). When we turn over a unit, I am able to just touch up a walls where needed.
Good point on paint touch ups. As far as the floors, TBH we never even got as far as quoting it out. We primarily took it on because of time constraints. I started calling around in August and no one could get us in until October and at that point in time we had every intention of having it rented by then so we took it on more out of necessity. No idea what our savings was there.
@Ashly B. Wow, two months for someone to refinish hardwood floors. I wouldn't wait either, last time I had it done, I didn't like a two week lead for a couple of vendors, found someone that could do it within a week.
Save all your paint colors. That way you don't have to scrap it off the wall to try and match it. But given you bought paint that was mixed at the restore, you will likely have issues with sheen matching, so any touch ups will stick out.
Very nice job!
I suspect you've have some renovation experience.
I like your color scheme and really like the bathroom!
Looks great. Nice job
Love it. Love subway tile. And that gray shower tile. Cool.
So where is the exposed brick?? I'm seeing it everywhere these days- so was curious to see how yours turned out. Am I missing it? :)
Any way you can switch which side the fridge door opens? That would be enough for me to find another place. :)
Wow! You did a great job with this renovation.
Currently contemplating my next real estate move and I'm torn between finishing the attic space to turn Unit 2 (pictured from my original post) from a 1 bed/1ba into a 2-3 bed/1-2 ba vs using the funds to purchase a new property all together. Anyway, thought it would be fun to do a before and after update since I now have all the units updated. When I purchased, the gross rents for all 4 units was $1,925/mo. Currently all 4 are renting for a total of $3,230/mo. Also in the time since these updates were completed, I purchased a small SFH and lived in it for 2 years while doing minor updates and just last August turned that into a rental that is cash flowing about $500/mo after mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc. Not growing as quickly as I'd like but I do appreciate looking back at these old posts and seeing how far I've come. Additional reno pics below!
Unit 1
Blew out the wall between the bedroom and this weird wide hallway to create a studio style apartment.
Inside the old and new “bedroom”
Originally considered a 2 bed unit, the rooms were so small they didn’t have closets or real doors. Took this one out to enlarge the bath and create a dining space off the kitchen.
MUCH larger and updated bath
Unit 3
Entry and living room
Same as unit 1, this had a weird wide hall to create a bedroom wall – blew the wall out and made it a studio
This kitchen may possibly be my FAV transformation in the whole place. It was incredibly disjointed and dysfunctional. Now its beautiful and spacious and we even had room to enlarge the bath still.
Bath
Unit 4 - moderate overhaul on this one, mostly because I got burnt out. Amazingly, this one with a small kitchen make over, some fresh paint and a new bath vanity still brings in $750/mo as opposed to the $815-840 the others bring in. Just realizing I don’t have any renovated pics of it, probably because I’ve never had to list it… always goes by word of mouth.