"Slow" BRRRR aka Over-Renovating a Buy-and-Hold Property Delimma

[Matthew Williamson]

If my goal is to hold a property for a long period of time (potentially passing to heirs), I would want to do the best possible renovation I could to help avoid long-term maintenance issues. My thinking is to take care of all the structural and MEP/infrastructure work all at one time, avoiding costly future repairs and potential missed rent opportunities. And I don't just mean repairing what's obviously broken. For example, if I found mold in one part of the house, I would want to destructively search other parts of the house. If I saw an undersized header in one load-bearing wall, I would want to open up and check all load-bearing walls, etc.

This type of renovation would add a lot of time, and have high associated carrying costs. I probably wouldn't be competitive when bidding for these properties. It would be way overbuilt for the neighborhood if the goal was simply to re-sell the property at a later time. Taking this to the extreme, I would just tear down the existing building and start from scratch, being sure to build it to my (read: highest) standards. 

I definitely see the downsides to this approach, but I can't convince myself to just put "lipstick on a pig" and do it a cheaper way. Has anyone else faced this dilemma? Best practice construction sites like FineHomebuilding and GreenBuildingAdvisor have been a curse for my real estate investing efforts ;)

- Matthew in Texas