Boston Area 2 Family Owner Occupied Renovation - Joe DeFarias

[Joe DeFarias]

First off, my name is Joe DeFarias and I am pleased to meet all of you savvy real estate investors. From the many emails sent from Brandon Turner, I've finally started my first discussion on BiggerPockets and I am thrilled to start an investor deal diary with my second multi-family unit. This project took almost a year to find because it needed to meet three conditions. 

1. The project needed to be a value-add investment where I could secretly prove to myself that I could project manage an entire gut renovation for future flipping endeavors ( What better project to practice on then your own home ). This project would create a great opportunity to build a team of subcontractors that can help me out for future projects.

2. The home needed to pay for itself while my wife and I lived in one of the units (The numbers had to work, which can be tricky in the Boston area) The house also needed a garage which can be very rare near the city. Four years ago, my wife and I purchased a 3 family without a garage and it was slowly eating away from me. For most of you who do not know me, I love woodworking and working on anything mechanical, especially cars. The garage would essentially become a workshop.

3. Location, Location, Location! This multi-family not only needed to meet the first two conditions, it need to be located within a one-half mile radius distance from a subway station (for people outside of the New England area, we call it the ‘T’.) This would help rent out the second floor unit quicker and at a premium price!

Before we get our hands dirty on the renovation, a little history of myself…

I am very fortunate to have a dad that was able to teach me a lot about carpentry and general contracting. My father is a GC and I spent many summers working with him on multiple projects when I was younger. The many hours working in construction rooted a great interest in design, ended up going to college, graduated with a master ’s degree in Architecture in 2009, and have been working for a Boston architectural firm since then.

I first witness the power of real estate through my father. My dad had invested in a couple of multifamily properties in the southeastern part of Massachusetts and was cash flowing pretty well, but between balancing a real estate portfolio and running his own construction business, most of his time was dedicated to his construction business. Not only did I learn about construction from him, but my father was also very kind enough to teach me how to manage properties. Granted, I think I have learned more efficient ways on Bigger Pockets, but at least he formed a foundation of knowledge to begin my real estate investment journey.

Project #2

The Two Family, Full Gut Renovation, Owner occupied, Investment property

Now for the pictures! Here are the before pictures on the house when my wife and I purchased the property. We were having a very difficult time finding a 2 – 3 family home in the particular area we were searching in because we were bidding against many contractors and developers that were purchasing multi-families in all cash to perform condo conversions which is something I would like to do in the near future after this project. After about a year of searching, pure determination and 14 offers getting shot down because of higher bids, we resorted to short sales. Short sales are a great strategy because it deters many developers because it takes sooooooo long to close. We were able to purchase this gem due to a short sale.

This is the back of the house with the garage.

Front Entrance to each unit

Unit #1 ( First Floor which will be our unit )

Living Room

Dinning Room

Kitchen

Bathroom

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

Here are the pictures of the second unit the day we purchased it.

Unit #2 Entry ( The rental )

Living Room

Dinning Room

Kitchen

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #3

Both units have the same footprint, except the second floor has on more bedroom above the main entry of the home.

I also incorporated plans I personally drafted up so readers can gain a sense of all of the rooms and our design intentions. The plan for the second unit is to convert the living room into another bedroom and change the current dinning room into the new living room. We will be removing the existing pantry and converting it into a half bathroom and we also plan to increase the size of bedroom #1 on the second floor and combine the enclosed front porch by removing the exterior bearing wall and replacing it with an LVL beam. These plans will make this rental unit a very profitable four bedroom apartment. 

Stay tuned for demolition and more in depth plans for the project!

[Joe DeFarias]

@Steve Vasconcelos Great to see you on Bigger Pockets Steve! It's been awhile. I hope all is well and I didn't realize you were a town over!  Let's grab some coffee during a weekend that works for the both of us.

@Charlie MacPherson Thank you Charlie!  Good luck on the rehab. Let me know if you need any pointers! I'm always happy to help.

It’s been a couple of weeks, but I’m back with more updates!

Time to start rebuilding now that the demo is about 90% completed for Phase 1.

The bathroom was the first to tackle. I roughed framed the new tub location and installed a rough opening for a new built-in style medicine cabinet along with additional blocking for towel bars and future accessories. 

For the trained eye, you’ll notice I removed the existing window and plan on replacing it with a smaller awning window that will be at a higher elevation to minimize future water damage. For the second floor bathroom, the plan is to remove the window in its entirety.

The image below was taken in the front hallway facing the living room (to the left) and the dining room (to the right). When we removed the old wall paneling, we discovered there was actually a door that the previous owner paneled over. My wife and I were delighted with this discovery. This new opening created a better open plan design for both living spaces. It also allowed more day light into the hallway, which was dark during the day. I removed the actual door, which was still in place, and  will just be a framed opening similar to the entrance into the dining room. 

I had supplied my electrician some reflected floor plans a drafted up to make sure all of the ceiling mount electrical boxes we centered in the rooms and followed the lighting layout in the bathroom.

And below is the bathroom design

Now for the big decision! Both heating units were ancient; in fact, the first floor unit was being heated by the original boiler, which belonged in a museum. My wife and I decided to remove all the radiators and convert to forced hot air furnaces with central air. Our two family qualified for a 0% energy loan that the state of Massachusetts supplies for older home like this one ( MassSave). It's a great program and I advise all Mass. residence to take advantage of this great program. The numbers worked, so instead of only replacing both boilers, we replaced the entire heating systems for both units. This was a decision based on holding this property for a very long time because of the location. Later on down the road, I don't want to worry about 100+ year old radiators leaking and failing. We also used the MassSave program to replace all of the exterior windows of the home.

Now for the fun stuff! (Insert sarcasm)

Since we will be living below our future tenants, I wanted to make sure to mitigate as much sound transfer as possible. If you missed my introduction, I work for an architectural firm that specializes in hotel design so I’m fairly up to date on dampening sounds transfer between ceilings and demising walls.

This ceiling system consists of two layers of Roxul Safe n’ Sound Insulation in between every ceiling joist. This material is great for muffling air borne sounds like conversations, TV and radio noise.

The second layer of sound protection are the resilient channels installed to the ceiling joist. Instead of using typical wood strapping as nailers, resilient channels are design to dampen impact noises like walking, stomping, and even the bass from a radio.

The third layer of protection will be 2 layers of 5/8”, fire rated, sheet rock. It’s proven that the more mass within your wall or ceiling assembly, the better chance you have to dissipate sound transfer.

I took a close up of a small piece for those of you who have never seen this product before.

One of the last items to covert this old New England home into the 21st century is installing cable and internet connections in many of the rooms. I ended up installing cat-6 in all the rooms to give us and future tenants the freedom to install them modem in any room. 

Rough plumbing - Complete!

HVAC Duct installation - Complete!

Rough Electrical - Complete!

I've scheduled the rough inspection with the city and once we pass, we're ready for sheet rock!!