When BRRRR Means Cold and Doubtful

Doubt will always be present for the real estate investor. My first heavy rehab has caused me plenty. I used to think BRRRR stood for Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, but now I know it can also mean you’re shivering cold and questioning your decisions: Oh cold, harsh reality!

This most recent real estate acquisition needed a lot of work. In the positive category were new windows and a solid foundation. In the negative category: a smoker(s) had lived there, dogs had used the carpets as toilet, an army of mice had taken up residence inside the cupboards, couches, beds closets, desks and drawers leaving millions of droppings. The owner had passed away, leaving a hoard of belongs to dispose of. The plumbing was in disarray, from the waste lines to the water heater. Peeling paint hardly coated the rotting wooden siding, and three massive silver maples threatened to fall on the roof at any moment.

Needless to say, the former owner had lived in a level of filth most people have never seen nor contemplated.

Ashley, my business partner (aka wife, aka mother of three, aka accountant), agreed to purchasing the property because she trusted my assessment, but her emotional reaction to the walkthrough matched what one would expect of a sane person. She doubted we’d ever get the property odor-free, not to mention clean. Early on, she asked why we didn’t just pour some gas on the place and throw a lit match in it.

December 23rd Closing Day

Those of you who celebrate Christmas recognize this date as the day before Christmas Eve. Ashley and I sat in the office of Ambassador Title. The title agent handed us keys. We’d signed a shockingly small amount of paperwork, because it turns out when you pay cash for a property, things are stupidly simple.

At that point, I’d already booked a roofing company, but because the executor of the estate hadn’t yet removed the former owner’s car from the driveway, we hadn’t booked a dumpster. Itching to work, we decided to rent a U-Haul to load the disgusting appliances: two clothing dryers, one rusted washing machine, an electric stove and oven, and a refrigerator-freezer that still had food in it from a year ago when the place went vacant. Yummy!

The year’s first real snow was falling that day, but we persevered across the U-Haul’s slippery metal gang plank and the slick-as-ice aluminum floor of its box. We drove to our local appliance recycling facility only to find that despite being posted online as open, it had closed due to the weather. With the looming holiday all public trash facilities would be closed for several days if we couldn’t unload the appliances that day, and the cost of keeping a U-Haul for that long would have increased my out-of-pocket by a factor of nearly ten. I silently asked myself, Self, what have you gotten into?

Fortunately, Ashley found a solution. I find problems; she solves them. We were able to drive across town into Iowa and dump the appliances in Council Bluffs. The whole audible cost us less than a hundred extra dollars, but the stress and time was enough to get me privately questioning my reasons for buying a trashed house.

The next day (i.e. Christmas Eve) Ashley and I took several-hour shifts bagging trash because the former owner had bought thousands of trash bags he never used. (It’s a strange impulse this person had. He purchased dozens of never-opened mouse traps too, as if his better nature sometimes roused long enough to get him off the couch, but by the time he returned from errands, he was too tired to see the project through.)

Anyway, Christmas Eve was upon us, and I’d driven to the property to take my turn bagging trash, but as it turned out, fate had something else in store for me. I noticed a bit of water on the floor in the basement. As any detective would, I followed the trail to its source: a water softener older than our last two POTI combined. (I figure if the plural of fungus is fungi, the plural of POTUS is POTI. Just go with me.)

So but, anyhow, I tapped a black lever on the top of this water softener, and it squirted a flow of water, so I thought, Don’t do that again, and I thought, Now if I can find the shut off, presto-wamo! leak be gone. What actually happened though was I grabbed what I thought was the shutoff valve, and heck, it may have been the shutoff valve, but we’ll never know because no sooner had my hand touched that little dial gizmo than the pipe feeding to it burst in a shower of rust and high-pressure water.

I took a jet of cold H2O right to the face, and my brain needed about three seconds to comprehend what my hand had wrought. (“Wrought” because the level of trouble I’d just caused was biblical.)

When I returned to my senses, adrenaline was coursing through my blood, screaming the lyrics to every Metallica song I’d ever heard and getting in fights with all the other chemicals in my blood because adrenaline is a bully that way. I knew my capacity for thinking was limited in such a state, but I also knew I needed to find the master shut off valve A-to-the-SAP! (FYI, be smarter than I: find the master water shutoff as your very first act in any home you own, no matter what condition the home is in when you buy it. Note that location. Memorize it.)

After searching the entire area and failing to find a water shutoff, I called Ashley. The furnace was under direct assault and starting to smell like burning from the heavy spray soaking it. In under a minute, much of the basement floor was an inch deep in water. Using Ashley as my outsourced brain, I tried to think, but even with my increased capacity for critical reasoning, I couldn’t find the shutoff. (Spoiler alert! It was behind several couches, a lawn mower, a couple rocking chairs and inside a wood panel box built especially for it—by the party who had partially finished the basement sometime in the seventies—on the opposite side of the basement. Go figure.)

Knowing that if I didn’t get the water shut off fast, a flood could cost thousands in damage, I called my Dad. He was no help, but it’s always good to start with the people who once changed your poopy diapers when you need help with an embarrassing failure.

Next, I called the biggest plumbing outfits in the city because I figured they were the only companies that would be open on Christmas Eve. They were open, but refused to help without me signing over rights to my first-born son. No can-do, Burton. Also, don’t do business with Burton. Sorry, this is a historied, nuanced grudge. I’ll refrain from the juicy backstory.

Finally, our local utility company came through with the win, sending a technician to shut the water off at the street. Two details I need to mention here: The utility guy was incredibly kind, which is the last thing you’d expect of a government employee, and I have to give credit where credit is due. Ashley was the one who thought to and did call the utility company. Her brain is more highly developed. What can I say?

When the chemical soup had drained from my blood stream I had the second of many doubt moments. What had I gotten myself into? Knowing nothing about plumbing, having no skill in heavy rehab, knowing zero contractors to perform major rehab projects, I’d taken on a ton of debt for a house I apparently lacked the skill to repair.

I asked myself how bad, and how cold of a bath I’d have to take to get out of the house that smelled like an outhouse, accepted the potential for failure, and pressed forward.

Already, I’ve foreshadowed the carpenter ant problem, but for a little context, I’ll mention that before we had the exterminator visit, we thought the piles of sawdust in the cabinets and elsewhere were evidence of termites.

January 18th

Today, as I’m writing this, my wife is over at the house rolling oil paint on the ceiling and walls, wearing a respirator mask. At noon, we’ll switch places. We’re about halfway through the rehab, with a bid for the kitchen in place and awaiting one on the bathroom. I’ve had to get a little salty with my roofing contractor, as he failed to complete the work he estimated for, and still charged me. The quality of his work was decent, but I could have gotten much cheaper and gone with someone who had integrity. He caused me plenty of doubt, but that’s another story I already told on Yelp, Angie’s List, and the Better Business Bureau, if you’re curious.

I know we’re going to run into more doubt moments. There’s already a looming situation with the bump-out in the kitchen that I fear could become a money pit, but we’re handling it one day at a time, just like an addiction.

I’m collecting a legacy of stories that make people laugh. This experience is helping me relate to and understand those who live differently than I do. The man who owned this house I’m rehabbing was a war hero. He saved his medals. He was a father. He loved his dogs so much he paid to cremate them and saved their ashes in a bag stitched with the memorial “Until we meet again at the rainbow bridge.”

For the risk of buying this house, I restored a dormant friendship with one of my groomsmen, when he agreed to lend me the extra twenty-five thousand dollars I needed to pay cash for the house.

Without this house, I’d never have seen how tenacious Ashley can be in the face of problems. She outworks every living person I know, and does so with style. I don’t suppose my tone would be so light-hearted if I thought I’d lose money to have these experiences, but I know, regardless of the money, when I reach rocking-chair-age, I’ll be proud of my successes and failures, because I took the kinds of risks few people are willing to take.

You can have that too. So get out there and freeze your butts off. BRRRR, it’s cold!