All Forum Posts by: Thomas Mattausch

I was intrigued by your low 5% management fee, but the Yelp reviews quenched my interest quickly.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/onerent-san-jose-6

@Chuck Hattemer, do you dare to venture any comments on the parade of abysmal reviews? 

Your video mentions a maintenance team - is that in house maintenance staff? Or do you just hire contractors?

Yeah, I was [kind of] joking about the crews :)

So the supervisors are back to operating their own GC businesses? Or are they still in your employ, but you are no longer filling the functional role of GC? 

As a anecdotal case study, I'd love to hear what sort of disagreeable incidents led you to learn more about liens. 

Wow. Incredibly concise, distilled and lucid compendium. Amazing to see someone test, reverse, and perform an autopsy on their own beliefs. As someone currently preparing to hire GCs for the first time instead of subbing out remodels, **thank you!**

The strategy I'm trying is to prepare plans and permit applications with architects, then shop those around to GCs. 

Advantages I see: GCs don't have to waste their time helping me figure out what I want, waiting for permits, less worry for change orders, and easy bidding...which hopefully leads to less uncertainty overhead built into their bids, and a better value for me (along with the most optimized layouts). Also, I get your #7 ("person experienced and savvy with permits").

Any thoughts on this strategy, perhaps contrasted to how you prefer to go about selecting a GC/remodel plan? 

Also what are your five former crews up to? I will keep them busy for a bit :) 

As @Jason Hartley suspected, Seattle's City Council has in fact created yet another piece of counter-productive, pandering legislation that includes a provision legally mandating "first-come-first-served" applicant selection. Fortunately it doesn't take effect til January 1st, so your bacon is not cooked. 

At that point, we all will need to create very high application standards which will shut out plenty of good applicants. 

SMH...

http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/first-come-fir...

Hi Krissa, good thing you posted here. No personal experience, but the preponderance of evidence shows that Do Hard Money should just be called Take Your Money. See this thread:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/92/topics/116900-do-hard-money 

What a coup, John. Fantastic long term investment, especially with your eye towards future upzoning and maintaining parking egress. I think the real question here is what kind of coffee do you drink? Finding, evaluating, and GC'ing that job to completion in 3 months with a day job must have kept you running. 

Can you share any of your strategies in finding/managing subcontractors that helped you make this work? I'm heading into a couple projects of this scale for the first time myself. 

That one complex has been a major cause celebre for Comrade Sawant and other misguided folks troubled by the huge surge in rents. It was purchased by a new company, passed its RRIO inspection, and both rents and the state of repair were going up. Strange, isn't it...who knew more expenses for the landlord might result in higher rent??

"And the new law incentivizes tenants to report problems, which is an essential part of enforcing violations in a department that heavily depends on complaints."

It's my understanding this law would allow a tenant who is facing a rent increase to make a call to put that rent increase in hold while paperwork is shuffled for who knows how long. That's perverse incentivizing, giving the tenant too much power: break a faucet and call the city to stave off rent increases. 

Thanks Matt. You are right about trust. I have two guys going full time now, and a network of craftsmen I trust and have good working relationships with. Not GCs yet though, and ideally I would like to establish an ongoing relationship with a GC, and in fact I could keep a the right crew busy for probably a year right now between the remodels I have lined up. 

Hello BP! Huge fan of this community I've only recently discovered. I've even started evangelizing around Seattle!  This is my introduction, so if I sound like minded or we likely could be useful to each other, please send a colleague request - especially Pacific Northwest BeePers (can we make that a thing?). Would love to have more contacts to trade vendor references with. 

I've been involved with my family's SFRs since I could hold a paint brush, and now generally have the reins. I'm about to embark on one of the larger remodel projects I've done. The property is a pre-war house with a legal basement duplex unit. For most of my remodels in the past, I've been somewhat hands on, or at least very involved with coordinating individual tradesmen and contractors. I don't have the time (or desire) to be intimately involved with this project, and just want to be listing an attractive, durable rental house ASAP. 

Scope of work on an $80k budget is: 

* build out ofbasement apartment down to the studs

* upstairs new kitchen on existing footprint

* replace/enlarge 2nd story rear deck

* new roof, door, & electrical for 2 car garage

* add a bathroom in existing finished space on the 2nd floor OR rebuild one gable at a lower slope to allow finishing out current space under the eaves as a master suite

* perhaps other stuff we haven't thought of 

The questions are A) how do you approach down-to-the-studs level remodel projects? 

1) Hire an architect, then shop the plans around for quotes from GCs (which sounds like the best idea to me)

2) Get quotes and designs from design/build contractors

3)  ?

And B) any tips on finding & selecting architects/designers or contractors who work well with investment properties and for your method?