All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

I recently purchased a home just outside of the Asheville, NC city limits. There is as beautiful old barn on the back corner of the 1 acre yard. When purchasing the home, I did think that I could set up a large canvas tent on the inside of the barn and rent it out as a "glamping" vacation rental (I've been itching to dip my toe into a vacation rental for a couple of years now. LOVE my long term rentals, but I'm young and looking for some excitement lol). However, the more I have discussed this over the past couple of months since buying the place, the more I am leaning towards totally finishing out the inside of the barn and having a more traditional vacation rental. I would love any and all suggestions, warnings and opinions on any aspect of this project, but my main concern is knowing what to look into when it comes to the legal side of turning a non-inhabited building into a fully livable guest suite.

Installing electrical, plumbing, septic, insulating, finishes, etc are all things I have enough experience with to move forward without blinking (but also very open to all ideas!), but the legal/permitting/insurance/etc part of this project is what is currently terrifying me. I think that in the long term, seeing this through will be a great investment, but I am having a hard time committing to the idea thinking that there is going to be some big legal issue that I do not find out about until after dropping in all my rehab cash.

A little about the Barn:

• Electricity and Water are currently run underground to the barn from the house.
• I can put a small septic tank in, but not yet sure about the permitting for that.
• The exterior walls are not closed in and I'm still sifting through ideas for the most economical way to close it in while keeping the look of the barn on the outside.
  
• I plan on putting in a bathroom and a kitchenette
• The property line runs only about 2' off the back of the barn and about 6' off the right side of the barn.
• The previous owners put in a new CMU foundation (within the last 10 years)

Thanks for this!

Clint,

Did you ever get any response to your question?  What did you decide on?  I had planned on getting an account with Buildium to manage my rentals (currently using tenant cloud) because I plan to start managing other's properties in the near future.  But then I just came across rentredi and I really like the app aspect of it and being able to access my properties on any device.  Please let me know what you found out! 

I am looking into a property with numbers that, at least on the surface seem decent (listed at $75,000 that last rented for $750, in pretty good condition over all).  However, what has drawn me to this property is the 3 car, 2 story detached garage.  I want to convert the garage into 2 more units to rent out to maximize cash flow.  So...

My Questions:

Anyone have experience with a project like this?

How do I go about checking the zoning for this, and what all should I be looking for?

What are the biggest potential problems I could run into when converting a garage into a rentable unit?

Any thing else I should know/be aware of?

More About the Garage:

It has separately metered electricity already but no plumbing or HVAC.  

This property is actually made up of 2 lots, side by side.  The garage is on the other lot, and has only a clear yard between it and the street (I assume that would make it easier to run water and sewage).

Only a one car garage door is left in the garage, the others have been framed in and covered.

The first floor is the size of a 3 (possibly 3 and a half) car garage.

The second floor is smaller because of the roof slant but is big enough for a large studio or a small one bedroom.

I have been looking into crowd funding and came across American Homeowner Preservation.  From digging through their website, they seem to be a relatively low risk investment with a pretty good return (12% annual return).  They accept both accredited and non accredited investors and the minimum investment is only $100 (insanely low???).  

Has anyone used this site to invest or have any knowledge that might b helpful to a non accredited investor interested in investing less than $5000 in real estate?