All Forum Posts by: Steven Maduro

well it looks like the lazy landlord will be rolling up his sleeves in these two houses 

The estimates came in at 1,800 for the 1,200 sqft prop

And 2,300 for the 1000 sqft house

The disparity was because the larger home has stained baseboards and therefore does not need the baseboards trim moulding and doors painted

Stay tuned as to how I manage to execute these two projects with a timeline of no more than 10 business days 

@ Tim Sabo

ha you must not have ever read any of the previous lazy landlord posts

The series is mostly dedicated to the novice 

DIY person 

Strategizing how to tackle jobs that are do able but can seem daunting

The first where I painted one of the same houses that I am now considering farming out.

The lazy in lazy landlord is tongue in cheek.

Although I am prepared to do what I can in a property as I acquire more 

It becomes less efficient 

So the series evolves as my business model evolves

Perhaps I will paint some and not others

Another thing to consider 

A great painter can make a house look stellar where as a novice can make it look quite cheap

I have an extremely high standard

My apartments usually are the best in town for the money.

My profile pic is my latest apartment 

By the way I did the floors.

So don't take me too seriously 

In just doing my part to share my experiences in he forums 

really? No garage at all?

What did they do with the garage door?

sounds cool I'll pm you my info 

So you either own a house or are looking at properties and you smell a really bad musty odor

Could be mold or it could be stagnant air in the crawl space

I recently was working on a home where there was a really really bad musty smell

It was enough to make you sick 

I thought mold remediation and was imagining the costs

Then a native from the area heard about my problem and asked if my crawl space vents were opened

He stated  the air can get really stagnant if they are closed

Sure enough they were closed by whom? Yours truly I am sorry to say

I remember two years ago walking by them and closing them for no reason at all but that I was idle and ignorant 

Since opening the vents the smell has disappeared 

Always check the cheap options first 

do you spray or roll?

Hi everyone 

It's time for another addition to the Lazy Landlord series.  I am currently doing three simultaneous renovations.  It probably would have been better to do one at a time .  But three simultaneous vacancies sort of pushed me to get them all done as soon as possible. 

The projects ranged from floor repairs, paint, fencing, exterior repairs, cabinet painting, deck construction, and trim work,

Being the lazy landlord that I am I decided to farm out 90% of this work . 

I settled on two contractors one who  was detailed neat but not too fast 

The other who was fast and reasonable but not detailed and left a little to be desired.

One of the first things that I learned about doing such large scale renovations is that it seems to be better to pay for the various jobs separately. Contractors seem to like to choose which jobs they tackle on their time line and according to how they feel.

By you segmenting the job you control which items get done first and you can monitor the craftsmanship and attention to detail of the work completed.

You learn which contractors to use where in the future. 

I really thought that I was going to tackle all of the painting but I have decided to farm the painting out as well.

Is this being too lazy? 

I can paint!!! 

But I am talking about the entire interior of two houses and one apartment. 

Including baseboards and doors 

Is it worth the expense?

Well we will see 

I will meet with the painter today to discuss terms pricing and time line 

Stay tuned for how this works out

Traditional split renovations 

Hello it's the Lazy Landlord 

And I am here in Decatur Ga with a new project. My first flip .

It's a traditional split level home in the Decatur Area. Built in the 90's

It's about 1900 sq ft I'm getting it for the low 80's and the neighbor hood supports new construction upwards of mid to low 200's and renovated homes to mid to high 100's 

It looks as if they already turned the garage into a family room/den

First my problem is the textured t111 vertical siding 

Second is the small windows and the lack of Windows 

I have read a booklet on how to renovate one of these and it seems like these can be really upgraded in a myriad of ways.  

I.e. Front patio, covered entry with columns , Windows where the garage was , relocate driveway to the side of the house and erect a rear garage , add brick facing and or hardy plank 

Larger Windows but now I've spent a load and haven't even tackled the interior.

My question is how far to go what are the best bang for the buck renovations although I understand the basics i.e. Bathrooms and kitchens open concept.  It seems these traditional splits suffer from a poorly set up exterior flow and function.

Has anyone here had success with flipping a traditional split? And if so what sort of renovations did you do?

Lol thanks @Bill Thompson I don't know why I didn't think of that 

That's what makes this such a great community of which to be a part