All Forum Posts by: James H.

Some things are just that simple. This is one of them.

If you decide to replace the siding, I would do, and have done, 30 pound felt paper wrap covered with 3/4 inch foam sheathing (joints sealed with Tyvek tape) and hardi plank lap siding. An older house should have shear bracing so structural sheathing is not necessary.

Although on a rental I would probably do OSB sheathed with 15 pound tar paper and then some sort of siding I could find a deal on.

Bat insulation is fine. The walls don't account for more than 15 to 20 percent of the heat/cold loss. The rest is through attic and/or floor. Just compare how fast hot water cools in an uncovered styrafoam cup vs a covered one for proof.

It's been fine for 77 years.

Some apartment complexes have a staged unit that they show. I wouldn't do it for SFH though because I don't need to and its too much work.

RE investing is supplemental for me. I don't foresee it ever replacing my W-2 income. If you are making, say 95K/year, you would have to invest at least 630K of your own money at a 15% COC net return to get up to 95K W-2 job. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Depends. Do you want to work 10 times harder in RE than you do as an engineer to make the same amount?

The problem appears to be that you are using a GC. This has you paying wholesale plus the subcontractor markup plus the GC markup.

You need to act as the GC and find individual subs if you want to get these lower prices being tossed around here. The concept of getting carpet cleaning services through a GC seems odd to me.

I the property is nice enough, and the rent high enough, it might help to list it with a realtor as well. I know that there are apartment locator services. I wonder if they also place people in SFH rentals?

If the HOA allows no screens, the cheapest option would be to remove them and not replace them. If the tenants need screens, then they can buy their own. As they become damaged, you remove them.

As far as the air filter, I don't see any choice but for you to eat it. It is nice to have a tenant that will change AC filters, but you really need to do at least quarterly checkups on those sort of things anyways.

You need to have enough knowledge on how you would owner finance a house to someone else before you can sell the idea to a seller. Otherwise, how would the conversation go?

Once you know how owner financing works (not just the general idea, but the nuts and bolts), you can walk a potential seller through the process and then they can decide if they want to do it.

The down payment and terms of the loan are all negtiable and will vary from deal to deal depending on what everyone's wants and needs are.

@Brad S. ,

I was curious what the solution to the foundation distress turned out to be. From my experience, if an engineer is going to put his seal (his career and liability) on the line, the engineer will want to see how the foundation behaves over time given different conditions (i.e. after wet and dry spells). Also, you may or may not need to measure the differential movement. Certainly, if you were to monitor over time, you would need to establish a benchmark. But if want someone to look at it once, snap fingers and give an answer, what do you think the measurements would tell you at that point? What if the differential movement was 3 inches instead of 2.5 inches, for example? Would that somehow change the diagnosis? When you pay and engineer a couple hundred bucks to come out and look at your structure, how much time do you expect that engineer to dedicate to the analysis?

I raise these questions because so many times people just say "get an engineer", but often times, getting an engineer is not the magic pill that is expected. If you want a full survey of the distress that is related to expansion and contraction of clay soils, you need to mobilize a drill rig and take samples. Then you need to do lab tests on those samples. You also need to do a floor slab survey AND monitor over several wet and dry periods. This procedure is done on commercial structures but I have never seen a home owner or residential investor have the kind of money needed to do it right.

But the solution for expansive clays will usually be the same. You can do some warranty foundation repair that will generally require multiple warranty calls over the next several years to keep shimming the remedial piers, or you will need to do chemical injection which is also not guaranteed to work the first time no matter what the contractor tells you. If you rely on the warranty, make sure look for the foundation company that has been around for 30 years and will be around for another 30 years rather than some nobody with a jack on Craigslist.

If you monitor with time, you might be able to identify surface drainage issues that weren't readily apparent on your first peak. Here you might find a solution that doesn't require as extensive of a repair. Or, at a minimum, you will find something that needs to be addressed along with the repair so that the repair remains effective over time.

Bottom line is; you should know what you are doing with foundations or have a trusted and experienced foundation guy (either engineer or foundation repair contractor) that can help you decide what the risks of a given situation are. But don't think its like calling a plumber who has total control over his working media.