All Forum Posts by: Gary Crawford

Definitely some great questions. I see you are in CA, so your rehab costs are most likely more compared to here in Vegas...I learned the hard way on a rehab up in Big Bear. I did sales for a painting/light remodeling company and was able to pay some of the workers on the side for a cheap rate to do the painting and baseboards (I would say $15/hr when it came down to it). For the flooring I purhcased some easy to install luxury vinyl planks and paid a retired flooring contractor $2k to install throughout the house. For the kitchen, at this point I had networked around with some other people in Real Estate and was able to find a great contractor to do the whole kitchen for $6k, (I bought the cabinets/countertops at discount, backsplash was a little pricey, but labor was about $1.5k). That same contractor did the master bathroom upstairs for total cost of $3k, the next bathroom I had the retired handyman remodel with a pre-fab shower enclosure, and the last bathroom I helped a handyman with the tile portion (biggest mistake of the rehab, will never tile again haha). The roof and A/C were big costs to me that ate up a lot of the budget though. I paid $5.5k to the foreman of a roofing company who did the job on the side over a weekend and the A/C was ~$6.5k, one unit for the whole house.  Hope this makes things more understandable!
Originally posted by @Peggy Lindsay:

@Gary Crawford - That all went very well for you. Congratulations! Seems like you were also able to hack the remodel cost. Remodeling 3 bathrooms plus the kitchen could easily eat up that entire $31k budget. As a contractor, I am curious how your remodel cost was kept to a minimum. Perhaps you can share a few of the cost savers that helped keep your budget down.

Remodeling is very expensive and sharing cost saving tips is great for this community!

Congratulations and happy real estate trails!

Originally posted by @Frank Jiang:

@Gary Crawford

Love this story!  Quick question: do you have a sense of how much of the appreciation from 185 to 300 was due to your remodel and how much was simply due to natural appreciation in the housing market?

Hope this answers most of your questions!

Originally posted by @Ana Coello:

@Gary Crawford Thank you for sharing this incredible start of a career! We are looking to house hack and rent by the room as well but in the north east and in much smaller scale.

I have a couple of questions:

-Are there any restrictions on how many unrelated people can live in the same house? 

-Did you remodel and then rent (have a "holding cost" per say)? 

-Or did you remodel as you rented the place? If so, did your rent change to reflect the nicer place?

-How has managing tenants that live with been?  

Warm wishes,

Ana 

Originally posted by @Jon Lee:

Well done @Gary Crawford!  Will need you to share your experience with the Outback soon.  We're rooting for your success in building your portfolio!

Originally posted by @Stephan Kraus:

Great job and congrats to a successful start @Gary Crawford!! i also invest in Las Vegas, currently putting together a creative financing / business takeover / househack / brrrrr - behemoth project (for my experience) after dwelling in flips and rental property investing in LV - lets see how that works out haha! what's your next project? 

let's get a coffe sometime! 

Originally posted by @Quincy Palou:

First, Thanks for Sharing.

I've never participated in any type of forum type of posting in my life (excluding social media) however, I was compelled to reply to this. I am in the middle of reading the bigger pockets how to invest in real estate beginners guide to getting started book right now. I have been listening to the podcast for about 6 months now. I finally decided to check out this website and look into the forums and this was the first one I clicked on. 

I also live in Las Vegas, so opening this as my first forum post is an omen. An omen for me to finally stop thinking and start doing. Taking action. This being my first post! I have nothing else really to contribute at the moment, I just wanted to say thank you. It's inspiring to hear that happening in my marketplace. I had the same realization about searching for multifamilies in this city as many of them are in the nellis area and rougher parts of town. It's super cool how you figured a way around that! Thanks Again!