All Forum Posts by: James Mc Ree

I use HD's Lifeproof LVP for all of my rooms except bathrooms. It is easy to install. Each piece locks together to its neighbors. I refinish steps to get close to the LVP finish. That makes the steps look nice, but they do stand out as different.

I prefer tile for bathrooms since they are more at risk of getting wet and having sitting water. Lifeproof's core is PVC, so it's not going to warp or anything. The plank-to-plank connections are tight and seem to resist liquids well, but I don't want to push it in the bathroom.

Trail Oak has been my favorite of the Lifeproof LVPs. I've used other variations of their wood looks as well. I like the thicker and wider planks that became available in the last year or two.

Without knowing anything else than what is here, my guess is your obstacles are either zoning or prohibited basement habitation. The "sneaky duplex" phrase sounds to me just like "sneaky tax evasion" - it's great to get something illegally until you are caught.

The screaming obvious action for you here is to call your town and ask about the property. We can give you lots of thoughts on what might be happening, but you don't want to invest based on that. Call the town's zoning officer. Here is some context on the two possible obstacles I see:

Zoning - The area is legally limited to single family homes, as in 1 and only 1. You can try to get a use variance, but I don't see how that would ever be successful since you would have to show the property cannot be used for the currently allowed uses (single family home). You can usually get the zoning destination with the property listing, then look that designation up in the town's zoning code to see which uses are allowed there.

Basement habitation - There is a concern that limited egress, fire and CO are major risks to bedrooms and habitation in general of basements. In PA, basement habitation is not allowed if any basement wall is below grade or if the basement exit door to the outside is below grade (PA 6400.81). Local governments may have tighter restrictions. That doesn't stop them from existing. It just means landlords and tenants play the game of making the bedroom look not like a bedroom during an inspection. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes not.

I think building a whole suite in the basement will be much more noticeable than just a bedroom and they will probably call you on it if it is not permitted. Permits will also be required for your plumbing and electrical work.

So, what if they catch you? You can get fined and ordered to undo your changes. That's no big deal if it's just a room being used as a bedroom, but imagine ripping out that nice kitchen and bathroom you put in! If the local government doesn't catch you during rental inspections, they have a great opportunity to catch you on sale of the property if they do an interior U&O inspection and find the house is a duplex. In that case, they can block the sale and your buyer may have legal recourse against you for misrepresenting the property if you did.

The title search shows the liens currently recorded against the property. It doesn't mean there aren't more to come. Title insurance protects you against anything missed by the attorney or something not yet filed. There are very few claims against title insurance, but this might be the kind of property that could generate one.

The sheriff sale should extinguish all of the liens. You buy all the liens with the property if you buy it traditionally. You can contact the bankruptcy court to learn the current state of the case to see if buying it is feasible. Most likely, their plan is the sheriff sale to get maximum value.

The lender will bid the amount owed to either have the debt satisfied or take the property. Others may bid above that and end up owning it. The lender will auction the property off if they take it. My experience with these auctions is they are normally slow and inefficient because the new owner had inflated price expectations. I've talked with auction.com and another company about rediculous reserve prices on some properties. They just defer to the owner, provide no contact info for to negotiate and just told me that's their price, but it may come down if it doesn't sell. Others may be more successful than I was. I only bought 2 with auction.com in NJ.

I have SFR rentals in Delaware County, but not in Philly. I know Philly at a very high level, but not the details to talk about neighborhoods.

My initial reaction is "none of your business." Stay out of it.

The risk I see is your new tenant shared info with you that you blabbed to her ex. Regardless of her relationship with him, you could breach her trust. You don't want to screw up your relationship with her before she even moves in.

There is a risk she is lying. I don't think you would want to dive into the details and get in the middle of it. Instead, you might want to focus on the legality of it. Maybe you could ask her to sign a lease addendum advising her that her ex lives in the building and asking her to certify there are no restraining orders and such limitations on either on either of them to her knowledge. You would want to run this by an attorney to get the right wording. I wouldn't do anything with him, but maybe setup an easy and legal kill switch on the lease if there is a problem.

You probably need a lawyer and to investigate the current state of the bankruptcy proceedings. You may be able to buy the properties through the bankruptcy proceeding versus after a lender foreclosure. Time to acquisition is important for an 85% complete property depending on what is missing.

It's a good concern. Try to track days on market and price trends to see how well an area is selling.

There is a housing shortage in general, so every house will eventually be a home. The key question is, "At what price?" You should think about what you would offer with regards to your competition and compare rents. You can price your rental near the bottom of your comparable competition to rent faster. Alternatively, you can offer more such as central air when the competition doesn't have it.

Avoid areas with a lot of new rental deliveries. Philadelphia as a city is nowhere near saturated, but you aren't buying the city. You are buying 1 property in a local neighborhood. Philly can vary quite a bit street-to-street. Look at that property's immediate area. It's all location, location, location. The suburbs are good areas for prospecting too.

Check to see if appealing your tax assessments would be worthwhile. That might lower your taxes.

Look at what you are really getting for your insurance premium with regard to your intent to use it. I think of insurance as what covers disasters (fire, flood, medical liability, etc) and set my deductible at 5% which makes for a lower premium. Others want to use insurance for everything and have a $500 deductible and a higher premium.

You could try the AirBnB business for a year or two with a property to see how it goes. It's not a one-way choice. You can switch anytime to another strategy. It is more time consuming if you are managing it all yourself.

You didn't list selling a property as an option to pay down loan principle. I would consider that if cash flow is tight across your whole portfolio. It's a way of jumpstarting your payoff plan.

Benjamin Moore Light Pewter and Revere Pewter were 2 of my main colors. They are both shades of gray. I dropped Revere Pewter and have mostly used Light Pewter as a common color in the house with kitchens and bathrooms being something colorful, usually blue for kitchens and green for bathrooms.

I use HD Behr Marquee which is around the middle of HD paints in quality. I've gone higher in quality, but the paint is thicker and a little harder to spread or I just wasn't used to it. I only tried the higher quality because of a sale and didn't see the value. I've recently been getting ceiling paints that go on pink and dry white to make it easier to see what spots were missed. My contractor initially laughed at me, then found it was helpful when he used it.

Have you replaced your water heater anode rod with a powered anode rod, such as one from Corro-Protec?

The Corro-Protec marketing claims are they are a once-and-done replacement that extends your water heater's lifespan to 20+ years. No more rod replacements needed, unless it breaks. The materials also claim the powered rods help reduce sediment. What have your experiences been? I am considering them for my SFR rentals for which I've done no water heater maintenance. I'd like to start with flushing every few years and replacing the anode rod every 5 years or just once with one of these powered rods.

I am skeptical of the very positive product reviews since the review really needs to be submitted 10+ years after the installation to be meaningful and they never are.