All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

Except that sometimes the locals are not really interested in lending. I went to the local that holds 2 notes of mine, from 8 years ago, to refi one. That was Jan 6th, and they still haven't come up with a GFE. The person I deal with is very nice, but she says the underwriters just don't feel timely customer service is in their job description.

In exasperation I went to Amerisave, and was shocked at the explicit rate charts, pricing, and speed of feedback. We'll see if there's a problem, but even just the way they have a secure, organized online system for disclosure submittal is impressive, some other banks actually have no security whatsoever, they want you to email identity theft bait unencrypted!

Agreed, it's amazing what a contractor skilled at fishing wire can do with minimal destruction. If you have access from the basement below or attic above, often you don't even have to cut out plaster as described, just drill holes through the sill plates and fish the wire down or up, either to the existing box, or to a "repair" style box that clamps in a hole cut in the plaster, since you'll be adding LOTS more outlets as the old houses often had only one per room!

Once we was able to rewire 2 apartments on the top floor and the one below it by accessing the attic crawl and strategically taking up the subfloor on the top floor to fish wires up or down. We only had to remove lots of plaster in the bath ceilings to fish up the risers, and cut a slot behind the run of cabs and appliances in the kitchen.

But finding someone willing to do this kind of work may not be easy, since it's not as simple as just wiring open studs and letting someone else worry about closing up. I kick myself for once opening up a stud bay per floor of nasty cement on metal lathe for risers in units on one side of a building, when on the other side a later electrician just fished the riser up through the plumbing chase and put the panel in a much better location.

The flooring vendor thinks the hallway floors need a 1/4 plywood underlay for the vinyl, which I think would be a disaster visually. He may be right for a glued down product. But if I was going to add 3/8 thickness I might as well put down laminate myself. That notion got me thinking about floating vinyl plank, which I've only installed once, in a kitchen. It would be thin, relatively cheap to buy and easy to install with 1/4 rounds, metal stair nosings and edge strips to end it short of the halway balusters. Plus it's easily reversible if it didn't work out, unlike vinyl glued down to ply nailed down with a zillion nails. I've only used the click type, but lot's of folks here seem to like the Allure PSA glue strip type, which is cheaper.

Thoughts? And can anybody tell me what the normal lifespan of carpet should be in this circumstance? 5 years? 10?

Randy, I haven't had any slip problems in 15 years where I have aluminum nosing over linoleum, nor even with the marble top tread, which would seem like a liability. Most appealing, I've done almost no maintenance on the stairs/halls in those 15 years.

George, what makes the marine last, is it physically tougher or more stain resistant, or both?

Thanks, but I don't believe VCT is a good choice over a dubious substrate, nor on the stairs where the old wooden treads are flexing and the tile joints are taking beating. Over a good subfloor no doubt it wears like iron.

My recently purchased 4 family has horrific carpeting in the hall & stairs serving the upper 3 units. I'm getting vacancies soon of the lowlife and section 8 in 2 of those units, but I'm still unsure about simply putting down more carpet to get ruined. I did it in another nearby building and it's still decent 7 years later but for one stain from a leaking garbage bag, but this neighborhood is lower down the gentrification ladder.

What other options are there, other than painting the floors & stairs? Laminate with nose molding doesn't seem a great solution, you've still got to end it before the balusters with yet another transition molding, and the cost of all those special moldings adds up fast. I saw one that would cost $30 per tread x 30 treads. I've got classic linoleum treads and risers with metal tread nosing and marble top treads with tiled hallways in another building, but that seems like a big project.

I have a local flooring contractor coming tomorrow to give me bids. When I asked about real linoleum he showed me an Armstrong commercial floor product called Corlon that looks great, a thick vinyl that looks like terrazzo. It's basically colored vinyl chunks set in clear vinyl, so there's no "skin" to tear like cheap vinyl flooring. It's $1.90/ft to genuine linoleum's $3.46/ft. http://www.floorcity.com/Armstrong-Connection-Corlon-Sheet-Vinyl-s/1892.htm

Any other great solutions?

NJ Anti-Eviction is pretty stout, basically once a tenant is in you must give him a new lease if he wants one. You can raise the rent, up to the point where it's "reprehensible" to the judge that hears the case, if it's brought. The law has plenty of verbage about other causes for eviction besides non-payment, but I imagine they're a much harder road, with multiple notices and court appearances.

But as far as squatting by accusations of seeing a rat, that is not the case here, now. I don't know if it ever was, or was purely a NYC phenomena. A lot of people around here have all they know about the subject being NYC law. They're shocked when I tell them they can't evict a tenant in a multi to use the place for themselves. That's NYC, not NJ.

This thread has peaked my interest, my "day job" business is pretty slow these days, and I think I do a pretty good job of managing my properties. What would this plan look like if the units rent for $1000-3000 as they do in my area? Still 10%? What kind of license is required and who issues it? What if I do the "handyman" type no permit required work myself? Is that conflict of interest?

I dunno, maybe a fully tiled place would go over in the sunbelt, but I don't recall ever seeing more than a kitchen or foyer tiled here in the cold northeast. And if you're not going over a slab, you also need to put in cost in time and material for cement board, tile over subfloor=disaster.

I've had really good luck with Costco laminate, I was just in a unit I did 8 years ago and it looks great. By only using theirs and keeping a few boxes around, I can repair it no problem if it comes to it.

Just to put a coda on this thread, at the court they put us with a mediator before a judge would hear it, when they heard he didn't have the money there, the game was over. they were uninterested in his claims about maintenance or my "forcing him out" by raising the rent 2 months after he stopped paying it. They're issuing the order to vacate.

I wonder how I would have done if I was just trying to evict him for being a disruptive tenant?