All Forum Posts by: John Gill

The question is, do you want to invest in yourself or not? Work hard and, more importantly, work smart and you can make $60k pretty quickly. Maybe not the first year depending on your training and contacts etc. But if you can stick it out the first year, you can absolutely make more than $60k.

Karen, I appreciate your response (and all the others.) I have advised him to contact contractors. The ones I've recommended have told him, point blank, that it's not advisable. This was not at my urging. He contacted them, I didn't tell them he was going to call, and they said "not a good idea" basically. Of course it "can" be done. The question is whether or not it's wise. My opinion and the opinion of the contractors I have contacted is that it's not worth the risk. But my client (who happens to also be my cousin in the interest of full disclosure) is going to be talking to people who have done it - not people I know personally as I don't think I know anyone who has done it. He'll ultimately decide if it's worth the risk and the city will decide whether or not to grant him the permits. Sometimes when your older cousin advises you to do the safe thing, you just want to prove him wrong. ;-)

Thanks for the quick responses. Now I just have to put my salesman hat on tight and sell him on doing the safer (and still potentially very profitable) thing.

I am a Realtor and I have an investor client who recently purchased a middle row home in Philly. Prior to settlement he talked about maybe digging basement floor down so basement height would make it finishable space. But now he's talking about tearing the whole house down to the foundation and building up and maybe even adding a floor. He asked my opinion and I tried to steer him back towards renovating as the idea of tearing down walls of a building that shared walls with two others homes seemed like a really risky, terrible idea to me. I asked one contractor friend of mine who said "No way" in no uncertain terms - "Tell him no and that's the end of it. Scary thing to do." But this investor seems hellbent on finding some contractor who will tell him "sure it can be done." Am I being too risk-averse here? Should I just leave the contracting advice to the contractors? Seems really risky to me and I'm also not sure the block will command top dollar like some of the new construction "comps" he sent me. The ones he points to are not really the same neighborhood. Does anyone have experience tearing down a middle row? Is this as complicated as I think it is or am I a big baby?