All Forum Posts by: Mark Moran

I just bought a single family home that I would like to create a secondary dwelling unit. I bought the house for $563 + 10k closing costs. I expect the renovation to cost around $80k and take approximately 4 months. I will be doing a significant amount of the work myself as well. I will be building a 2 bedroom basement apartment that will rent for $1600 ‐ $1800 and an upstairs 3 bedroom that will rent for $2200 ‐ $2400.  

I expect my borrowing costs to be around $2000, insurance $150, water $80, property tax $400, maintenance $150 for a total $2630.  This gives me an expected cash flow of around $1000 to $1350 a month.

I do feel the initial purchase price is high and that affects the cash flow significantly. I did do one SDU in the past with better numbers due to much lower purchase price. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Also, is there a point where it makes sense to set up a property management business because I would like to hire someone for maintenance and also someone to help with construction. I only have 5 units at this point.

 Hi Chris,

I thought that the turnover in rents would allow you to keep the rents up. Do you normally do the max increase every year with your units? I think this year was 2.2%.

Would you mind telling me a bit or what you did to get it up to market standards?

Thanks,

Mark

Thanks for the reply Michael. 

I know that is very common where you guys are in Vancouver. I'll have to see how much the city is doing that and looking into the zoning for the units.

I recently finished a renovation of a single family home and am closing on the sale at the end of July. I'm moving to the Ottawa area and with the prices of single family homes surging recently, am thinking of buying an older multi family property.  Has anyone had success trying to flip an older multi family for cash flow?

I'm seeing some challenges of having the existing tenants paying low rents and having to try and get the property vacant to update the units. I see that there is still no evictions allowed due to covid but even still the process to evict for renovations looks challenging. I was also planning on moving in to one unit and renovating and renting one at a time. 

I also noticed some properties have a lot of extra unused land. I'm wondering if anyone has any good ideas on how to capitalize on this? I was thinking of building a multi unit type garage and renting it out to the tenants or anyone nearby who wants to store their car or just have storage. 

 Chris, I think your investing strategy is also a factor with this. If you are buying single family homes and renting them at a loss for price appreciation or are you buying rentals for long term cash flow. 

Thanks I will check that out

Hi Chris,

Thanks, I hope so. I will definitely explore that. I think having control of the development when I still own the house next door will make things easier as well.

Mark

 Hello Hai,

Yes, I believe it should be free and clear but we haven't had an appraisal from the existing mortgage company yet. I think the appraised value of the land would fall well short of what would be required to build a new home so I would need investment from another source. I will look into that credit union.

Thanks,

Mark

Hi Chris, it is in the Carleton Heights neighborhood.