All Forum Posts by: Milind Shastri

Hello fellow investors in the DFW area, does anyone have recommendations for a foundation crew who can do a new pour (and potentially do piers also). Do let me know if someone comes to mind. 

Cheers,

Mil

Has anyone got a Notice of Hearing from the city for a Substandard property?

I've been working on getting the permits for an investment property (fix-and-flip), and recently got a Notice of hearing stating to "show cause why the building or structure located at xxx should not be declared to be substandard and why you should not be ordered to repair or destroy the building structure". The residential property indeed is in a crappy condition, but that's the whole point of purchasing it, to fix it. 

I have almost all the permit package and will be submitting it to the city soon, but was wondering if any one had any tips/suggestions/experience with such notices. This is for the city of McKinney, TX. 

Has anyone poured a slab in-place of an existing pier and beam foundation? 

I've acquired a property where the current condition of the pier and beam is quite bad. I'm considering jacking the house up and pouring a slab foundation, as this a way cheaper option (1/2x) than installing new piers. Any idea if this could conceptually work; I will be getting foundation plans subsequently but am just getting a preliminary understanding. 

Thanks!

@Teri Feeney Styers haha thanks for indulging in this :D. 

Excellent catch on the insurance, wifi and generator costs. I intend to use it in the same city as I work in most of the time and with plenty of Starbuxs' around so potty should be taken care of with some additional coffee costs :) 

I'm seeing some reasonable prices for vans and with working from home available, I can't help but explore this possibility. 

This is kind of weird. I usually flip houses, but with working from home available from my regular job, I'd love to try out working from a vehicle. Say I buy a bus or a van listed at $30k and sell it 1 year later for $31k (all numbers out of...umm...air), rehab it for $2k, I'm wondering how much it would cost me end-to-end in Texas. I'm being a bit lazy here but any ideas folks? am I missing anything...

One-time costs:

Purchase: -$30,000

Depreciation: -$1,200 

Title, tag, registration fees: -$180 (35, 55, 90)

Sales tax, etc (buying): -$2,000 (6.25% in TX)

Broker fees: $400 (?) 

Selling: $32,000

Holding costs:

Depreciation: -$1,200 (1 year)

Maintanance: -$2,000 (1 year)

Insurance: -$6000 (1 year)

Total:

Net cost of ownership: $10,980 + gas

I am trying to figure out a cost-effective way to add a new foundation to an old (1960s) block and base foundation. This is quite an old style of foundation and in case you are not familiar it's like this, except the one I'm looking at has tree trunk (blocks) instead of cement blocks as shown below:

The layout I'm working on looks something like this and I'm 

I've spoken with a number of structural engineers and gotten different answers from each one. Here are the options:

1. Some say that you need to use the same style piers on both the old and new sides. 
2. One engineer says the same style piers on both sides need to go down 12' and some say that 12' is just too much.  (12' deep piers on both sides to me seems like the safest way but it's also unnecessary over-engineering and extremely expensive). 
   
3. One engineer says that all you need to do is level the old foundation and pour a slab on the new side. The two foundations can be leveled and joined with rebars. (this is the most cost-effective solution). Being in Texas, gound movements happen all the time and good gutter system and a foundation warranty should be enough. 
   

Has anyone had any experience with adding square footage by combining 2 different foundation styles? 

Curious what are the minimum requirements for a city typically just so I understand the options better. 

Thanks!

I'd be interested in this topic too. 

 I use Magicplan with a Bluetooth laser measure to walk-though a pre-flipped property and envision what the finished project could look like while iteratively changing sizes and positioning. An example of the output looks like this. It's not fancy but does the job for me. It takes me about 45 minutes to get all dimensions for an initial floorplan with door and window sizes. 

My communication with contractors is not even close to automation and I usually have to do reasonable planning on a Gantt charts, then manually write up contracts. Having worked with so many contractors I can't even imagine them utilizing the complexity of software like Salesforce (which, in fact, I use for my day-job). Some day! :) 

Hello Nicki, there are multiple resources I have found useful here. If you spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with the discussion forums you will notice how much of a wealth of knowledge there is here. I regularly get responses from very experienced investors that has saved a lot of time and money in the field and has accelerated my growth. The blogs are pretty neat too but I don't spend much time there. 

All the best!

 Thank you @steven. That's helpful to recalibrate future projects. I'm pretty sure investors will pay extra to put their applications on a fast track and the city could always use the extra revenue; just putting it out there in the internet universe 😉