All Forum Posts by: Pat L.

& congealed grease from the deep fryer.

A colleague of ours installed one only to get a $250 emergency plumbing bill
because the tenants daughter flushed about a pound of rotting pasta down the disposal, blocking the drains & she had the dishwasher running at the same time.

Another of his tenants kept emptying her fish bowl water into the disposal but what she assumed was disposable blue sand was in fact glass chips & she did it twice. We were able to free it up once with the allen key but the second time it was toast.

As an aside we always install those new super flush toilets in the rehabs that we sell......more expensive but it can flush just about anything & trust me they will flush their cat litter & just about anything imaginable.

I always did it myself until I hired a guy I sold a rental to. Just luck I guess.
He has since bought several properties from me & his wife is brutal when tenants try to screw them. She would make one hell of a property manager.

I am always trying to find him work & often just buy a place for him to work on. We picked up a $58,000 foreclosure for $17,000. (absentee landlord didn't fix his roof) so it was $7200 total rehab. He now owns it with me holding the financing. The appraisal came in at $45,000. We have had such a great relationship over the years & I was recently instrumental in him buying an 1830's 3600 sq ft mansion near the lake. I hold
the financing & to think when I met him he lived in a small 1000 sq ft cottage with 3 kids.
Handymen like him are a gold mine.

We built ours 20 years ago raised 3 kids & both my wife & I have large (deductible) home offices.
You could not replace it today for the original build cost. We never had a mtg.
It's 3500 sq ft BUT when the wife wanted to add a room for the hot tub a 12x15 room became a 3 story 2000 sq ft addition. I did all the work with subs, & no financing.
Our taxes are $11,000 a year but that's less than one deal a year. Utilities are $2000 p.a.
BUT I can 'HIDE OUT" in a number of places now & we can accommodate all the families during the holidays. We also own the home next door & have few close neighbors. We also hold the paper on all of our kids homes that we have built/rehabbed for them.
We have had so many friends downsize only to be disappointed. To me the cost of home ownership can be supplemented with other streams of income.

We had a problem once with conventional financing regarding two adjoining properties.
I am not aware if it's still an issue???

Brian is on the money

I bought a SFH @ a tax lien auction, the ones where the city/town "guarantees clean title".
We rehabbed & flipped it holding a 1st @ 14%.
The buyers had it rented for 4 years then sold it.
Then the fun started. The title work had to go back 40 years, I had to show all relevant
docs regarding my LLC as being an LLC in good standing as I originally bought it through my LLC.
By the time they had completed the new search etc the sellers were out $1936.80 in title & legal work fees specific to the title & the closing was delayed 6 months.

I'm currently rehabbing a ranch home built in '78.
The above the stove micro wave was vented to an old duct in the wall that must have been a heat vent to the bathroom at one time. We then found the bathroom exhaust fan also connected to the same duct work.
The enterprising sole at least had another heat source into the bathroom when the exhaust fan was not blowing.
When we opened it up there was a disgusting sludge adhering to the ducting. I assume mold has a hard time growing on grease residue!!!

Sorry I just noticed you have steam heat.
Gas inserts may be the way to go as some wall heaters in our town are no longer legal.
Depending on the number of rooms in ea unit it's going to be expensive.
I just sold a large duplex that we put sep furnaces in with ducting to the rooms. But we had to tear up the flooring of the upper unit to get ducting to the lower. But we were doing extensive rehab.We got the idea from a modular home build we did that had small sep furnaces on each floor.

Is the current system forced air with ducting?? Easier but again splitting ducting inside walls could/will be a lot of work. ESP if it's a three story.
If not, sub dividing the hot water/ steam feed will be a very interesting exercise.

We did a two story by running those small diameter Aluminum stretch feed tubes that they use for gas inserts. But we had straight runs & could access the 2nd story feeds through a chase that had been installed during the original
construction. Smaller ducting is not an efficient alternative but it worked enough to sell the place with sep utilities.

Unless it's a 7 yr ARM??
I hope you loaned the money to your LLC & have it recorded, thereby stripping the equity.
Good luck with the investment.
As an aside...
We have a city/town near us that is on a crusade to shut down multiple families that were created without permits & or zoning variances etc. So we started to grab LEGAL duplexes & just holding them. As the 'illegal' multiples were shut down our legal properties Went up in price in fact we advertised them as such.
Now at tax lien auctions they specifically 'notify' the buyers that the multiple being auctioned is illegal & must be converted back to a SFH.

I have been investing in the Niagara Erie County areas for over 20 hrs.
I personally AVOID both Buffalo & Niagara Falls although many still swear that it's a great opportunity because pricing is unbelievably LOW. If you check out Craigslist you will find a LOT of Buffalo/Niagara Falls properties being 'unloaded'.

There are some areas nearby that have better opportunities & less risk.
PM me & I can give you the contact # for my RE Agent.
She is very knowledgable & has made me a lot of money with both her insight & quick access to great deals.
Good luck