All Forum Posts by: Christopher B.

Exactly, every scenario is different. What would you do with your money if you didn't invest in this house? What's the difference between returns and risk exposure? How experienced are you, how well do you know the realtor, how well does he know the GC? What kind of protection will you have, is your name going to be on title? Wl,ho's managing the crews?

If everything is kosher split the deal, everyone makes money and life is great.

Very unlikely. Nobody with a brain would take on the liability of a house they simply did a visual inspection on.

To start pick a niche, focus on becoming proficient at it and then work your way into other areas of investing. There are many, manys ways to skin a cat but it's better to be great at one thing then average at many. Good luck.

When did they stop using knob and tube? I've never seen a house built in the 50's using this technology. They also may have to cut "raceways" to get the new electrical in so it may not be as easy as simply fishing the new lines through. I've not see electricians not make a mess of things yet when fishing lines. If the electrical is this old how does the plumbing look?

I've personally found it easier to just gut the bathrooms and kitchens to the studs in these cases. Trying to save the rock and patch is a headache and it will look much better with the new rock. Good luck. 

 I wondered! They taught you well because that tile work looks good, excellent job. I used to teach those classes myself. I learned a ton about tile working there which is good and bad because I'm considered a tile snob now haha. They've got good tile, down this way they're considered more expensive though. I don't think the tile market in my city is as big as in other places. You'd be surprised how many times people would ask me to explain the difference between ceramic and natural stone. 

I got tired of picking up the hammer after awhile and hire it out now. I ran into an investor friend at Home Depot today that was dirty and had a cart of tile to lay, some people just enjoy it. You can be very successful either way, don't let anyone here or anywhere else tell you there's a right or wrong way to do it. Decide what's important to you and model it around that. Good luck and congrats on that $25k.

 Tile looks good, very creative. What was the inspiration for that design? I ask because I used to work at The Tile Shop and we had a display set-up exactly like that.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Table 3 is a distribution of wealth by % of ownership among economic classes. While the top earners own a larger % of the overall securities market the American real estate market is larger than the stock market by about $3 trillion. If you look into the next 20% a larger portion of their wealth is in real estate, this is probably pretty true as I'd say most active investors here on BP fall into that range.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/06/17/how-the-super-rich-invest-their-money/

This is a small sample size but actually claims the wealthy have more of their wealth tied to the stock-market than real estate. I remain a bit skeptical of what the real numbers would be so will stick to my speculative claim that, outside of families tied directly to financial or industrial revolution magnates, more wealth is built through real estate in this country.

Alright, I'll bring this project up to date if anyone is interested. I'll be concise.

Due to the termite damage and poor foundation I brought-in a house moving company, we slid 2 steel I-beams through the house, lifted the entire 2nd story and demoed the first floor down to the dirt. We're pouring new footers, building a proper foundation, and reframing to the 2nd floor. We've also added a little square footage to the house to make the master bedroom bigger.

 We're doing the foundation in 2 parts, once we get the front of the house rebuilt we can move the steel to the back and begin replacing the foundation there.

Some pictures

So here's what happened. I made numerous mistakes on this project. Some couldn't have been avoided, some could have.

-The log cabin was covered in the front two rooms of the house, we had no clue when we purchased due to how the rest of the house was built around it . There are 3 additions off the original log cabin which I did inspect but the original log structure couldn't be visually seen. Looking back now there were some warning signs that should have made me dig deeper. Word of advice, when you walk through an interior door casing that is 15" wide you should begin looking for more clues to as why it needs to 15" wide.

-After removing 3 and in some cases 4 layers of drywall and cabin boards we found the original log structure. This was pretty cool for about 10mins, then we realized the house had been DESTROYED by termites! We had planned for some termite damage but it seemed isolated to one-two rooms on the right side. In reality, the prior owners had removed the floor system on the left side of the log structure and built a freestanding deck inside the room, fooling us all. I could push my finger through a 15'x6' timber to the exterior sheathing, the house was being held together by the sheetrock, literally. More on this later.

-To make matters worse the cabin had no proper foundation or footer, it was simply hand cut timber that was 6"wx15"hx20'long sitting on piles of rocks. Under this was loose laid block, from the exterior it looked like the foundation had simply been stuccoed. Sweet, I was excited!

I'll update again soon with

- How the west side of the house began falling down shortly into the project BUT I saved the day

- The "friendly" neighbor

- A little FarmCabin history, past and present

A few pictures of the damaged we uncovered: Viewers Discretion Is Advised

I don't know if these pics do it justice.