All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

There are reputable contractors that will do heat pumps that go down to -17 degrees.

Barring that I would consider a pellet boiler as well.

Because the political climate is unstable, to say the least. I tried to bring in some capital from back east and everyone was waiting to see what happened with Prop 10. By the time the election happened they'd moved on. 

We also install mini splits into C class apartments in the Tacoma area. If I were you I would look into heat pumps as well. There are some great central air options.

Generally the VRF units will have hyper heat and work below zero while older heat pump designs will need a heat strip or gas backup.

My dad was trying to buy some adjacent land for an assemblage. He offered $150,000 and the sellers turned it down. So we waited a few months and offered $100,000. They countered at $150,000 and we said no. A few months later I wrote a long letter explaining how I got the value of the property, and offered $75,000. They accepted, we tore down the derelict warehouse on it and leased it to my dad's construction company for storage.

Judging by recent comps it is probably worth close to a $1M. 

He's as distrustful of you as you are of him.

Put the deal in writing, give him 50% up front and make the check payable to the name of his LICENSED company.

If he asks you to write his name on the check find someone else.

The academic literature is pretty clear that AH increases the value of neighborhoods, or at bare minimum has no effect.

In fact, there are some developers that build the affordable housing first, then build the for profit housing later.

New AH is almost always similar in quality to market rate rentals, which is a function of how grants and LIHTC submissions function.

As a result it can be an effective way to redevelop a neighborhood and force it into transitional status.

It's doable, but the tenants are almost certainly under rent control (you need to check carefully) which means you can buy them out but not force them out.

Expect to spend thousands on relocation.

The engineering drawings should be pretty specific, although the inspectors don't seem to check.

We always make significant improvements, and in the process we always seem to get rid of the whiny tenants with the trash outside their front door and the broken car in the parking lot... and we replace them with quality tenants that pay on time and don't cause problems, at much higher rents.

The marginal cost of reframing a new floor plan for a gutted house is nearly zero. It's a couple hundred dollars worth of wood and a few hundred dollars a day for a carpenter.

Architects or designers are fine, a local one will get things through plan check faster.