All Forum Posts by: Steve Wilcox

I would basically double all of these numbers based on todays pricing 

THe cost of labor and materials has changed dramatically. Additionaly in our martket municpal fees for permits have also more then doubled

Hey Guys

I have a tenant that we belive has left a building. We have posted notices on both their enterances to their apartment, as well as asked all the other tenants in the building, and we have not heard back from the tenant, nor haas anyone who lives in the building seen them in over a month. I have had this happen in the past where people just disapear, move out and never notify especially when there is court for an eviction that will be eminent. 

We have not yet been to court but they have been notified

In NJ it takes a long time between court and when we actaully get the lockout completed and this apartment has been sitting without payment for a long period of time now, so the quicker we can take possesion to clean the place up and get it rented to a new person the better, but want to make sure we are doing it right. 

If the person has ghosted you for months, and appears to be gone when can we take back possession?

If we go inside I am sure there will be a bunch of abandonded possessions, trash, ect, I have almost never seen someone actually leave one of our apartments in broom clean condition in my market yet..

Hey guys I'm looking at building a new construction to family home in New Jersey, designed to sell, but considering going modular. I just finished up a traditional stick build house and understand that in New Jersey many of the building inspections are done at the state level rather than local and that it can speed up the process greatly to go modular and potentially have some cost savings.

Does anyone have any experience in this space, preferably near Newark New Jersey, and can you share your thoughts on modular versus traditional build?

In our area, this is a highly regional question as every state and even some municipality have their own version of the rules, we are able to just wrap the house in vinyl without removal.

On higher end houses or knock downs a specialized company removes the asbestos priorbto constriction starting

It will be a slightly higher cap rate then pure multifamily. How much depends on the quality of the building, the percent of the income that is from the commercial section, and what the quality of the space is, what the quality of the tenant is in the space. 

I.e. a small beat up nail salon with mom and pop owners with a short lease, no garuentee is worth a whole lot less then having a coperrately gaurenteed chipotle or similar 

we are finally starting to get some court dates, is anyone else seeing the same in essex county?

Unfortunatly now we have to go to mediation where the tenants can try and work out with a court mediator (who we have to pay) and we are required to be represendted by attorney, who we pay, what they can do since they have not answered a phone call, opened their door, or paid a single dollar of rent in some cases for over 24 months....

After we are unable to come to a resolution then we get the privilage of paying our attorney to come back for an actual court date at a later point. 

The courts in essex county are so backed up, its extremely frustrating. We have multiple people that have not paid a dime of rent since the middle of 2020, some of them have then convinced other tenents in the buildings they are in that they also dont need to pay. 

The courts are SLOWLY working through the backlog of cases but our attorneys expect that we will be back to normal sometime late 2023. Its very frustrating becuase I am sure everyone who works for the city, the courts, ect all got paid their salaries during whatever we want to call the last 2 years while there were not court cases, except to sue landlords for garbage tickets, but now if you asked them to work overtime or pressure to move faster to help clear the backlog of cases, they are lucky to get through the 10 cases a day they agree to hear. 

Also the landlord tenant court case process changed dramatically to make it way more difficult for landlords since the eviction bans, its no longer summary judgement, so make sure that you have a good attorney who has all the paperwork filed and supporting documents for your day in virtual court, becuase getting a court date in essex county is not easy or quick 

Ceiling white (which is actually kind of grey if you look at it next to primer)

Benjamin Moore grey owl is our go to wall color

Semi gloss ultra pure white for door and trim

@Vladislava Kobeleva

Building costs are rising incredibly rapidly. I am building a few new homes including two 2 family houses in urban areas of NJ, and can tell you that it's very hard to just assign a price per foot in any times because of different design, complexity of the project, materials specifications, fire rating, sprinkler systems, conditions on the lot, ECT.

Here is a current example I am dealing with. In some of the dense infill builds (a house I am building in Newark), there is no where to store fill dirt after digging foundation, so you need to cart it off site, there's no room for a dumpster so all trash gets packed in the center of the house then live loaded periodically. The cost for the all permits alone for a 2 family was about 12k. Lumber has skyrocketed, and production time on vinyl windows is way way behind leading to longer lead times, good subs are busy so they either want more money or can't get to you for a long time.

In your case I know that many towns out there do not have city sewers or water so you need to install septic and well, lots of areas have bedrock base which is difficult to excavate for new footings and foundation, and the complexity of the plan (corners, large open floor plans, big windows, ECT) can dramatically impact pricing.

I would say between $200-$300 a foot to build right now (mid range quality product) Is probably not an unreasonable forecast, plus the cost to clear the lot of the existing building, permits, carrying cost, and closing costs on both the buy and sell side should also be accounted for.

If they have released their earnest money to you their deposit has gone hard, then why bother being combative? When we purchase we often are cash offer and intend to finance or refinance ASAP to keep that cash moving into future deals, so sometimes we can close cash but could end up closing with financing if we can get all the ducks in a row in time to save some costs with running title twice and other closing costs. 

In reality they can back out and loose their deposit regardless, I would just make sure to put time is of the essence or something of the sort to make sure you are honoring the timeline set forth in the contract, and also maybe ask them for an updated proof of funds to verify they are still closing