All Forum Posts by: Waverly Rennie

I was also quoted 20k by two different groups for a whole house remediation that wasn't that bad of a mess, just in one room, but supposedly there was mold all over. They seemed to be charging a ridiculously high price for a <2k sqft house. I ended up demoing the house since it wasn't that good a quality house, and am dividing the lots. good luck!

i just got two quotes to demo a 1000 sqft frame house plus short drive and small concrete patio- $5k or 6k. mine has asbestos tiles on one section so am paying 1k for their removal as well. paid $500 for survey. good luck!

I have two houses in the Clearwater Florida area that I rent through AirBnb and VRBO- I charge $125 cleaning fee per stay, however long or short, for the small (750sqft) 2/1 and $175 for the 2200 sqft two story 3/3. These rates are a little high for my area but not by much. The ladies (who I hire directly) do the laundry, floors, dust, fridge and microwave etc, and spend from 3-5 hours, usually, unless there was a dog there. See below..... I keep $25 off the top of each which I then use to pay $20/hour to the same cleaning ladies to do extra cleanings, rake leaves, and use it to pay for rug cleaning, etc. In the smaller house I had not been charging an additional pet fee, since i was already charging a relatively high price for the place on the strength of it being dog friendly. But after a few guests with dogs that seemed to shed like snow, I am thinking about adding a pet fee. It literally takes twice as long to clean the house.

Hi Nate- it has city water/sewer/electric etc so at least that's a benefit. I do like the idea of the two story. I am buying/rehabbing homes to rent as short term vacation e.g. AirBnB since there is a big demand for that here, but i like the duplex as a backup exit strategy if AirBnB gets shut down, you can still rent two doors better than one.

I am trying to find out about the whole "keep a wall hence it's not a new build" thing here to see what the advantages are. I think the existing house is within the normal setbacks so that doesn't seem to be an advantage. The house is built on cinderblock piers over dirt- welcome to Florida.... I think a shallow trench foundation is what is seen as better here. Will talk to a few construction guys and a developer I am working with on a high-quality build small development on a lot I have elsewhere. Oh, the learning curve!!

@Nate Wightman duh, thanks for explaining. You and @Bill Thompson have written some amazingly useful stuff here. So helpful for a sorta newbie in a sorta bad situation. I am trying to treat this as my "try not to lose too much on your first deal" situation even though it's not quite my first deal............

How does one find a good GC with experience in building modular? are there brands of modular one should look for?

thanks again for all this useful info.

@Nate Wightman I am loving this post and having fun with it too. Did you have a link to the modular building you were describing 3 posts ago= 2 up and 2 down?

I am a reluctant builder, having bought at auction a dump that was more of a dump than I thought, so I am analyzing my options including a scrape and build. Unfortunately I paid way more than I should of for a scrape so thinking a duplex might work better to catch me up financially than an SFR would.

Got quoted $85 a square foot for cheapest grade to $125 a square foot to build medium quality with SIPS (all this assuming I've already paid the ~$5k for the demo and the $whatever for surveys, soil tests, etc but not sure if it includes plans.)

Since i'm in Florida, am looking at your hurricane proof building too! Best of luck- will let you know what I find out down here.

I know I am late to this party, but a couple of points:

They put this on sale a few times a year for $10 off a carton, which brings the price down by about a third ($1.30 square ft before tax for the one I am looking at). Worth waiting for if possible. 

I bought some a few months ago for a rental on sale and installed in two bedrooms over concrete slab with plastic sheeting underlayment as recommended. Very fast install, despite only having a $5 hand saw to cut the planks at first- went out and got an electric saw to get the job done. One thing to think about is the reducers to go from the hallway/doorway into the room. Your room edges get covered by quarter round but you can't use that at the doorway necessarily. You can order the matching stuff on line but you just have to factor that into your timeline. We didn't, so we ran out to Home Depot and bought a bullnose kinda piece of sort of matching wood and that was good enough.

A few months after install, I do note that there are faint scratches from moving furniture but all in all I am happy with it. Am now looking at Trafficmaster Allure Ultra as another option for an upcoming rehab. 

happy flooring!

Hi Clark and glad this was helpful. The 20% did not include cleaning. The client was billed by A/V for a cleaning fee of $175 which was paid to me. The PM issued a payment to the cleaner for $150 out of a joint checking account that we set up. We kept a float of about $1500 in it so that they could pay the cleaning, the repairmen etc, and then they took their management fee out of that joint account. I wasn't systematic enough in having a detailed checklist for cleaning and setting up for the next guest and sometimes although the cleaner has the best intentions in the world, sometimes she would forget or miss details (did the soap dish get washed out?). I would have liked it if the PM had been a bit more on top of that to make sure the systems were working out but I guess it ultimately rests on my shoulders. Not that I have made the checklist yet, bah ha ha ha. One of the points of contention with the PM was that they felt that the agreement gave them the right to collect 20% on bookings that I had already made before they came on board and which were going to happen after we had ended the relationship. I was also surprised that they took 20% of the total client bill which included the cleaning, taxes, etc. All these little details to hammer out. If you would like I can PM you a copy of the rental agreement we made and I can tell you a few more little details.

Hi there- In Florida, I had some people "managing" my AirBnB/VRBO-listed property for me while I was overseas. I was the owner on the ABNB/VRBO sites, I received the $ from the clients through the A/V sites, and then paid the manager-people  20% of the booking for the fact that they actually responded to the client enquiries, set up the checkin and cleanings, dealt with phone calls and contractors when there were plumbing leaks, fire alarms going off, etc. So I think it would have satisfied the Colorado scenario in that they performed services for me as i rented my property. I found that once I was a little more experienced in how to run a rental, had seen how it was working and was back in internet land, I was able to do most of it myself, and a little more pro-actively, so the value-added wasn't there any more that would justify a 20% fee to a management person. Another management company that was run by a licensed RE agent also was proposing to take 20%. For the first 5-6 months it was worth it to me to pay them. IF they had been a little more proactive, acted more like they were really managing the property (including having some kind of approach to saying what kind of maintenance should we be thinking about, creating a personalized welcome letter for each guest, physically going to the property during turnover to check how the cleaning was being done, etc.) instead of just responding to internet enquiries and waiting for the emergency phone calls, I might have kept them on. Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

Just a follow up note- I had been staking out the property since the previous owner was in and out getting his stuff and I wanted to talk to him about when he was going to finally get out and also to ask him about the house. It ended up being a pretty positive experience although bittersweet. He felt better about it hearing me praise the efforts he had made to try to fix the place up, and I felt better hearing him say "in a way, this is a huge relief because I just didn't have the money or skills to fix it up". As you can tell, I haven't quite gotten into strictly business mode yet.

This doesn't change the fact that I paid TOOOO much money for the house which is a disaster and I may end up losing money on the house- but at least I didn't spend any cash for keys! which he gave me as he finished moving his stuff out. good luck- W