Flip Thy House

The Ever-Expanding Nature of “I’ll Be Done in a Few Weeks”

Still not done with House #2. Although the end is definitely drawing near, and the biggest hold-up at this stage is getting the electrician back in to finish running the electrical for the new bathroom.

I hit it pretty hard the last five days or so, managing to get all the exterior painting done, all the tile in and grouted, and most of the interior painting done. Still some odds and ends remaining like new outlets, cleaning up the old door hardware, re-hanging doors, etc. And then, at some magical point, it’ll be done. And I’ll sleep, for about a month. After drinking a big bottle of tequila. Myself.

Poor, Poor Neglected Real Estate Blog

I know. Indeed. If this space were a house it’d have knee-high grass in the front yard, newspapers and collection letters for the last 19 occupants piled up on the porch, and tumbleweeds blowing past it down the street.

I’m still alive, still plugging away, and all that good stuff. House #2 has pretty much sucked up my will to live, which leaves me less than motivated to update here. Well, I exaggerate, as I’m not completely beaten down yet, more that I’m running at max capacity trying to juggle all my freelance work, work on House #2, the day job, the husband job, and who knows what else.

I’m probably 1-2 weeks away from finishing House #2, which is exciting, true ’nuff, but I’m way too tired and jaded for backflips. And even that finish date is conditional on, yes, you guessed it, the plumbers finishing their work. 

Apologies to all the wonderful plumbers in the audience (or significant others of wonderful plumbers), as I’m sure you exist, somewhere, all two of you, but I swear, hands down, dealing with plumbers has been the absolute most frustrating thing I’ve done in recent memory. They finished all the rough plumbing weeks ago, it passed inspection, htings were flying, and they just had to come back to finish up a few things, just “an hour or two” of work, and bam, they were done.

And, of course, it’s been weeks now, and they aren’t done. To be fair (and I’m taking them at their word here), their father has been in and out of the hospital, and it’s just a two brother operation, so there’s a very valid reason for some of the delay. That said, I made the mistake of paying them 90% of the total amount due when they were last there, which is a fairly valuable lesson I’m learning on this project.

No matter how nice they are and how hard you’ve just watched them work, don’t let any contractor or subcontractor leave, no matter what. Use brute force and bribery if necessary. While rational, logical folks might think (and respond to) a statement like “We’ll be back tomorrow to knock out the last hour of work”, odds are great that you won’t see them again for weeks and weeks, if you ever see them again at all.

Especially if you give up any financial leverage you have and paying them what seems fair, as far as payinh 90-95% of the total amount due if they’ve completed 90-95% of the work. Because that last 5% will always cost more if you hire someone else, yet they have little incentive at all to come do the 5% left, as they’ll always make more money on other jobs. Don’t let them leave, but if they do, make sure they’ve got a financial incentive to come back.

So we’re waiting on the last of the plumbing to pour concrete in the new bathroom, which’ll let us finish the last of the Sheetrock in there, which is the last big thing other than painting and switching out outlets and 9 million other small little things.

On the brighter side, the wife of the furnace/electrician has been by twice more to look at the house, bringing her mom and sister to see it yesterday, and she’s sounding more and more serious. They’re looking for a house in town to move their family to, and her mom is going to move in with them. They’re looking for at least a 5/2, which is pretty damn hard to find, especially one that’s reasonably priced. She’d discussed converting the rest of the garage of House #2 into a small kid’s bedroom with her husband and they seem to think it’d work, thus the renewed interest in House #2.

They own the pre-fab house they’re currently living in outright, and their mom also owns the house she currently lives in, so other than the timing of selling/renting those houses, they’re really good prospects as far as getting financing to buy House #2. Don’t know about their credit but both have good jobs, income, all that jazz.

They didn’t seem too scared when I mentioned wanting to sell the house for around $145,000, which would net me about $25,000 in profits after taxes and commissions and all that. I’d take that in a heartbeat, as I’d really like to move this thing quickly. There’s also the possibility of bypassing agents and commissions entirely, as they’re pretty reasonable and savvy about real estate, so I could potentially give them a price break by going the FSBO route. So yeah, fingers crossed.

We did get an offer on House #1 from the lady interested in building a hair salon on the property, but, umm, it was less than stellar. I actually felt like Steph’s  seller from awhile back who just countered with a huge handwritten “No!”. Which takes a bit, as I’m so ready to be done with House #1 at this stage, so I’m not exactly the pickiest of sellers.

Their offer? (The house is listed at $89,500; you’ll just have to take my word on it that even that is a bit low based on the comps, and of 3/1s in that price range, it’s definitely a nicer one, and their are some complete junkers listed at $90,000-$92,000).

They offered $60,000, a full $30,000 below list price, but that wasn’t even the best part. They wanted a closing date of July 31st, an option fee of $5, and a 90 day option period.

So, umm, yeah. “No!” I get the idea of lowball offers and that doesn’t insult me all that much, but the other terms were the ones that set me into fits of giggling. They did request that we counter their offer, though, and I wanted so badly to use reverso Homer Simpson logic on them and counter at something like $120,000, with a closing date in 12 hours, and an option fee of $5,000 and a 30 minute option period. I pretended to be a mature adult, though, and countered at $87,000 with reasonable terms, and they disappeared and we never heard a peep back.

I’m going to give it until the end of February but I’m pretty resigned to renting it at this stage and hanging tight for a few years. I’ll recap the whole sordid deal with actual figures and numbers when it’s rented/sold, but needless to say it’s been a pretty frustrating, especially since it’s entirely my fault that I didn’t make some quick cash on this one many months ago, or immediately rented it out and produced some cash flow.

Almost…To….The…Finish…Line

Things have been pretty crazy of late and it likely won’t let up anytime in the next few weeks. House #2 is getting there, although the last week felt like it was very much of the “One step forward, two steps back” variety.

I should have known that the eternal thorn in my paw — plumbing — would rear its ugly head one last time before I got done with this project. Or, err, re-insert itself in my paw, I suppose, if you want to be picky about it. I was feeling pretty upbeat about the last remaining plumbing project, which was running the drains, vents, and hot/cold lines for the bathroom addition. Granted, it was the biggest job yet, but I’d hung out with the plumbers a good bit last Saturday, built up a certain amount of rapport, discussed my goal with these projects, my general life-state, and I felt like we were in a really good spot, as far as them giving me an estimate for the last bit that made them some cash yet wasn’t outrageous.

Oh naivete, though art my name…

They shot me the bid over on Monday night and I nearly stroked out. I was expecting it to be something around $2,000-$2,500, as it’s a fairly big job, it involves tapping into existing galvanized lines and tapping into the old cast-iron sewer line, digging out a trench for the drain that ties into the sewer, so it’s not exactly a stroll in the park for them.  But all the concrete removal has been done and a hole dug underneath the footer to get outside for the main drain line, so a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done. So I was pretty slack-jawed and apoplectic when I saw their bid was for $5,400.

It did, though, include a lot of stuff I planned on tackling myself, as far as installing the vanity and toilet, fixtures, etc. And we’d also discussed that I could likely save money by getting my general contractor and crew to do the trenching, and their bid included them handling all of that. I’d also not haggled at all on the previous stuff they’d tackled, and they knew that I’m pretty anxious to get this job done, so I honestly don’t really blame them for shooting a bit high in their estimate, as we’re all in this to make money.

Spent most of the week dickering back and forth, but we finally agreed that I’d handled all the monkey work (trenching, hooking up fixtures, and basically everything else non-technical) and they’d handle all the tricky stuff, for $2,000 in labor and $300-$400 in materials.  So I was pretty happy about that, and hopefully they can get out next week to knock that out.

Other than that, just trying to wrap up everything else. There’s some trim left to put up, as well as Sheetrock in the rooms that need to be exposed for the rough plumbing and electrical inspection, and still a good bit of painting. There’s also tile work left in the front living room, as well as the decorative stuff I’m going to do outside. And some cabinet hardware to instal, a few more light fixtures, and, oh, you know, 172,946,172 other small things.

As far as House #1, the title company finally caved and sent us the $500 check for the earnest money from the previous contract on the house. No real explanation from them, as apparently the buyer’s lender still hasn’t paid the appraiser, but I guess they finally decided it maybe wasn’t the best customer service in the world to remain stubborn about paying us the earnest money.

There’s also a potential offer lurking for House #1, as another woman is interested in it, but she wants to get approval from the city to build a salon on a portion of the lot and live in the house. The layout is pretty conducive to that, as it’s a long narrow lot with a big drive way beside the house, which basically divdes the lot in half, with the other side currently just unused grassy space. It’s also getting shown quite a bit of late, so hopefully a decent offer will materialize soon.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

I’m definitely not going to be done with House #2 by January 31st, but things are definitely zooming over there now. The plumbers finished up all the venting, supply lines, and drain work for the laundry room addition, and the electrician gave me the thumbs up on everything I roughed in over there, so once he comes by on Monday to tie everything into the circuit panel and wrap up a few other loose ends, we can get the rough inspection done and get all that sheetrocked and finished. Praise Jebus.

That just leaves the plumbing for the bathroom addition, which is going to be a bear. There’s really nothing I could have done differently, but if you’re thinking about adding a bathroom addition on a slab foundation that was an addition to the original house and about three feet below the elevation of the rest of the pier and beam house, umm, just don’t do it. Just trust me on that one. My eyes were pretty wide open about just how hard it was going to be, but it was pretty much the only option if I wanted to add a bathroom (which was pretty necessary in a 2000 sq. ft. house with just one tiny bathroom).

It took a lot of searching, but I have to say I’m pretty damn happy with the plumbers, once I finally found them. It’s basically two brothers who do all the work, just started their own company a few years back, and are pretty funny to listen to, as far as good-naturedly jawing back and forth with one another, cussing at each other, and doing paper-rock-scissors to see who has to crawl under the house. Their quotes are in the high-average range as far as the work they do, so I wouldn’t call them cheap exactly but they show up when they’re supposed to and finish whatever they tackle, even when it means staing until nearly 8 PM last night, on a Saturday. They also text-messaged me yesterday morning to tell me they’d be slightly late after needing to chase down some parts, which I imagine might be the first in the history of plumbing contractors, as far as not only letting a customer know they were running late but doing it via text-message.

In other positive news, our furnace guy/electrician came by last Friday to look at the stuff I’d roughed in and brought his wife with him (who pet sits for us when we’re out of town). They’ve done work on three houses for us here in town, so we’re fairly friendly with them in that small town sort of way when you bump into people at the grocery store, restaurants, etc. She asked me what I was planning to sell the house for, as they’re looking to move into town now that their kids are school age, playing sports, etc., as they currently live kinda far out in the country. She didn’t freak out when I said around $145K and came back again yesterday to show the house to her mom, and both seemed to really like it.

Again, not trying to put much faith in such leads as they’re far, far away from a signed contract, but that’d be close to perfect if they truly end up interested, as the husband has been all through the innards of the house doing furnace and electrical work, and they’re very realistic as far as what you get when buying a 60 year old house.

But yeah, in general the enthusiasm pendulum is swinging back towards the positive side, despite all the long hours I’m putting in over there. Cash flow is a little tight right now and I’m dipping into the wonderful world of selling off some stocks, shifting cash around, and putting some expenses on 0% credit cards, but we’re by no means in shaky territory, just not sitting on all the cash that we’re used to.

“Can We Perhaps Add a Couple of Days onto January?”

Sprinting towards the finish line on House #2 as far as trying to wrap it up by the end of the month, but it’s probably 50/50 as far as whether I’ll make it. Well, more likely 25/75. Oh, who the hell am I kidding. 10/90? 5/95?

There’s still a lot of painting ahead of me, which will likely be the hold-up and reason I go a week or two over. But somehow or other, it’s looking like all the major stuff will be done. Which is a slight small miracle in and of itself, as the last week saw some pretty major progress.

I’d been holding my breath on the last major obstacle for the new bathroom, which was removing enough of the concrete slab so that the plumbers can run all the pipes and vents and get out under the foundation footer to tie into the existing lines. A couple of the contractors who originally came out many moons ago to bid on the project (before disappearing) weren’t at all encouraging about that prospect, quoting me prices of $150-$200/ft for cutting out the necessary area with a concrete saw and jackhammer. While my contractor was willing to give it a shot, I assumed we were in for an extended nightmare, if the going rate for such work is that high.

In the end, not so much. In fact, anti-extended nightmare, as all the sawing and jackhammering took about two hours total, with another hour for cutting out rebar and cleaning up. We were done before lunch and had the rental equipment back in time to just get charged for half a day. Total cost to remove about 15 sq. ft of concrete? About $250 plus some thank-you beer for the guys coming out on a Saturday to tackle it.

We also got the old gas floor furnace out, almost accidentally. There was one old floor furnace in the bathroom hallway and we were looking at it to see what to do about the hardwood floors there, as far as patching or inserting some inlay design once it was removed. We lifted it out enough to see how thick the old floors were, and it was coming out fairly easily (it was disconnected from the gas lines, so no need to monkey with that), and some banging and cursing and crawling under the house to insert a jack underneath it resulted in no more gas furnace to worry about, which was another nagging item in the back of my mind that I’d never tackled before and wasn’t sure how long it’d take.

All the tile is currently going in, as we’re on hold for the last of the sheetrock work, waiting on the plumbers to work their magic so we can have the rough inspection, before sealing the last of everything back up. Trim and crown moulding and some door casings are going in, so rooms are actually looking like rooms again.

Seems like I’ve been over there more than at home for the last few weeks, but at least the end is in sight. The only downside to all the above happy-happy progress talk is that the budget is on fumes, and I’m probably going over by a couple of thousand dollars. That “miscellaneous” category will bend you over every time, as trim, light fixtures, and outlets add up too damn quickly.

We’ve had a surprising number of showings of House #1, but still no offers. Still on the fence about whether or not to reduce the price further, just to get it gone, but I’m leaning towards leaving it where it is at $89,500 and giving it a month, and renting it out if it doesn’t move by then.