This afternoon I went over an looked at the property I’ve been watching for a few months. From the outside looking in, it appeared to be a rehab project that simply ran out of money. It’s typically opportunities like this that widen the margin on a deal, as most of the expensive stuff has already been taken care of by someone else.

Walking in through the front door, it was evident that the place had been lived in since the renovations took place. The carpet was dirty and stained, and there were remnants of belongings (crayons, broken pencils, etc) left in the kitchen drawers.

The walls in the …

I’ve been casually looking for another rental property next to the one I already own. For a long time, the people in the area have been very proud of their houses, asking nearly 5 times what they’re actually worth. Needless to say, those houses are still on the market, many for as long as 15 months and counting.
But there is one property just a block or two away from my first one that has been on the market for 4 months, and its price has been dropping like a rock. The reason? The bank wants out!
I remember …

One challenge facing rehabbers of older houses is whether or not to keep the old plaster and lathe or replace it all with drywall.

It really depends on what kind of feel your shooting for, and whether or not you want to keep some of the charm of the old house in place.

In the case of my first rehab project, the entire house had plaster walls, most of which was overlaid with wallpaper and painted several times. Older techniques used to wallpaper over plaster leaves two sheets of wallpaper overlapping each other, producing a visible seam.

Since this house was destined to be a rental …

I ran across improvenet.com last night in an attempt to find a good project cost estimator for a future rehab project.

Improvenet not only can hook you up with a local contractor to get the job done, but they have a bunch of useful tools such as a project estimator for all different kinds of projects, from kitchen remodeling to flooring replacement to roof replacement.

Naturally, they won’t provide quotes online, but their project estimator gives a reasonable first guess as to how much a certain project might cost given the area you are working in.

They even have a …