fliprent

Well the guys only worked about half of a day today on the Hopkins house because Home Depot decided not to leave the delivery like they normally do.  Actually my contractor should have been there but that’s another story.  He says they delivered at 6:30AM…   Flipping houses is fun when everything goes well but when it doesn’t …. well you get the picture.    They say they made some good progress today anyway (I don’t know because I didn’t make it to that site today).     The days are a little longer now, so that’s a plus.    I’ll surely be checking up on them in the AM.

I consider myself to be a nice guy in this game of house flipping.    Almost every other investor/flipper I know is aggressive and, well… not so nice.    I guess it’s something that comes with too many years in the game.     Just dealing with tenants and contractors alone can drive a sane man crazy.    I ran into an investor friend today that is one of the worst.  This guy is a cross between Vince Vaughn and your cranky old granddad .    I can’t take too much of him in such a short period of time, so I made up an excuse and kept it moving.    I had too much on my plate today anyway and now I need to get back to work.    It’s 5:47pm and the second half is just getting started.   

Progress is right on time.  We ordered the second delivery of lumber including the front and rear exterior doors.  The team has done quite a  bit of demo work including the rear exterior wall, fireplace, and more interior brick work.  They are moving along nicely and I’m really satisfied thus far.  We did a “no-rain dance” today so hopefully it works.  Luckily the only rain has occured over the weekend however,  the interior still becomes fairly wet.  Once we get the roof framed, we won’t need to worry as much about the rain. Sorry about the size of the pictures but I don’t have my image editing software with me in the field.  Flipping houses requires a lot of hours spent outside therefore, I typically post from  my laptop. 

rear shot of house

As you can we did not demo the existing footings but we will need to repair them and add more concrete and do some brick work.  We can rebuild the rear of the house on top of the existing footings and avoid a major expense.

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Some folks have requested pictures of the project at Johns Hopkins biotechnology park.  I’ve decided to create a series of posts, naming each of them according to the project.  The first project of this series will be titled ”framing day(n)”.  Today is day one of framing and things went fairly well.  The lumber was delivered at approximately 7:30am.  The guys were running a little late but the driver delivered the materials anyway.  They did arrive shortly thereafter and began to unpack the lumber.

 framing floor joists Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t think I can remember a time when I would call a contractor one day and he would show up the next day.   A few years ago, when things were good, contractors were busy.  Getting through each phase of the job quickly was a challenge for GC’s (general contractors) and investors.  I would call my plumber, tell him I was ready and his response would be something like “I’ll be there next Monday”.  Now when I call them it’s, “I’ll be there tomorrow”.  

My concrete guy Adam was one of those “always busy” contractors.  His services were always highly sought after and business was good.  He owns two restaurants, a laundry mat and his concrete business.  I remember waiting two weeks to get him back to finish a job.  Yesterday I called him after church and at seven o’clock this morning he was there.  This Hopkins project just might make it on schedule.  We’ve got a long ways to go so’ I’m not getting my hope up too soon.       

It’s looking more and more like I will need to bring in a general contractor on this Hopkins Project.  I normally act as the general contractor for my flips but this one is taking too much time from other projects.  Also, it is a larger job than I originally thought which is not unusual when doing complete rehabs.  The rear wall of the house is being held up by a single header approximately 6×12 inches and 10 feet long.  I have several options, none of which will be cheap.  I can take the whole rear wall down and rebuild it or I can try and replace that header with steel.  Both are risky and will require someone with previous experience.  Also the rear addition on the house needs to be rebuilt. I can either re-brick it or tear it down and build it back up with wood.  Flipping houses is somewhat easier when you are not rehabbing them.  The margins are usually larger with rehabs but you need to have the stomach for this kind of work. 

I’ve met with about five general contractors and I haven’t been overly impressed with any of them.  You can however, get some good ideas about how they would tackle the particular problem.  It’s always a good idea to get as many contractors as possible to see the job.  It slows progress but it’s worth the time and effort.  On a side note my plumber was supposed to start today but the business manager never sent me the contract.  The plumber is now calling me to start work.  Imagine that I’m going to give him a check to begin work without a contract!  Even if you have worked with someone before, do not get so comfortable that you leave yourself vulnerable.  This market is very bad for contractors right now.  A lot of them are hungry, so to speak.  House flippers need to make sure that you use common sense at all times.  Anyhow, I have a meeting with an architect and another contractor this morning. My wife has a “honey do” list just to top it off so on with the day I go.        

One of the things that attracted me to this house was that it has a full basement with approximately 90 inches of clearance to the floor joists of the first floor.  Why you ask?  Many Baltimore City row homes were built in the early 1900’s and they did not use the basement for living space back then.  In fact many of them are not tall enough for a normal adult to walk through without ducking down. Read the rest of this entry »

The property is located directly across from the Johns Hopkins Biotechnology Hospital. The draw is the planned multi-billion dollar Hopkins Biotech project of East Baltimore city. Can you say location, location, location?  This house was purchased through a more conventional method. The seller advertised a “for sale by owner” sign from the window.  After several weeks of researching the project area, meeting with the development corporation responsible for managing the project, I decided to make an offer.  I did my due diligence, including a title search, attempted to verify that this property was not on the list to be acquired by the city, cash flow analysis, plus more.  There was a previously accepted offer but the financing fell through.  I used a rehab loan from a local bank that I have a long standing relationship with.  For privacy reasons, I won’t provide the exact purchase price at this time. I negotiated approximately a 30% discount from the market price in the area.  Most of the three story shells in the area were selling for 80k -130k depending upon the square footage.  Read the rest of this entry »