“Re-habbing Orlando 101”

Hi I’m John Conde, Owner of Stop Foreclosure Orlando, Inc. Orlando’s premier source for bargain properties

If you want buy a fixer upper I strongly recommend that you really do your home work. Now I’m a pretty experienced real estate investor and over the years have re-habbed close to three hundred houses so I’m going to share a few things with you that I’ve unfortunately learned the hard way. Things that can save you a lot of time, money and frustration.

When you go look at properties you want to make sure that the main components of the house are in overall good shape. Things like the roof, the kitchen, and bathrooms…now you may have to do a little upgrading to those rooms and that’s fine but, unless you’re a seasoned re-habber you should stay away from houses needing any major structural repairs. Now it’s absolutely critical that you know what the after repaired value of the property is. The best thing to do is find a good local realtor to do some comparables for you of recently sold properties in that area and out of all the comparables that the realtor gives you expect that yours will sell at the cheapest price. Don’t try to convince yourself that your house will sell for the highest price on the whole street. That’s just not realistic and you’ll regret thinking that way later. I can’t tell you how many newbie investors I’ve talked to that wanted to get into re-habbing business so badly that they tried to turn a “non-deal” into a “deal” and the end result is always the same…they lost money and came away with a horrible experience. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS YOU WILL REGRET IT!!!

So let’s say you’ve found a good a deal and you’re ready to submit a contract on it. Make sure that you give yourself at least a 7 day inspection period. This will give you plenty of time to get the house thoroughly inspected by a professional home inspector. The inspector will look at things like the electrical system, look for termite damage, the plumbing, etc. All these types of repairs can be really expensive especially if it’s an older house. Believe me…it’s much better to spend a few hundred dollars upfront and maybe lose it than to not be sure about what you’re getting into and be surprised later. Remember…any repair that you have to make that you weren’t expecting to make comes right out of your profit. When the inspector finishes his inspection he will provide you with an inspection report and it will list all the hidden things that he found wrong with the house. The good thing about that is you can use this report to try and negotiate the price down even more with the seller.

Now in the same time frame that your have your inspections done you should be getting estimates for the repairs you need to do. Now there are 2 ways you can do this. One way is to get a general contractor or a “GC” that will give you a quote on the entire job. That’s someone that doesn’t necessarily do the work himself, he usually has a crew to do all the work and his job is just to manage everyone. This is what I do because I work on my business not in my business. Now depending on how involved you want to be and how much time you want to spend at the property this may be your best option. The other good thing about using a good general contractor is that the job gets done much faster and at the end of the day the faster you can finish, the faster you can sell it and move on to the next one. But you will spend more money by using a GC. Oh and…always, always make sure that you check his license and get references this is very important. I found out the hard way that you should never hire someone just because they’re the cheapest. This will always, always end costing you more money and headaches in the long run. Quick tip: If you get the feeling that the guy may be a heavy partier, don’t hire him!! He will definitely have some no show days.

Now if you have extra time on your hands and this is your first project and you’re excited and really want to be involved, then you could try and save some money and play the role of the GC yourself. Make a list of the repairs
That needs to be done and start getting estimates. You should get 3 separate quotes on each repair Quick tip: Be sure that you call contractors that give free estimates, make that clear on the initial call because some guys don’t tell you that they charge for estimates up front, they just hand you a bill. Again, I can’t stress this enough… don’t just go with the cheapest guy out there. You have to ask a lot of questions, get references, and make sure you feel comfortable with them, and do that for each contractor that you’re going to need; the plumber, the carpenter, the painter and so on. Oh, and if you have any skills that you can bring to the table, then by all means role up your sleeves and get to work.

Once you have a really good idea of how much you’re going to spend on fixing up this house and how much you’ll be able to sell it for then you can figure out what your profit will be and is it worth the time that you will be putting into the project. It’s not hard to make money in real estate but you have to do your homework and you have to do all things I talked about in this article.

If you’re interested in finding bargain properties in Orlando visit our website at https://sellmyhouseinorlando.com/ or just call me at 407-902-7749. I hope this information
was helpful to you. Thanks for reading.