Investing in rental property can be a sound method for making money. But it can also turn into a money pit. Rental houses require maintenance, just like any building. Often they require more than normal because tenants can be rough on the home. Tenants can be demanding, expecting you to fix every little thing that breaks in the house, even if they break it.
And market conditions can change, making it difficult to get enough rent from a property to cover your mortgage payment and expenses. If property values rise faster than rents, you may find that you are better off selling your property to someone who plans to live in the property.
That was the case for a property in East Atlanta. The owner was a corporate owner that needed to sell the house. The house had water damage, and had out-dated countertops and cabinets, but it just didn’t make sense for them to put the money into the house.
So they had two problems:
- They couldn’t rent the house for what it was worth.
- They couldn’t sell the property to an owner-occupant because the house needed lots of work.
Resideum stepped in. We buy houses in any condition. So we purchased this house, and hired Property Pro Services to make the necessary upgrades.
Whatever the reason for a rental problem becoming a “problem-child,” Resideum is often able to solve that problem.
Watch as Greg Kurzner and Brent Bagley discuss the process.
This one turned out great.
You can view the follow-up video where we take a look at the repairs after they are completed. Watch: We’ll Buy Your House and Make it Beautiful Again
If you have a rental property or any house that you need to sell fast, contact us to get a no-obligation offer for your Atlanta property. You can get cash quickly and leave the problems to us.
Video Transcript:
Greg Kurzner:
Hey, this is Greg.
Brent Bagley:
This is Brent.
Greg:
And this is our latest project. It is going to be a relatively quick flip in East Atlanta, 1115 Wiley Street. Come on, let’s take a look.
Brent:
This was investment property. Basically, the owners…the house appreciated. The rental value didn’t appreciate with it. So it was best for them to sell it. It was a great opportunity for us to come in and buy it. And so that’s what we’re going to do. We bought it. We’re going to fix it, fix it up and put it on the market to sell to an owner occupant. If you have a house that, your rental values aren’t matching with the appreciation value for your house and it’s a good opportunity for you to sell, we’d be happy to buy it and do the same thing.
Greg:
All right. So a lot of houses that you see us flip are really, really problem houses. This is not one of them, right? Yeah. We have just a few things that we need to address. And so what we want to say is, is that we’re happy to buy houses that are burned to the ground. We’re happy to buy houses that have all kinds of issues. And we’re also happy to buy houses that don’t have all the kind of issues. Right?
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
So why don’t you kind of show what you think we need to do in here? And I’ll kind of put a number to it as we walk through. How about that?
Brent:
I mean, basically, we need to refinish the floors. They’re that honey color, they’ve got scratches.
Greg:
Yeah.
Brent:
This is not something…
Greg:
They’re not terrible right? But…
Brent:
Not terrible. But for resale value, it’s going to be better to refinish the floors.
Greg:
So we’re looking at probably six thousand dollars to sand and refinish this and put a new three sets of poly on it. But it’s, it’s going to make the house look like 2021.
Brent:
Yep. And we’re going to be changing out the carpets. I’m just gonna point those out because the stairs are right here to my right.
Greg:
Yeah. I mean shags is kind of out. Right?
Brent:
That’s out.
Greg:
So we’re going to go with something better.
Brent:
We’ve got to, of course in this house, we’ve got, there’s some sheetrock damage from a water leak. So we’ve got to fix that, of course.
Greg:
Yeah.
Brent:
And you know, so far all the fixtures in the house are OK.
Greg:
So you kind of brushed over that. But a lot of people that see that are going to be freaked out by that mold. Right? And, you know, in a lot of respects, you should be because mold is one of those things that a lot of people get very concerned about. It’s a health issue. So, you know, how do we address that?
Brent:
So we’re going to cut out everything and cut out all the sheetrock that’s any damaged. If there’s any wood that has any mold that’s not rotted, you treat that.
Greg:
Ok.
Brent:
You Kilz it. And then there’s a, there’s actually a paint treatment that you put on it to keep any mold spores from coming out. But you don’t have to…
Greg:
Don’t give them all of our secrets, though Brent. All right?
You asked me what we were doing, so…
Greg:
I know so that is probably going to be a fairly significant part of the renovation cost but we want to make sure that it’s completely safe and healthy and then it goes back and looks like it did before. Right?
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
So, you know, to be continued on what that’s going to cost. But we have a pretty good idea.
Brent:
So far, the light fixtures in the house aren’t bad. You know, there’s not a lot we’re going to have to do with that. Coming into the kitchen, looking at it off bat, the kitchen doesn’t look awful. I mean, it’s not a terrible kitchen. But…For today’s market.
Greg:
Yeah.
Brent:
I think like I said, we’re looking to change out the countertops, change out this backsplash, probably some new appliances. The appliances are stainless steel, but there are older and some damage to them. So we definitely want it to look nice.
Greg:
Yeah, I mean, the countertops, believe it or not, I mean, a solid surface, but they’re just kind of ugly. And I don’t think they really give the house…
Brent:
They’re dated.
Greg:
Yeah. Dated. So we probably are. What do we have budgeted on the kitchen in here? Fifteen?
Brent:
Fifteeen.
Greg:
Fifteen thousand that we’re going to use the kitchen and we’re going to make this kitchen look like 2021. It’s going to look good.
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
All right.
Brent:
That’s about it downstairs.
Greg:
One more thing. Just take a peek if you can. This is part of also where we got that mold problem. So, you know, we’ll you’ll see when we get upstairs. It was a problem around the bathroom up there. And we’ve got quite a bit to fix. Age before beauty.
Brent:
Yeah. Uh huh.
Greg:
All right, so upstairs again, this is pretty kind of standard. It’s not a lot we can do to add value, but, you know, we may decide to paint. We may just touch up the paint where we need to. Biggest problem that we’ve got right here is with the bathroom leak. And again, you know, if you’re a homeowner, has a house like this that you’ve all of a sudden had a big leak in. Not sure what to do with. And you may don’t want to mess with all of the stuff that goes along with this, both the renovation cost, but also the health concerns, you know, we’ll buy it from you. You just let us know. And then what happened in here, Brent?
Brent:
So it looks like the, looks like the leak came through the wall. And as you can see on the other side, and this is the damage downstairs that you’re seeing on the ceiling…
Greg:
I gotcha.
Brent:
In the laundry room.
Greg:
OK
Brent:
So of course, this is all gotta be, probably some subfloor might have to be replaced up here.
Greg:
Yeah. Once we get it all open and we’ll know more about it, but…
Brent:
But otherwise, again, carpet up here. I already pointed that out is going up the stairs.
Greg:
The Master. Again, pretty just cosmetic, but you can see where we had the leak into the closet, so that’s what we’re going to spend some of our time.
Brent:
As we talked about. We’re going to look at updating the, that the master bath, updating the vanities, countertops.
Greg:
Yeah. One of the things that is awful here is this. I mean, this old kind of 1980s Marble-Lite stuff is pretty hideous and the cabinets aren’t terrible, but they aren’t great either. So we’ll probably change that out. And then we’ve also got sort of this 1980s style tile. Even though this house is not built in the 1980s, this stuff, it’s not horrible but it’s not good either and putting some more natural stone I think we’re going to try and do, right?
Brent:
Yeah. And you know part of the budget that we talked about downstairs is probably about, you know, 10 in the bathrooms.
Greg:
Yeah. Yeah. Cabinets. I think we’ve got 15 for the kitchen and maybe 10 more for the bathrooms. Let’s take a peek out here. One of the nice features about this house is the two story outdoor decking. And again, it’s got Hardie Plank. But you can see some of the trim is a little dated and it’s worse on some of the other sides of the house. We’re going to deal with the decks, both the the top deck, bottom deck, and the one on the back, and try to clean those up and make them look good.
Brent:
Put a fresh coat of paint, probably on this as well.
Greg:
But again, when you look at this house and you see some of the others that we’ve done, this house looks a lot better than a lot of them.
Brent:
Oh, yeah.
Greg:
But it still is going to have, I think, our budgets right around sixty thousand. You say, “How do you spend sixty thousand in here?” Quickly. I mean, just doing the kitchens and the baths can do that. But when we’re done and we’ll be done within, what, maybe 15 to 20 days, we’re going to come back.
Greg:
We’ll see a complete redo on it. And you can judge for yourself if we do a great job.
Greg:
Alright, to wrap things up on the outside here, as you can see, where we’re going to spend our money is on this deck. We’re going to change out the the deck boards and the tops and we’re going to see if we can get away with just pressure washing the railings, make them look better. And again, on the edges, we’re going to paint at least the trim, right?
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
And what do we have budgeted for that? Do you know?
Brent:
Probably, probably around five.
Greg:
Five thousand for that on the exterior.
Brent:
Yeah. But that’s also including the trim paint on the windows on the side.
Greg:
Yeah. You can’t see is we’ve got a little bit of spray paint on one of the sides of the house that we’re going to have to fix.
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
And we might add gutters. We’re thinking about that because a lot of the other houses now do have them and this one doesn’t.
Brent:
Yeah.
Greg:
So that’s where we’re at. Let the old police car drive by. But thanks for joining us and hopefully you’re get it.
Greg:
Yeah, sorry didn’t mean to interrupt. Go for it. I’m Overtalking.
Brent:
Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time.
Greg:
There you go. Alright. Good job.
We buy houses in Atlanta in any condition. If you have a house you want to sell, complete the form below to get a free, no-obligation cash offer on your house.