Target Pex & PVC

Target Pex & PVC

by | Apr 15, 2010 | Plumbing, Target House

The new plumber got started mid week at The Target House and is moving fast towards the rough-in inspection which should probably happen Monday. I am impressed with the guys on his crew, they are very detail oriented, we even addressed the baseboard height so the water valves for the toilets will be at the right height. I am running 8″ high baseboards again on this project to mimic the houses original design so this puts the water valves higher than usual.  All the new Pex lines are ran and as you can see he brought all new pvc drains and tied them in under the old existing bathroom to the main sewer line by removing the old cast iron stack. This is the right way to do it, we aren’t trying to tie into anything old so there wont be any problems for the new owner. I had also asked him to minimize roof penetrations for the plumbing vents. Every drain needs a vent so a lazy plumber would have poked through my new roof 5-6 times but instead these guys tied all the vents together in the attic so I only have 3 vents visible.  I had to put my siding project on hold as its been raining all week, looking forward to finishing it as soon as the weather cooperates and the mud dries up.

The sale of The Neighbor’s House is still looking good. The buyer is using a VA loan and we are currently waiting for the appraisal to come back as this will be the last big uncertainty before closing. I got a call from the apprasier Monday asking a bunch of questions about The Hat Trick House next door, as I guessed they are infact using it as the best comp for this sale.  What were the chances of rehabbing 2 houses next door to each other and needing my own comp?

117 Siding and New Plumber

117 Siding and New Plumber

by | Apr 11, 2010 | Plumbing, Siding, Target House, Trim Out

I started getting the siding on this week and have been interviewing new subcontractors for the 3 trades that will be next in line to rough-out the house. I love the historic style #117 wood siding, it gives my projects a real edge over the competition as most guys run HardiPlank on their additions. It cost a little more at about 45 cents a foot but well worth the price for my projects. Its always my goal also to find the best prices for any work that I have to hire out because it increases my net profit. A dollar saved is a dollar earned, right?  My DIY method of doing these rehabs does not involve hiring a general contractor who would tack at least 50%  profit right onto your cost but instead managing the subs personally and working right alongside them doing most of the work myself. This gives me the freedom to pick my own sub contractors and negotiate with them directly and pocket the savings.  As with many of the subs in the past, I started to experience “price creep” with my plumber on every house we did with him. With construction as slow as it is I cant justify paying a higher price for the same job so we give new hungry guys a shot.

Out of the 3 trades I always do the plumbing first, its hard pipe and cant move whereas the electrical and mechanical can work around anything. I accepted a bid from a plumber yesterday that I’m really excited about. He’s been is business over 25 years, does alot of new construction homes, comes highly recommended and has beat our last guys price substantially. We are getting a complete new plumbing system with “15 fixtures” including new pex supply lines all the way from the water meter,  new pvc drains all the way to the sewer and complete new black pipe hard gas lines from the gas meter throughout the house to 4 locations in order to qualify us for the “Smart Energy” title. Our local energy company CPS right now is really pushing awareness of using a combo of gas and electric to builders but we’ve of course always done this anyway. They designate your project a Smart Energy House, this combined with all the Energy Star appliances has been a real plus for our customers. His bid also includes supplying the hall bath tub and 50 gallon hot water heater. I am getting a 1 year warranty as well and he wont even let me touch the fixture installation to save money as he’s that concerned about his liability. The price is $5900 for the job where previously we were paying over $7000 and having to furnish the tub, heater and do the trim out myself so effectively I think I’ve shaved about $2000 of this one trade alone. I hope he works out, he is suppose to be all roughed in and topped out this week for an inspection.

The Neighbor’s House is under contract again as of last weekend. We are passed the home inspection and are expected to close at the end of the month. Additionally there is a back up offer in the lurch. I still will share all the juicy details from all the previous offers we received and deals that fell through but not until the sale closes. This house is incredible and someones going to be very happy to own it. What a great project and fun story!

Post framing walkthrough ~ Target House

by | Mar 28, 2010 | Framing, Room Additions, Target House, Videos

Here’s how my 900+ s.f. addition came out over at The Target House. The floorplan is flowing nicely even with the change in elevation to the master suite. That hallway is actually 46″ wide even though I mistakenly tell you 42″ in the video so its not cramped at all. As you can see I basically had to rebuild the entire floor in that back room this week because it was originally a screened-in porch so it sloped down for drainage. It’s all straight now and lines up perfectly with the new addition. As far as sales go, we are getting great showings at The Neighbors House, Spring is here, the weather is beautiful, flowers are planted and there is a strong smell of home buyer in the air: ).

Window shopping

Window shopping

by | Mar 24, 2010 | Roofs, Target House, Windows

The roof is all complete and just in time to beat this week’s South Texas rain storm. Final tally after adding up the receipts for my spreadsheet is $3998 for labor and materials, an excellent price for 40 squares of 30-year roof including 23 squares of old roof tear-off. Speaking of finding deals I’ve been doing some window shopping for the past few days in search of the best price for dual pane, white vinyl, low E windows for the Target House. I compared 4 different sources and ended up back with my usual supplier Builders First Source here in San Antonio. Sometimes I cringe at putting vinyl windows in an old historic house but with today’s energy prices it really makes sense.  After having Home Depot quote it and send it to the bid room twice, Lowe’s quote and send it to QSP, I was still able to do better by a few hundred bucks. For 25 windows I am paying $3340.00 with tax. Keep in mind most of these for the old portion of the house are ESW’s (exact size windows) and are made custom to fit inside existing wood casings in order to preserve the historic qualities of the home. There is a Federal tax rebate for 2010 in the amount of $1500.00 if you spend over $5,000 and the new windows have a U factor greater than .40. This changed from last years requirement of .32 but in any case we wont qualify due to our low invoice price and we didn’t see it necessary to pay an extra 20% for the extra U factor just to get the $1500.00 back. Make sure and check with your CPA if you are a rehabber, there is some great energy efficient Obama money out there for grabs.

..we have Roof

..we have Roof

by | Mar 22, 2010 | Framing, Roofs, Room Additions, Target House

For those of you taking notes, I just completed step #4 in my standard order for major renovations.

Step#1 Demo

Step#2 Level the existing structures’ foundation

Step#3 Frame up new construction portion

Step#4 Put the roof on

As with any renovation the demo always comes first. Next, I always level the existing house’s foundation so I am starting with something straight before I add on. Thirdly, I frame up the new addition and then finally get the roof on so everything inside will now be dry. After the roof I’ll usually move towards getting the siding on which includes doors and windows then I can have my sub contractors come through and rough-in the electrical, plumbing and hvac. I like to have the house secure before new stuff goes in so this is my reasoning. You can see how the roof gable pops up moving backwards through the addition, this compensates for the interior steps keeping the same 9′ ceiling height throughout. 

After my usual price shopping all over town I ended up getting the 30-year roofing material at Lowes for $50/square.  If you are spending alot of money at Lowes or Home Depot have them send your quote to the “bid room.”  They’ll come back with another 10% off everytime. If you bring in a competitors quote they’ll beat it by 10%. In San Antonio if you can speak a little Spanish you can get a roofing laborer to put on a new layer for $20/square if you supply all the materials whereas roofing contractors charge over $160 with materials. I ended up throwing down about $80/square total after including all new flashings, tar paper and drip edges. I used my favorite color Estate Gray by Owens Corning, it goes with everything and looks rich. This isnt bad and less than half of what a homeowner would pay. This roof is 37 squares so the total price is around $4000 which is a great price for a 30-year shingle with all new metal and added ridge vents on a 2200 s.f. house.  Another rain storm caught the guys mid-way Saturday so we’re finishing it up Monday.

Framing and TV Deal

by | Mar 14, 2010 | Framing, Marketing, San Antonio Real Estate Market, Target House, Videos

After some last minute on-the-fly floor plan changes Thursday night from our architect Morgan at Dewitt, we finally got our material delivery Friday afternoon and my new framing crew got started. We really cut it close as she actually showed up to the job site with the new plans just hours before the framing started. These guys are very detail oriented and even cheaper than my last guy so I’m pretty stoked I found them.

Framing in San Antonio goes for about $3.00-3.50 per square foot for new construction if you deal directly with a sub contractor, in case you are wondering we negotiated $2.71 per foot for this project. In a day and a half they got the floor system done and all the walls up, all that’s left for Monday are the ceiling joists, rafters and decking.

The master has a cathedral ceiling and we are also doing a double-sided gas fireplace between the spa tub and master bedroom which are both new for us so its exciting. I’ll get the roofers over as soon as framing is done so we’ll be all “dried in” and then i can get started on the siding myself.

A Major TV production company in Hollywood that does all the good reality shows on TLC Network and HGTV contacted us this week about doing a reality show about house flipping. They found out about us evidently through our YouTube channel and got to my website.

It would be real cool to get our own show but unfortunately they are looking for someone doing a minimum of 10 houses per year, probably so they can film enough episodes. Theres been a real lack of good flip shows on TV lately, we really enjoy Flipping Out because Jeff Lewis does the larger spec deals like us and Property Ladder was always good because Kirsten Kemp the host is great and they also featured such a wide variety of different investors from pro to novice.

As far as the new Flip This House crews, Rudy in LA isn’t really doing it for us and the New Haven crew seems to be more focused now on selling courses online like Montelongo. It’s pretty flattering nonetheless to get approached anyway, maybe there will be a Property Ladder episode in our future?

We are still getting good showings at The Neighbor’s House and I feel the Spring buyers are just now getting out there now that we have great weather. In San Antonio, sales are off 4% year to date when compared to last year and inventories are slowly rising this year by about 100 houses per month.

After a closer MLS search for our general area, its apparent that there are tons more sales that are AO (under contract) or Pending right now so this figure should be improving for March.