No Longer the Ugly House
Great news: we have completed the renovations on The Ugly House, and from now on it is called “No Longer the Ugly House”.
Before we completed the renovations, we had 16 applications and were getting about two new applications a day as we were wrapping up the project. We secured the top end of our planned rent range of $775, and if we had to do it again, we could have asked for $850 without an issue. But as you have hopefully noticed while reading these reports we hold ourselves to a high standard and we therefore honored our initial planned rental rate of $775.
Like the "Work in Progress" article, there is good news and bad news to report as we put a bow on this property and move on to the next one.
The good news is that the neighborhood is even more desirable than we initially thought. The house is basically brand new inside and out, with new siding, windows, paint, carpet, fixtures, and a very sturdy carport. The bad news is that we blew out our budget, which was originally 10K and raised to 14k after the first week. We ended up spending just over 20K. Most of the overage was due to all of the extra items we had to undertake because we were working with the city on a daily basis.
Example: initial parking estimate was 1K, as we planned to add swinging doors to existing garage structure – simple and straight-forward. The actual cost was over 5K. We needed to scrap the old structure, have an electrician cap all the wires, and use plans and bill of material provided by the city to build what can only be called a “Class A” carport (The materials alone for carport were over 2K).
As another example was we needed to replace a bedroom window because it was flagged as being too small. We measured it several times and it appeared to meet code, but when push came to shove, they were not going to remove the notice in order issues unless we changed the window. Our initial estimate was $0 actual cost was over 2K since we needed new window and we had to put in a new header, cut siding, and repaint.
The Kitchen:
I believe these are the first pictures I have shared of the interior. From this angle, you can see the kitchen, cabinets, dishwasher, sink, and stove. The pass-through arch actual leads to a dining room.
The Master Bedroom:
There is anything special about the master bedroom except for the good amount of natural light, new carpet, new paint, and new blinds. The second bedroom is the same deal with new paint, carpet, and new blinds.
Dining Room and Front Room:
From this angle you can see the dining room, the front room and the front door. Again this room has new paint, new linoleum and brand new ceiling fans.
Other shots of the House:
The first picture is the brand new window that I wrote about earlier. I call it "the 2K window" because it was an unplanned expense but it was required in order to close city issues. I am not happy about the expense but I really enjoyed working with the city and the code enforcement department. Despite the fact they have a thankless job, I found them to be very pleasant to deal with, and I am glad they do what they do. I will happily buy another house with code enforcement issues (I might pay 5K less next time but I’ll buy it).
The final shot is taken from the bathroom entry. The bathroom is very large with a linen closet on the right, a full vanity on right, and the toilet near the wall. The floor was already tiled and there is a full-length mirror at the end of entry. To the left is a large tub and shower enclosure with a skylight above the tub (Which I admit is odd, but it was already there and it is water tight so I saw no need to replace it).
Again, the project is complete, we got our expected rent, and the house is basically new inside and out. We blew out our budget, but we learned a valuable lesson about working hand-in-hand with the city: you are either in or out with the city. Either fully commit, or don't even start. Remember our words if you take on a house with city issues: please budget at least 5K in unplanned expenses. Learn from our experience.
