Barbara Canada Realtor® Washington DC Homes

According to our agreement the rehab is supposed to take 6 weeks. I gave the contractor additional 2 weeks just in case something comes up. It is now halfway through the project but only 3rd of the work has been done. Unless they start working nights, I don't see this project ending on time.

I want to find out what causes the delays so I schedule an appointment to meet at the house and go over the project. Since I work full time, I can only meet during lunch or after 5pm. We opt for 5pm. I rush to the property to meet him there and when I arrive only his workers are there and he's nowhere to be found. I try to find out where he's gone but with my non-existent Spanish I really can't get much information from his workers. I call, leave a message and wait. It's 6pm now and I begin to feel uncomfortable in this neighborhood. My husband keeps calling and urging me to get home, since it's getting late.

It is now 5 weeks since we began this journey. The framing in the basement is done, HVAC is completed, electric too. But this project is far from being done. It is the end of summer and I really don't want to go past the 1st week in October. It will be impossible to rent this thing in winter.

During one of my checks on the house, I find that the basement still leaks and waterproofing the walls did not help. The sump pump is working fine but the water seeps through the wall and affects the framing. The contractor suggests putting French drains outside the house. This will off course be at additional cost, since it was not a part of the original scope or work. I have no choice but to agree. Water leads to mold, and mold leads to lawsuits, and I cannot afford it. The house has to be absolutely dry before we can install the drywall.

To Be Continued...

It's the end of the second week and so far the work has been on schedule and without any major surprises. I come over every few days to check the progress and make sure that my contractor is still there, working. Sometimes I have to get to the job site during my lunch hour if the contractor has an issue or question that needs my presence in order to get it resolved and move on with the job. It takes me about 30 minutes each way if the traffic is not too bad. Therefore our meetings usually don't last longer than 15 minutes since I have to rush back to the office.

The 3rd week is rolling around. The sub floor in the front of the house is now finished. The work on the 1st floor bathroom has begun. The HVAC guy came and measured his stuff. However, there is a big gaping hole in the basement where I want to add a 2nd full bath. Something's wrong with the main stack - cracked or something like that. My contractor explains that the plumber came looked at it and left. He doesn't know when the plumber is coming back. Wait a minute. Now, how can you not know when is the plumber coming back. You can't move on with the job until the plumber is finished..

The work stalls for a few days. There is an issue with the plumbing company - they have disagreement with my contractor and refuse to come back. Now I have to get on the phone and call the plumbing company to find out what is the issue really is. My contractor tells me one story - the plumbing company tells me another. It turns out that the check my contractor gave to the plumbing company bounced and they need payment before they do anything. This is little strange as I just gave the 1st draw (20% of the total) to my contractor a couple of weeks earlier. Where did the money go so fast?

I promise the plumbing company that I will send the check directly to them instead of going through my contractor and they agree. Work begins again the next day.

So we had our first hiccup. A major one. I don't think any more that my contractor is such as nice and honest guy. It seems that everything that happens is someone else's fault. Hmmm...

The plumbing is now taken care of. Where is the HVAC guy? He came 3 weeks earlier, looked at the drawings, measured his stuff and now is missing in action. My contractor claims that he calls him every day and leaves messages. After several days of this phone tag I request that he finds someone else to install the HVAC system. The contractor is hesitant since he gave the 1st guy some money as a down payment. But I keep pushing and finally he gets a new subcontractor to do the HVAC.

Once all the rough-in is done we need an inspection. The contractor calls DCRA to schedule the inspections. There is a different inspector for each system (plumbing, electric, HVAC) and since they are all City workers you have to wait a few days before they make it to your property. You can also call a 3rd party inspector who can come the next day, but they cost money. Sometimes it's worth paying because you don't have to wait. We make the call to the 3rd party inspectors, they come, check the systems and we get the OK on everything. I almost cannot believe it.

To Be Continued...

To control the cost of materials my contractor and I agreed that he will tell me what he needs and I will order the stuff. It would be great if I could just order all materials for this rehab all at once - it would save me a lot of money on the delivery cost - $75 each time. Unfortunately the house is too small to hold everything and allow the contractors to do their job at the same time, so I can only order as much as they will need in the following 3-4 weeks. The first load consists of 2 trucks of stuff. Since there is no driveway up to the house, the contractor has to carry everything up a long set of steps to bring it to the house. I bet they hate that hill.

First order of things is to change the roof - it is old, has 3-4 layers of shingles and leaks in several places. You can't really do anything else - except maybe a demo - before you fix the roof. It doesn't take long however - only a couple of days. The contractor and his guys move fast to replace plywood, install the ice guard and the shingles that supposed to have a 25-year warranty. We'll see. According to the home inspector the gutters and soffits were in a decent condition thus we left them alone.

The roof is now done, debris removed, house is half-way gutted and the dumpster is almost full. We can now start the work inside. The front of the house has a sinking floor - a result of four or more years of termite action. Luckily only 4 floor joists need replacement. That's a relief. We already had a termite treatment done so those little monster should not be a problem in the future. There is some mold present in the basement but with everything out of the house that should not be too difficult to remedy. Water and bleach work pretty well.

Well, so far so good. I am really happy with the progress. I'm starting to think that those horror stories about contractors were just meant to scare newbie investors away from good deals. My guy is a pretty nice guy, has some good advice and shows up for work every day. Rehabbing is not really that difficult...

To be continued....

Let me back up for a second -

before any work can begin I have to get proper permits from DC. Anyone who has ever been to DCRA (District of Columbia Regulatory Affairs) permit office knows that it doesn't take just one visit or one person to deal with. There are several stops that one has to make to obtain all necessary signatures on the drawings and ultimately get the building permit. Each major system in the house needs a separate signature. So I take a day off, grab the drawings and the application, and get down to DCRA before they even open to be one of the first people in line. It's 7:30am and I'm at the door.

But it doesn't really matter - the person I have to see first is not in yet. So I take my number and a seat in the waiting room. Thank God that there is a TV in the room - at least I can keep myself occupied as I wait. 45 minutes goes by. The waiting room is now full but my guy is still not in. I check with someone to see if he is even planning on showing up today. "Yes, he is. He just starts later than other people". - So, let me get this straight - the office opens at 8am, but you can't assist me until 9:30 or later? Great!

As predicted, this was just the 1st visit. The drawings need some changes, a soil erosion study has to be done before I can move forward, I need a plat map from land records, and a permit from DDOT (District Dept. of Transportation) to put a dumpster on the street. Luckily the land records and the DDOT office are right next door so at least I can get some of these things started.

If you are a homeowner that needs to get the building permit, DCRA has a Homeowner Center across the hall from the regular permit office, where the homeowner can take her drawings and the wonderful people there will "walk" the drawings through the entire permit process. This way you can get a permit within a couple of hours. You could try that as an investor, but better not mention that or you are going to be send across the hall where all the other investors stand in line :-)

Another tip - permit fee is based on the dollar amount of the labor cost. So the lower the labor cost of your project the lower the permit fee. Just imagine how much work you could do "yourself" and save the $$$.

After a few more visits to DCRA I finally become a proud holder of a Building Permit.

To Be Continued....

It's June 2006. I've been watching this listing for a couple of months now. It's been under contract for over 6 months, but the settlement date has already been postponed several times. Something tells me that it might not settle.

Sure enought, a few days later the status went back to "active".

So I put in an offer and it got accepted. The price at $134K seemed like such a deal given that there was nothing else available in DC under $200K. I knew it was gonna take some time and money to fix the place but I was optimistic.

My first available Sunday, I grab my husband and we go accross town to get some ideas for the rehab. I measure the rooms, take dozen of picutres of each room, come up with the detail list of stuff that needs to be done, and imagine how I will turn this ugly duckling into a gorgeus property.

My husband brings me down to earth from my rehab cloud - "Don't forget where you are" - he says - "this area is practically a war zone".

Yes, I know. This part of DC has seen it's share of crime in recent years, but it's getting better. The City is putting more money into the neighborhood, and eventually things will turn around. There is a new development across the street - Habitat for Hunanity is building almost 100 new homes for low income residents where an empty field once was. And almost $8 mln was allocated to rebuild a high school down the street. Even if I have to hold this property for a while, it eventually will be a gem.

A few days later I have my scope of work done and the preliminary drawings are sent to my architect. Now, it's time to get some quotes from the contractors. This is the difficult part. With all that boom in real estate good contractors are expensive and hard to find. I get on the phone and call my investor friends to pick their brains and get some recommendations. I get several names and schedule the appointments to meet with the contractors. First one is on Tuesday during my lunch hour.

It's Tuesday, 12:30pm. The meeting was scheduled for 12pm. He does not show. Does not answer his phone. After a few more minutes of waiting I leave. Back to the office where I have a message waiting from the "no-show contractor" - the traffic was really bad and he could not make it today. This is just the beginning of the long list of excuses that I will hear over the next several months.

Needless to say, I lost interest in that contractor.

The next appointment goes much better. The contractor is only 15 min late. We go over each room in the house, brainstorming ideas, and making sure that we are on the same page. He seems like a nice and honest guy, and I like the fact that he came with his wife.

After a couple more apointments I have enough quotes to choose the "winner" who will work with me on this rehab project. The estimates vary from about $55K to over $100K. All contractors received the same scope of work and preliminary drawings from me so they all would bid on the same job. It is quite interesting to see the differences not only in the estimates I receive, but also in the contractor's behavior towards me. Since they are dealing with a female, they assume that I am absolutely clueless as to what it takes to rehab a house. The more cluless they think I am the higher the estimate.

I don't pick the cheapest contractor, but the one I feel most comfortable with. We agree on the price and payment schedule, sign the contract and the work begins. The estimate comes to about $80K.

The property is a true shack - it needs everything: plumbing, electric, HVAC, roof, bath, new kitchen. It is a 2 bedroom/1 bath frame house, that sits on a hill overlooking the neigbhorhood. It has mold and termite damage; water leaking in the basement; squirels and other rodents living in the attic, and poison ivy covering the siding. In other words - all that good stuff that normal people try to avoid.

To be continued.....