A Peek Inside

As tenants left the properties there was more of a chance to have a good look inside the buildings and see some of the idiosyncrasies and hidden challenges that lay ahead. As work progressed on the buildings it became increasingly clear that the best thing to do was to take the buildings back to the studs and do a complete interior renovation of the buildings, so in this post I am showing you the before and after for various photos to give you a peek into the idiosycracies…...

Before...

This wall was in one of the rooms of the better maintained apartments, and you can see a pretty funky piece of door framing here with some curious angles to the tops of the doors. After stripping the old plaster off the reason for this was evident - behind the plaster was an old chimney built in 1900, which was the only part of the property that did not settle a few inches. As years past the rest of the house gracefully sunk around the chimney - not just to the left and right in this picture but fore and aft as well - resulting in some "character" slopes to some of the floors.

And after - the framing attached to the brick never had a chance to settle!

Why waste money on a lock when you can
 just batten the door shut!

 The quality of the finish in this lower apartment was by and large good, mainly because the tenants had invested some effort in improving the look. It was all superficial though - 'we bodged it' was the parting remark of the tenants - and in their shoes why wouldn't they. The landlord had not been prepared to invest for them.

In the upstairs apartment of #20 Lincoln there was some very creative building work done over the years - you can see in the two pictures to the left some interesting room boundaries at the back of the house, which was a result of building extensions on extensions over the year. In the second picture you are looking at the original exterior of the house and its clapboard siding, which after adding the second extension because an interior wall, complete with the original window.



To the right of this picture is an even older extension which was probably added when indoor toilets became common. Behind this wall is the bathroom with two roofs - the original roof was never removed when the extension roof was added resulting in an expectedly low ceilinged bathroom.

Below you can see the same views after stripping away the exterior layers - revealing yet another exterior window for what is now the bathroom.

The funky extension process resulted in similar idiosyncrasies one floor down in the first floor apartment. This area was an oddly shaped kitchen with additional annex room, too small for any proper purpose - probably mainly built in this way to provide some additional structural support

Finally in case you are still wondering why we started pulling everything apart, one final example  to left and below from the rear cottage. The fine looking wood paneling on the walls seem pretty distinguished - it was only on closer inspection that the wood paneling turned out in fact to be …………  hardboard - one up from cardboard I guess but barely! 

Once everything was stripped from this room, it turned out to be the right decision - most of the building was held together by accident rather than design, with unsupported rafters and  ceiling joists sitting on non bearing walls like the ones below. It also provided some inspiration to open the room up to the rafters and create a cathedral ceiling in the redesign.

My main learnings from this process have been:

1. If you think you can save existing work, and you have even a hint of perfectionism in you, think again! Plus by stripping everything out it frees your imagination as to the possibilities of a space.

2. If you are planning to invest for the long term, rather than flip the properties, bite the bullet at the start and do things properly - you will save a lot of pain in the long run knowing you don't have to rip the house apart again because you cut corners. (At least I hope that is true!).

3. Expect your tenants to be rational human beings - if you don't look after them in a reasonable way they will return the favor and cut corners as well.

Hello World

#14 Lincoln from the front

#14 rear cottage

#14

#20 Lincoln from further down the road

#20 Lincoln from the back

The garage and shared driveway for the properties

View of the two Victorian houses from the back of the lot

I'm kicking off this blog as a way of keeping track of the renovations to our rental homes which we purchased in November 2013. We are a couple of months in now so am a bit late starting but I am going to post progress here as well as some learnings and tips on how to navigate this sort of renovation project.

This is also my first blog (OK only ten years behind the times :) ) so it will be a learning process for that as well.

November 2013

We have been considering getting a rental property for a while as a way to diversify a bit from the volatilities of the markets, and with an eye to creating an income stream as part of pension planning. With interest rates at crazily low levels, and the volatility of stocks in recent years, having some more stable form of income seems an attractive option. 

We spent some time looking at various opportunities in our own town and neighboring ones, came close to buying one in Norwalk in 2012 before realizing the headaches that would come with it.

Almost by luck we found this opportunity in Westport, after passing them and seeing a for sale sign on a dog walk. 

There are three houses on the site, all are two family homes for a total of six units. The two houses at the front are virtually identical Victorian Colonials built around 1900. The house at the back used to be the garage or carriage house for one of the houses and at some point was extended and converted into residential accommodation. It's probably of a similar age or a bit younger.

The houses were owned by the previous family for over 40 years and passed from father down to sons and daughters. The last work done on them of any consequence was probably around 40 years ago as well so there is plenty to do to bring them up to modern standards.

The purchase over October / November went pretty smoothly - the due diligence (surveys and inspections) suggested the houses were by and large in decent structural shape given their age, and that the apartments were legal (not a given in these parts as many multifamily properties are often illegal in terms of either their location in the wrong residential zone, or because they have jammed too many apartments into what is legally allowed).

The houses are in a great location - a quiet residential area in a good popular town where there are a limited number of quality rental properties and a restricted amount of space for expanding. People want to move here for the schools or to get out of New York at a certain point in their lives; or because locally there is a thriving job market in a 25 mile radius.

So we took the plunge in November and went ahead and bought the properties with the goal of upgrading them to a modern standard. The one catch at the start was that they came with incumbent tenants (apart from one very dilapidated apartment at #14). Luck was on our side however - the only tenant in #14 left in early December so work could start in earnest on the first house. The cottage was vacated by early January and #20 by early February allowing work to progress at full pace.

Our initial thoughts on the properties was to make selective improvements to them and to keep as much of the interior intact as possible - as you will see in future posts this turned out to be over optimistic on our part and we eventually realized that we would have to do a full renovation of the projects and take the houses 'back to the studs'. Hindsight and reflection two months later leads us to learning number two.


Learnings
1. When you buy a multifamily rental look really carefully at the legality of the rental versus the town planning and zoning regulations. You can probably assume there is something non-conforming with a purchase, and if you want to buy it assuming you can keep that non conformity just be aware of the risk you are taking. If you are doing anything more than cosmetic improvements to a house you can be sure the town authorities will be all over you!

2. If you buy an old house and think you can save something inside, you're probably wrong! Think hard about this early on in the process because if you don't you will make incremental decisions that can lead you down the wrong path. If you do go for the incremental approach be prepared to changes your ideas and plans as you uncover more information!