Hi Everyone,
I hope that all is well on your end.
Today, I would like to talk about something that drives me ‘nuts’.
What drives me nuts is people who think they are skilled renovators, when in fact, they have no experience at all.
If you are a new real estate investor looking to purchase your first rental property, you will need to learn the basics about renovations. That does not mean that you need to learn HOW to do renovations. Rather, it means that you need to become educated on the topic and learn the basics when it comes to the cost of materials, the cost of labour, and the time required to complete renovations.
There are 3 major factors to consider when completing a renovation.
These factors are:
- 1) TIME
- 2) MONEY
- 3) SKILL
TIME
Sometimes people (unskilled renovators) wan to attempt renovations on their homes or rental properties because they have some time on their hands. Any renovation, whether big or small requires you to invest time. The more time you have on your hands, the more time you can potentially devote to a renovation.
MONEY
People also attempt renovations on their own in order to save money. This is not a bad idea. However, if you do not have sufficient TIME on your hands in order to complete the renovation on your own, ‘Doing It Yourself’ will probably cost you more money as you will have to hire an experienced contractor to finish the job for you.
Doing renovations on your own for the first time are harder than you think. This does not mean that you should not do it on your own, or never attempt doing renovations again. You just need to be realistic with regards to how much TIME you actually have to devote to it.
If you don’t have enough TIME to devote to the renovation, then you must be prepared to hire a professional in order to get the work done.
SKILL
SKILL is probably the most important factor to consider. Yet few people pay attention to this factor. Before you start a renovation on a rental property, or any other property for that matter, you need to ask yourself, “Do I have the skill required to complete the renovation?”
Most people think that they possess the skill required, and as such begin the renovation themselves.
Very shortly thereafter, they find out that they have no idea what they are doing and that they do not have the skill set to complete the job. Some people then decide to save TIME by throwing in the towel. Their next step would then be to spend the necessary MONEY by paying a professional in order to do the work properly.
On the flip side, some people may chose to save MONEY by trying to complete the renovation themselves. Depending on the complexity of the renovation this decision may end up costing the person a lot more MONEY in the long run. After all, if the renovation is done very poorly and the poor work causes further damage to the house (think plumbing and electrical work) a professional will need to be called in, in order to repair the poorly completed work.
Renovations can be done, and done well, either by yourself or by a professional. However, before you decide on any renovation project, you need to seriously look at:
How much MONEY you are willing to spend
How much TIME you have to complete the renovation
How much SKILL you have in doing work yourself.
Best Regards,
Neil Uttamsingh
ps: First Rental Property will be making a BIG announcement in September. Stay tuned for details…
pps: here are some pictures from my recent renovation…
