Hey everyone, longtime reader first time poster.
Here is the deal, I'm a 25 year old who has been living the mustachian lifestyle for some time now. I make about 30K per year from my job, and am able to save 15K (plus I get rental income on top of that, more about that later). I bike to work, and drive a scooter for longer trips (102 MPG).
I also own a three story single home thats been converted into three one-bedroom apartments. My mortgage payment is only $747 a month and I owe about 100K. I get $900 a month in rental income from the folks who rent the bottom floor and will be getting an additional $900 a month from folks renting the top floor starting in June.
My roof is 30 years old, and I'd like to get it replaced before the new tenants move in in June. Pretty much every roof on the property is in some disrepair, peeling shingles, rotted wood a front porch whose roof is becoming separated from the building slightly, etc.
There is probably a total of 2000 square feet of roof on the house, top roof, front and back porches, bay windows, etc. and I asked a company called Global Home improvement to give me an estimate. If you live in the Philadelphia area you'll know them because they do the roofs on all the new Wawa's.
He offered to redo every piece of roof on the property, including capping the boards around the edge of the top roof (which are damaged and let pigeons and squirrels in from time to time), and add high end gutters to the top and porch roofs. Everything would be backed up by a transferable lifetime warrantee, except the appearance of the paint on the roof (35 years) and the gutters (20 years). The fine print on the lifetime warrantee is that if I sell it it turns into a 50-year guarantee for the new owner, and the company has been in business for 18 years (so who knows if they'll be around or not, but they seem to be doing well for themselves).
He originally quoted me $46,500, but was willing to back down to 39k, then 35k when I told him I could get a loan from my parents and pay cash.
I signed on the dotted line with the assurance that I can cancel at any time before this Friday and get my full deposit back ($500).
Between the savings I have now, and the income I'll have coming in by August 7th I could pay off 27k out of the 35k, then pay the next 8K + interest over about the next six months. I'm not a roofer, and don't have the experience necessary to do something like this myself. I could do a shingles everywhere for probably 10-15K, but I do prefer the idea of never having to deal with the roof again. I also live in a neighborhood (where I grew up) where all of the houses are approaching 100 years old and there is value for me in preserving them, and doing things right in terms of repairs.
I've got two other roofers coming over tomorrow to give me competing estimates. Hopefully they'll give me something lower for a comparable package, or at least something I can leverage to the global folks, I'm fairly confident I could get them to bring down the price a little if I had a credible offer from another company for a similar product.
I'm looking for other folks thoughts, especially if you've got roofing experience. Is 35K a crazy price to pay for roofing, even metal? Is it worth it to set myself back about a year in terms of savings to put a roof on my income-producing building that I should never have to think about again?
