More potential RE musings from Malcat's meandering mind: Distance Duplex Edition

[Metalcat]

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on my last rental investment thread. By the time the agent got back to me, it had already sold. There just are no good rental buys in my city, and one of the major issues with my jurisdiction is extremely pro-tenant laws and rent controls.

However, we recently traveled to another province to a small ocean side city where most of DH's family lives, that has very favourable real estate prices compared to rental rates in some areas. No rent control, and very pro-landlord laws.

I have a virtual tour of a fully, beautifully renovated duplex on a lake, with a 3 bedroom unit and a 2 bedroom unit tomorrow, which is listed for 235K but could end up in a bidding war. Rents would be combined around $3200, and rental demand in this particular area is extremely high. Demand for housing in general in the area is high.

How insane is it to buy a duplex a 7 hour drive away? We have tons of family in the area who could help out in a pinch if needed, but I imagine I would probably benefit from a management company.

So this is the exact OPPOSITE situation of my last question, where I know the building and the area inside out. Now I'm looking at a property where I know nothing, might not get a chance to even see it in person, and instead of living in the same building, wouldn't even be living in the next province, its two provinces away.

I REALLY like my real estate agent, and I actually contacted him about three other multi-unit properties closer to the downtown area, which were listed for more, but he actually steered me towards this property, which was well outside my search radius, because the cash flow is better and the places I was looking at were much older buildings that would need more maintenance.

I didn't know to look in this neighbourhood because I don't know the surrounding areas very well. But this is clearly the nicer, less working class region closer to major shopping amenities.

I would personally want to live in the cool downtown area on the ocean, but I get that it's kind of hit and miss sketchy, and people frickn' love their suburban houses with back yards and shit.

Oh, I should also mention that real estate prices in this area are exploding. With the advent of remote work, people from much more expensive cities are flooding the area and driving prices up, with no end in sight. They've already gobbled up almost all of the oceanfront properties, and are starting to move inland towards the nicer suburbs.

Rents are rising, house prices are rising, it looks like a good time to buy, and then in a couple of years, I can reassess the market and either raise rents or sell if the house value rises proportionally more.

This isn't the only unit I'm looking at either, but it's the one with the best numbers and the lowest maintenance property.

Long distance landlording is way out of my comfort zone, so I would love some feedback. Crazy to do it or crazy not to??

[MrGreen]

The cash flow sounds phenomenal, and if you think you may move there that's also helpful. Being a duplex is nice because if you could live in one half of it if need be, even though it's not in the downtown area you prefer.

Our old house is 7 hours from where we are now. We use a rental management company because I didn't want to have to deal with a maintenance problem while we were in the middle of a multi-month trip. We didn't really know people locally in trades either. If you have a reliable connection for general repairs/basic plumbing that would go a long way in not having to worry about sudden repairs. Are any family members handy enough to fit that bill?

In the four years we've been renting, almost all the effort has been either finding a tenant/getting the place leased or reacting to sudden maintenance requests. The rest of the time it's on autopilot.

My personal thoughts are that the pandemic has created enough of a permanent shift in how people think about work that demand in farther flung areas will remain high for quite a while, if not indefinitely. It seems like a great opportunity to buy something in an area that could blow up at some point in the future as people realize the relative value in lower RE prices and many recreational opportunities.

[Metalcat]

The cash flow sounds phenomenal, and if you think you may move there that's also helpful. Being a duplex is nice because if you could live in one half of it if need be, even though it's not in the downtown area you prefer.

Our old house is 7 hours from where we are now. We use a rental management company because I didn't want to have to deal with a maintenance problem while we were in the middle of a multi-month trip. We didn't really know people locally in trades either. If you have a reliable connection for general repairs/basic plumbing that would go a long way in not having to worry about sudden repairs. Are any family members handy enough to fit that bill?

In the four years we've been renting, almost all the effort has been either finding a tenant/getting the place leased or reacting to sudden maintenance requests. The rest of the time it's on autopilot.

My personal thoughts are that the pandemic has created enough of a permanent shift in how people think about work that demand in farther flung areas will remain high for quite a while, if not indefinitely. It seems like a great opportunity to buy something in an area that could blow up at some point in the future as people realize the relative value in lower RE prices and many recreational opportunities.

There are at least a half dozen stories in major news outlets specifically about people moving from expensive cities in Canada to this specific city. It's definitely a thing.

The thing with Canada as compared from the US is that something like 90+% of our population lives in cities, and we don't have that many of them. Also, the cost of housing in almost all of our cities has gone completely insane.

This specific city has kind of gone under the radar for Canadians for interesting geographic and cultural reasons, and yet it's probably in the top 3 most beautiful cities in the country.

It's a very, very poor region with no jobs, so it took remote work to cause a sudden influx of buyers, which I do not see ending any time soon. The waterfront properties are already unaffordable because of buyers flooding in from expensive Ontario cities, the spot I'm looking at is more inland, but right on a lake and in a booming, nice neighbourhood.

I'm looking at another triplex that has additional unrenovated space to become a 5 Plex in a lower income area, but a 5 minute walk from the ocean and a 15 minute ocean-front walk to downtown.

That property would definitely require a property manager, because I would likely have more tenant issues.

That property is very interesting because it already cash flows similar to the other one, but the additional units would throw it way over, and it's so well located that we could even keep one of the units empty and us it as a subsidized apartment for ourselves.

DH has a cousin right downtown who is a housekeeper and a lovely, trustworthy woman with low income who could easily tend to any small tenant needs. He has another cousin 40 minutes away who is very handy who could also use work. That's the thing, labour there is also suuuuuuper cheap since the min wage is so low. So if the cousins can point me to good handypersons, then I could set up my own management team.

I'll have to look at that closer.

[Dicey]

Ha! I was thinking this yesterday, but had a busy day and no time to post. In a sense, you're taking a gamble with found money. If it turns out poorly, you clearly won't starve.

FWIW, our rentals are about eight tours away, and we mostly self manage. They are all in the same 5,000 home retirement resort community. We have a good realtor who lives next door to one of our rentals. She handles the listings, screens tenants and we have the final say. She also has a network of service providers. Over the years, we have cultivated our own providers, but in the early days, her resources were invaluable.

I bought the first house in 2003, as the market was exploding. I felt the prices were reasonable and would be far less so when I hit FIRE and became old enough to live there. What cemented my decision to buy was the fact that the property had a Casita that I could use. It became a haven for me during some difficult years. However, 2008 happened and it didn't rise in value as expected. It didnt lose value, but it was never a money maker. However, knowing I had a secret getaway and a nice place to retire to at an affordable price finally vanquished my Inner Bag Lady (IBL).

When DH and I married, he'd never seen the place. Happily, he liked it a lot. In 2015 and 2016, when that market was still in the doldrums, we bought and lightly rehabbed (paint, flooring, appliances, landscaping) two more.  These two were purchased se well that they immediately cash flowed better than the first house. Overall, my anticipation that prices would be out of reach by the time I was ready to live there was a total bust.

Fast forward to now. In the last year, the market has exploded. Prices have zoomed, rents have increased. When I checked this week, there was only one year-round rental available (many are only rented seasonally, no Airbnb is allowed) out of 5,000 homes. The asking price is insane, and I'm sure they'll get it.

For many years, I struggled to justify buying the first property. I would have done better just putting the money in VTSAX. But it has been a wonderful experience. I still love the Casita and do not miss my hag IBL. The community has matured and continues to be lovely. The floor plans are still very workable and the amenities top-notch. The good news is that we just refinanced two of them and we now have $1M in combined equity. We also have three nice houses to choose from to retire to, all at affordable prices with low taxes, because in CA taxes are based on purchase price.

Related: When I bought the first house, it was in the last phase of the build out. Many buyers were people who bought in earlier phases and wanted bigger houses/lots or different floorplans. One dude, who happened to be the father of someone I had worked with (I recognized his unusual last name) ordered three houses on spec. From his experience living there, he knew what to choose: the most popular floor plan with the most wanted upgrades, on good lots. He held the three of them, then sold them after holding them vacant for exactly a year. In that time, all three appreciated smartly.  One of them was $342k in 2003 and he sold it exactly a year later for $480k. His other two probably did just as well.

I know the details of that house because my realtor owns it. She has basically been underwater on it ever since. She didn't care, because she loves the house and has no plans to sell. She's also made a good income doing business within the community. According to Zillow, it is finally worth more than she paid for it seventeen years ago. She still loves her home and doesn't care what it's worth.

I use these two illustrations to help answer your question. In this area, people like the speculator next door did fine, and people like me who bought with the intention to buy and hold long term, did fine. But for everyone in between, it was probably a money-losing proposition. Real Estate can be fickle and unpredictable.  The one percenters are going to scream, but my answer is to listen to your gut. In the end, I have so much money that it doesn't matter if this portion of my portfolio wasn't fully optimized.  Our lives are richer for the experience of owning in this particular community. I suspect you're in about the same position. Based on your description, I'm inclined to vote yes. Or more specifically, "Why the hell not?"

[Metalcat]

^Dicey, that's basically where I'm at.

I have a 6 figure lump sum and only 100K of tax sheltered account space left to put it in. It's either taxable or something else at this point.

Also, we don't need this money, this is bonus money. Between DH's job, pension, and the fact that I'm going to go back to work part time in the next few years, we are already more than set.

I could lose every cent of this lump sum and be absolutely fine.

This is a region we may want to move to in the future, so a big appeal is buying into the market now while it's still so relatively affordable, as it's rapidly looking like it won't be in a few years.

So if we lock in a good value property now, if we decide to move there, we could either live in half of this property, or sell this unit amd buy something else of relatively equal value, whatever that looks like in the future, because this property will keep pace with whatever happens.

What I don't want to do is wait and potentially get priced out, because with my need for possibly multiple hip surgeries, I can't relocate from my current province for another 2-5 years without losing access to one of the top hip specialists in the world.

So the benefit is not so much in making money, although that would be nice, it's in essentially locking in the current house values, with the small risk of them dropping, which is a loss we could easily weather. Even a substantial drop in value wouldn't be a big deal when the purchase price is that low to begin with, we're not talking about a 1.8M row house in Toronto.

[MrGreen]

We're about to close on our sixth property (we sold three so this will only be #3 at the moment). Not one of them was ever bought as an investment but, with the exception of the first one, all were carefully considered regarding resale or rent if we ever reached a point where we no longer needed them. Every purchase has worked out very well for us. Even our first house, which we bought before I knew anything about real estate, has carried its weight enough to hang on to. With the long-term trend toward globalization and low interest rates, it's hard to imagine well considered real estate purchases not working out. Well considered is the thing, and with what little I've heard about the locale it sounds like a phenomenal place to live (other than limited economy). If it catches on and growth explodes, it will create an economy that will help the area support itself via better paying jobs, and that will only beget more growth. That's more or less what is happening in our community now as people are flocking to the beach and warmer winter weather.

[Metalcat]

So we did the virtual tour today and got a sense from the realtor that it will likely go for closer to 260K, he also estimated the rents much lower than we have projected, but he also admitted that he knows nothing about the rental market, and it has risen steeply in the past two years more rapidly than house prices because of a lack of rental inventory and increasing demand.

So with the new numbers, the property is closer to 1% than 1.3%, but I think our rental estimates are much more realistic than his because literally every listing for the area is in the ballpark we estimated, so the real numbers are still probably nicely above 1%.

The lower unit isn't as nice as it photographed, but all it really needs is kitchen cabinet refacing, and a new washer and dryer.
Even though it's a converted house, each unit has it's own separate driveway, it's own laundry/storage room. Also, rentals in the area are largely heated with oil and don't have AC, and this one is mini-split heat/AC combo, so that's a MASSIVE selling point. With the lack of rental options, a lot of the rentals are in buildings that are over 100 yeas old, so modern features in a rental isn't a given.

The sellers aren't looking at offers until Wednesday, so it all depends if someone pops up with a massive offer, which is always possible. Apparently this is what's driving the market up so rapidly, Toronto buyers are just accustomed to making no condition offers insanely above asking, so you never know when one of these massive competing bids might blow up a perfectly good deal.

Technically, our numbers still work at 300K, but because this isn't a primary home, we're not emotionally attached to this specific place to feel the need to make a massive offer. There will be other units, or there won't be. We won't live or die on this deal no matter what happens.

Apparently cash deals are a HUGE factor because of a combo of out of province buyers over bidding, but not understanding how financing works, or locals being too poor to qualify for full amounts because of the new, much tighter lending rules. So even having an offer that indicates only 50% financing needed would give us a massive advantage.

We've also instructed our RE agent to ask the seller if we can get an inspection done before offers go in on Wednesday. When we sold our place, we had a ton of offers, but we had 3 people who completed inspections *before* making their offers, and even though we had some bids 10K higher, we went with one of the no inspection bids. Just knowing that certain buyers were willing to do that, it really showed that they were no nonsense, and not as likely to try and negotiate an after offer discount. So even if we can't coordinate the inspection, it sends the message to the other side about what kind of buyer we are.

The RE agent won't let us put together an offer until Wednesday though because the region is set for an enormous rain and part of the lower unit is below grade, so he wants us to tour again and see if any water leaks in. The grading looks great, but he wants to be certain. He even lied to the seller to get the second showing because the seller is not allowing repeat showings, lol. As I said, I really like our RE guy, he's in his 50s, was quite successful, but is semi retired and just working with buyers now because he finds it less stressful and more fun. So he's a real pro and no nonsense, but also super mellow, which I'm enjoying, even if he doesn't know shit about the rental market, lol. But he is going to reach out to a trusted property management company and get me better estimates of rental numbers.

All in all, even if it doesn't work out, it's been a fun, non-stressful process. Real estate is fun when none of it really matters, lol.

[scottish]

A real estate agent who lies!   It boggles the mind.

Good luck with this whichever way it goes.    I like the idea of inspecting before making an offer to purchase much better than an offer with no conditions and no inspection, especially if you can't see it in person.   That would be my advice - find an inspector with no relationship to your realtor or the seller or anyone else involved with the property and get them to check for problems.   Even if it's found money, a 6 figure sum is large enough to be diligent about spending...

We used to rent a cottage in PEI for 1-2 weeks every summer.    The owners were somewhere in Quebec, but they had a handyman person within driving distance of the place.   This seemed to work ok for them.

[Metalcat]

A real estate agent who lies!   It boggles the mind.

Good luck with this whichever way it goes.    I like the idea of inspecting before making an offer to purchase much better than an offer with no conditions and no inspection, especially if you can't see it in person.   That would be my advice - find an inspector with no relationship to your realtor or the seller or anyone else involved with the property and get them to check for problems.   Even if it's found money, a 6 figure sum is large enough to be diligent about spending...

We used to rent a cottage in PEI for 1-2 weeks every summer.    The owners were somewhere in Quebec, but they had a handyman person within driving distance of the place.   This seemed to work ok for them.

It will be very hard to find an inspector not connected to the realtor, lol, it's a small place with a tight knit community and the realtor has been in the industry for decades. I got a list of inspectors from a relative there and the realtor knows all of them.

I wouldn't make an offer without no inspection. The place is recently fully renovated, so I wouldn't be looking to do a ton of work on it, so I want to make sure that if I'm paying a premium for a turnkey house, that it's actually worth the premium. There are a lot of very old crusty properties there for very little, which if I was a flipper, I probably wouldn't bother with inspection because you're guaranteed to run into all sorts of problems with renos and that's just what you expect. The realtor said that a lot of the Toronto investors don't bother inspecting those properties because the report will just come back "FUCKED" and they're already willing to pay way over asking for a building in shit condition, so there's just no point.

I'm certainly not cavalier about a 6 figure spend. In fact, I'm being tremendously conservative and cautious. I'm naturally incredibly wary of real estate investing actually. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have interest in potentially owning for ourselves in that market, and if it didn't look poised to outperform the index over the next decade. I'm just so conservative that if I invest in anything other than index funds, it has to be something where losing everything wouldn't hurt me long term, because I don't *need* the upside, so even the most extreme downside needs to be comfortable.

[clifp]

Honestly, I haven't found long distancing landlord  that hard.  I'm not handy, so even if my rental was next door, I'd still be calling the plumber, appliance guy, or handy man.  Given your income potential, it makes zero sense for you to do repairs, and not much more for you DH to it either.

The key to making remote landlording profitable and low stress, is to find a good property manager. It took me three tries for my Vegas properties, and my partner took two times to find one for our Kansas City properties. My only advice is if you aren't happy don't hesitate to find a new one.  If you do find a good one, it also makes buying additional properties in the area easier.

Personally, I'm very happy with the diversification that real estate provides me. If the stock market goes to 0 tomorrow, I don't have enough cash flow from RE to support my current lifestyle, but I do have enough that I could cut back and be ok.

[scottish]

How much does your property manager charge?

[clifp]

They charge between 8-10%.  My Vegas PM pretty regular finds bargains in things like appliances and services,  so I think it actually cost me about 5% a year to hire her.

[scottish]

Nice.  Plus she has some skin in the game if she's charging a percentage of the income from the property.

[Metalcat]

It looks like we might make an offer on a totally different property in a different location.

First, it's a gamble whether we can even get this first property I mentioned , it's definitely a multi offer situation, and high chance that someone will make a no condition, over asking, cash offer. That's just the norm in the area.

However, there's another duplex that was the one we were interested in in the first place, but our realtor pushed us heavily towards the superior investment property, plus the selling realtor on the first duplex wasn't responding. But the better property is somewhere we have no interest in ever living ourselves, so the property is useless to us in terms of personal use, and that's a big appeal of buying a duplex, is having a vacation home subsidized by renting out the other unit(s).

I found out that the original property was under contract, but the sale fell through because the buyers just found the amount of work needed on the place to be too much for them. It's quite hideous, but I love hideous properties that just had a sale fall through, that's how I got our current place.

Anyway, there are a lot of details as to why this place is not as good of an investment property, but why it has huge advantages as a property for our personal use. So we just need to decide, like, tomorrow, if we want to primarily utilize this region for it's investment potential or for it's lifestyle potential. Because we would LOVE to be able to spend months at a time there, but cannot ever relocate there due to my medical team being here and me facing potentially multiple surgeries.

We're leaning heavily towards subsidized vacation home. The major appeal of the other place was to act as a profitable placeholder in the market in the event that we were ever able to relocate years into the future. But with the other duplex being so cheap, we could start spending up to half the year there if we wanted to right away.

With renovating and renting out the larger unit, we would come close to breaking even on expenses, and the cost of the renos would bring us just in line with market value if we can get it for the price that I think we might be able to.

[Dicey]

I'm confident you'll make a good decision.

[Metalcat]

I'm confident you'll make a good decision.

Thankfully, I don't think there are a lot of bad decisions here. Also, with such a hot market, it's entirely possible that neither property pans out.

On the flips side, we can actually *easily* afford both, we just can't easily afford to bid on both, because cash offers are the norm and they add up to more cash than I have on hand.

So then it's a matter of choosing which to try.

I think there's a much bigger chance that we lose out on the nicer property. It had a huge flurry of interest. But the ugly duckling Realtors are currently discouraged about their hideous little troll of a unit.

[SunnyDays]

I vote for the troll!  It has everything you want right now (well, except for cosmetic stuff) and sometimes miracles do happen.  You might be able to live there for substantial chunks of time after all your surgeries are done.  You’re still young, so lots of time for things to come together for you.  And even if not, a month or two away at a time is nothing to sneeze at.  Plus, the place will likely appreciate a lot.

[Metalcat]

I vote for the troll!  It has everything you want right now (well, except for cosmetic stuff) and sometimes miracles do happen.  You might be able to live there for substantial chunks of time after all your surgeries are done.  You’re still young, so lots of time for things to come together for you.  And even if not, a month or two away at a time is nothing to sneeze at.  Plus, the place will likely appreciate a lot.

The troll had a bad update in my journal...definitely not buying the troll

Somebody bought it for cash with no conditions this morning, but I managed to buy the previous buyer's inspection report, and oof, the listing and realtor LIED THROUGH HER LIE HOLE about the condition of the roof. She said it was solid, replaced less than 5 year ago, and structurally in great shape.

Uh...no, it was partially repaired 5 years ago due to a massive fire.

[314159]

I'm sorry for your misfortune, but I'm thankful you've shared it with us. Here & your journal have been a rollercoaster lately!

[SunnyDays]

Glad you dodged that bullet!

[Metalcat]

I'm sorry for your misfortune, but I'm thankful you've shared it with us. Here & your journal have been a rollercoaster lately!

Oh, this made me chuckle.

Right now is by far the most mellow and least eventful my life has ever been.

This kind of thing doesn't bother me at all. I have what I call "a very good relationship with reality". Things are what they are, sometimes what you think they are turns out to be wrong, but I never get too attached to an imagined reality once it's proven wrong, I just move forward with what I now know about that reality. Technically, my reality hasn't change since last week. All I've done is exchange a lot of emails and have a lot of phone calls about *ideas*. And *ideas* aren't reality.

This is not a roller coaster, this is toying with ideas and seeing if anything sticks. If reality ends up incompatible with the idea, the idea doesn't materialize.

[Metalcat]

For anyone not reading my journal, here's an update.
We put in an offer on another duplex.

This one splits the difference of the other two, and has better cash flow than both. It's not right in the area we want, but it's walking distance from it.

It's not turnkey, but only one unit needs upgrades and they're very minor cosmetic details. It's not a multi offer situation, because it had an offer that fell through on financing before it even got to inspection.

The street it's on is a quiet, family street, but not in a high end neighbourhood. It's an upper working class/lower middle class area. This can be ideal for tenants, because they often can't afford to buy, so will stick around for many years. The current tenants have been there for years and have said they never want to leave.

We will be displacing the upper unit tenants in the less renovated until, and raising the rent by $150 for the lower unit tenants, who seem amazing, so I'm really hoping they stay. Lovely young LGBTQ+ family with kids who ranted and raved about how much they love living there.

We'll see what inspection says, but my realtor said the place looked really solid, really well cared for, and the disclosure shows a TON of recent renos from when the current owners bought 5 years ago.

If we rented out both units at the max projected rents, it would be over 1.6%, but we don't plan to raise the lower unit to max, and don't plan to rent out the upper unit. But even then, we'll about break even on cash flow.

And then we get a large, 3 bedroom apartment with an enormous patio, large storage garage, and massive lot for the area, walking distance from downtown and the ocean.

Still, we'll see what inspection says. Although, it's so cheap that even if it needed an expensive repair, as long as it was a predictable expensive repair, it would still be worth it.

Not like the last place which was so messed up, it was impossible to say what it would need.

[314159]

I'm sorry for your misfortune, but I'm thankful you've shared it with us. Here & your journal have been a rollercoaster lately!

Oh, this made me chuckle.

Right now is by far the most mellow and least eventful my life has ever been.

This kind of thing doesn't bother me at all. I have what I call "a very good relationship with reality". Things are what they are, sometimes what you think they are turns out to be wrong, but I never get too attached to an imagined reality once it's proven wrong, I just move forward with what I now know about that reality. Technically, my reality hasn't change since last week. All I've done is exchange a lot of emails and have a lot of phone calls about *ideas*. And *ideas* aren't reality.

This is not a roller coaster, this is toying with ideas and seeing if anything sticks. If reality ends up incompatible with the idea, the idea doesn't materialize.

I think it's because I often read through several pages of a given journal at once, so I don't get to invested in any single train of thought, but I happened to read yours multiple times during your SJ adventure and real estate search, and I suddenly was really hoping you got whichever building looked good that day. Congratulations on your offer!

Anyway—thanks for sharing your extremely healthy outlook on reality!

[Metalcat]

I'm sorry for your misfortune, but I'm thankful you've shared it with us. Here & your journal have been a rollercoaster lately!

Oh, this made me chuckle.

Right now is by far the most mellow and least eventful my life has ever been.

This kind of thing doesn't bother me at all. I have what I call "a very good relationship with reality". Things are what they are, sometimes what you think they are turns out to be wrong, but I never get too attached to an imagined reality once it's proven wrong, I just move forward with what I now know about that reality. Technically, my reality hasn't change since last week. All I've done is exchange a lot of emails and have a lot of phone calls about *ideas*. And *ideas* aren't reality.

This is not a roller coaster, this is toying with ideas and seeing if anything sticks. If reality ends up incompatible with the idea, the idea doesn't materialize.

I think it's because I often read through several pages of a given journal at once, so I don't get to invested in any single train of thought, but I happened to read yours multiple times during your SJ adventure and real estate search, and I suddenly was really hoping you got whichever building looked good that day. Congratulations on your offer!

Anyway—thanks for sharing your extremely healthy outlook on reality!

Now we're just waiting on inspection, which I'm flying back down for. The tickets cost double because it's last minute, but I simply can't buy a duplex I've never seen. Lol, I'm not there yet.

I'm just expecting the inspection to go well, not because I'm unrealistic, but because I err on the side of irrational optimism when an outcome is unknown and where I might be very disappointed.

A lot of people try to hedge in those situations and "not get their hopes up", but I personally think that's a pile of nonsense. If I really want something, then if I don't get it, I'm going to be brutally disappointed no matter how I try to temper my hope. So I might as well assume Schrodinger's cat in the box is alive until and unless I have to accept a dead cat. 

I generally don't waste my energy worrying about anything unless and until I have to.

That said, I had a twinge of nerves booking the flight down because of the cost of it. If the deal goes through, the cost of the trip is just part of the cost of doing business. But if the deal doesn't go through, I just blew a whack of cash taking a shitty trip to a place I just visited last week.

Suboptimal.

So yeah, I'm going with "the inspection will go well" until the last second.

[sammybiker]

It's been fun to read along @Malcat

I'm guessing the location is somewhere in NS?

[Metalcat]

It's been fun to read along @Malcat

I'm guessing the location is somewhere in NS?

Nope, south NB, just adjacent to Maine

[sammybiker]

Even better.  I was based in Bangor for about 12mo and enjoyed a few trips over the border and a couple of beer nights in Fredericton.

Any update on the inspection @Malcat

[Metalcat]

Even better.  I was based in Bangor for about 12mo and enjoyed a few trips over the border and a couple of beer nights in Fredericton.

Any update on the inspection @Malcat

Inspection is today! I've flown down for it.

[Metalcat]

Update: inspection went VERY well.

The inspector described it as a "gem" of a property. There's some work to do, but much less than you would expect for a 50 year old house in a lower income region.

Some grading work needs to be done, no water comes into the downstairs unit, but it can get musty. This should be solvable by fixing the grade problems.

The stairs and veranda to the upper unit are structurally okay, but the spindles and railings are in terrible shape, so we would probably redo most of it in not too long.

The upper unit needs very minor cosmetic work, but very, very minor, and is actually in better shape than the photos made it look.

The siding is in good condition, but has had some replaced and doesn't quite match. That's fine, I don't really care, but the area is gentrifying, so in 5-10 years, we may want to consider replacing the siding as the area improves around us.

Overall, about 5-10K worth of work to be done within the next year or two to basically get it to "perfectly good." Then another investment down the line to really upgrade the curb appeal, but that won't be a consideration until we're the ugly kid on the block.

This city is PACKED with really old houses with a lot of problems, so it's a HUGE win to have no surprises in the inspection.  We were expecting the stair/veranda and grade issues. So no surprises is awesome. Especially after the last property had EVERYTHING wrong with it. Lol

[Dicey]

Hooray!

[Metalcat]

I'm sorry for your misfortune, but I'm thankful you've shared it with us. Here & your journal have been a rollercoaster lately!

Oh, this made me chuckle.

Right now is by far the most mellow and least eventful my life has ever been.

I brought this upon myself didn't I?

Nothing to do with the new house, it's pretty uneventful. But, what? A week after I wrote this I found out I need to have both of my legs broken.

The only relevance to real estate is that I can't possibly actually *use* the SJ property for myself for the next year or two, and totally unable to do any renos myself. So we will just keep it as a reno for now :(

That's not the end of the world, it will just build up the cash flow for more money to spend on renos when we *can* finally use it, and then the place will pay for its own renos.

Lol, why is my life always insane? ALWAYS!