How to Save Big Money on Your Next Rehab

Proven Suggestions to Save You Money on a Rehab Project

Plan it out: Many investors, especially newer investors, try to make their house the prettiest one on the block like they see on the tv shows. This will cost you big time. Your goal should be to bring the property up to date, not to gold plate it. If your new property is in a Joe Lunch box neighborhood, don’t try to make it look like the ones on TV’s Extreme Home Make Over. Kitchen cabinets can be sanded and re-painted. Adding some new hardware makes a dramatic change in the effect without spending a lot of time or money. If the cabinets need to be replaced you can often get a bargain on in stock cabinets at your local Home Depot or Loews. Vertical window treatments can be replaced fairly inexpensively. When buying the hardware, see if you can get a large box of knobs and hinges instead of buying them one packet at a time. Think about making your selections for appliances, cabinets, bath room fixtures, lighting, paint, etc. a duplicatable process so that you save time on the next job and so you begin to know what items should cost.
Bids: If you are not doing all of the work yourself, get at least 3 bids on everything. Even if you have a bunch of regular contractors that you deal with. To get a head start on the bidding process, you can use Service Magic online to start a flow of qualified contactors giving you bids. They can arrange to have at least four different contractors contact you and will gladly add more if you don’t like what you got from the first batch. Keep in mind, that when you find a contractor that you like… the one that seemed the most professional may not be the cheapest but you can absolutely tell him or her that they were not the lowest bid, but you would still like to use them if they can just match it. Most often, they will match it or come much closer to it just to get the work. This saves you money as well as gets you the contractor you really wanted to use.
Paint: you can buy “mistake” paints for several dollars a gallon, If you take all of the extra cans they have on the floor and throw them in a 5 gallon bucket, invariably, you will get a beige or taupe color. Just add some more white to lighten it to a shade you like. Put a little on the backs of several outlet plates so you have an example to use for matching if you need to have more blended in the future. The mistake paint may cost only three to five dollars a gallon but still give you a good quality paint. If you do not want to have to do all of the hard work of painting the exterior yourself, use your pressure washer to blast the outside of the house and then go to the local big box home improvement store and look for paint trucks (Any vehicle with paint splatters, a ladder with paint splatters or any type paint equipment.) Approach the drivers as they return and tell them you are looking for someone to paint the outside of the house either this week end or the following week end. Tell them the house is already pressure cleaned and will be ready to paint (You will need to mask off the windows the day before they get there). You have set them up for an easy extra pay check for just a little extra work. You provide the paint… they only need to show up.
There are numerous ways to pinch a penny. The best ways involve having others take care of the tasks that you either can not do yourself or just prefer not to do yourself. You will save a little money, some back breaking work, and speed up your whole process by not having to do it all yourself.