Standardizing Your Rentals and Flips

Mike: Welcome back to the FlipNerd.com REI Classroom, where experts from across the real estate investing industry teach you quick lessons to take your business to the next level. And now, let’s meet today’s expert host.

Blake: Hello. I’m Blake Yarborough. I’m today’s REI Classroom host. Today I wanted to talk about standardizing your rehabs and flips.

Mike: This REI Classroom real estate lesson is sponsored by theinvestormachine.com, FlipNerd’s private investor coaching program and your blueprint to investing success.

Blake: As you get into this business and you’re in it a longer time, you’ll see a need to do this. By standardizing, this will remove the repetitive mental stress of figuring out what something goes with each house. Use the same flooring choices, paint choices, granite choices. Kind of narrow it down to a couple different of each. It really makes your life easier.
Use a beige tile for my bathrooms. On lower level houses I’ll use typically just do the living room stuff in that same beige tile. A lot of times I’ll use that same beige tile in the bathroom for the tub surrounds and on the flooring. On a nicer house, say $150 to $350, I’ve been using a nice porcelain plank tile. Kind of wood look, but it’s porcelain. You can run it all the way through the kitchen. It’s not ceramic, so if somebody drops something on it it’s not going to be breaking as easy, and it’s not wood so if water spills it’s not going to ruin the wood. Nice porcelain tile is what I’ve been using a lot.
Granite, first of all, you could save a lot of money if you really figure out where’s a place to get to granite that’s in the local area. For Houston we’ve got a place. I’m buying it at about a third of what it costs me to buy it at one of the big box stores. Granite, I usually limit my choices to two or three. Santa Cecilia has a classic and a gold I use. They also have a medium. Or else Giallo Ornamental is another one I use a lot. It’s not a high level granite but it’s nice, attractive and it goes with a lot of things.
As I mentioned the bathrooms, I use the surrounds on just about every one and usually the same fixtures. But, on higher end flips, yes, I will go to a nicer fixture. Roofing materials, once again, just without even looking at it I just about say weathered wood every time. It’s a nice very common grain roof. When you have extra materials for a roof repair, you already have some shingles. Same with broken tile.
A paint touch up for a rehab, when somebody moves out of a house, a lot of times they need to paint the house. You’ve got to either have a bucket of paint there or else you know what paint you used two years ago because you’re using the same paint. It’s easy to go back and match that paint.
A little side note: when you’re matching . . . The paint, when it’s newer paint, it’ll still look a little different so don’t just patch. Roll it with a roller. Go ahead. You might paint the whole wall. That way it’s a cleaner look. At least that’s what I do. But, the paint colors should be very, very similar even though one’s maybe two years older.
I always paint the baseboards white and the ceilings white. Some people go same paint all the way through. I think it gives it a little bit more custom look. It makes the room seem a little bigger. A lot of my rentals it’s beige tile, white trim, beige wall, white ceiling all the way through. Neutral matches everything. I don’t have to think about what I’m using.
A lot of times I used to buy specific tile for each house, and then I had all these different tiles that I’ll never use. You don’t have enough remnants after a job to do a whole one. When I started doing something like Angra Hueso is a lighter beige tile, I think it looks good. Angra Café I use some. It’s too dark. These are some tiles you can get at Floor and Decor for instance. The Hueso I use it on the flooring and the surrounds, and it’s working out great for me.
That’s just a few little ideas. Start early. Like I said, it really will save you a lot of frustration on going back and trying to figure out what you did when when you’ve owned these houses for more than a handful of years.
Once again this is Blake Yarborough with the REI Classroom. If you have any questions about financing, please feel free to call us at Capital Concepts at (713) 651-9500, or check us out online at 4smartmoney.com. Thank you.

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