A couple weeks ago I was bitching about our appraisal on the Somerset home. Well, it wasn’t the only one that came in low. The McCarty house‘s appraisal came back at $105,000. Not terrible, but we were really hoping for $120,000+
Granted, pre-COVID I was certain we’d be lucky to hit $90,000 or so, but things really heated up recently, so my plans adjusted.
So, like Somerset, we appealed this appraisal. But unlike Somerset, this one actually got adjusted. Our new appraisal is now $120,000.
Now, that’s not a massive difference, but it does equate to about $11,000 more in our pocket once we finally get through these rehabs. Hopefully the quiet titles get done soon and we can wrap them up.
I didn’t have to do much for the appeal. My mortgage broker took care of most of it, we just talked about some comps that I was aware of nearby. Thankfully, it worked.
Once we do finally get these fully done I’ll write up some posts with all the numbers.
Sigh, The McCarty house. This one has been a journey. If you want to go back and read a bit more in depth about this house and some of the highlights, most of that lives in the tag here.
This home was left for dead when we picked it up in the Wayne County Tax Auction for $43,000. We (way) overpaid.
I thought it had 3 beds and 2 baths, but it had just 2 beds and 1.5 baths. Not a big deal, right? Well, the house was also a complete disaster. For starters, there was mold EVERYWHERE. I mean, the kind that lives not just on surfaces, but in the air to the point where it hits you and makes you take a half step back when walking through the door.
The roof was failing, the upstairs bathroom was leaking, and we later discovered a pinhole leak below the main water shutoff in the basement. To make matters worse, the basement had been fully finished in the past. The genius that did the work covered every single floor drain with tile. The only exposed drain was clogged and backing up.
The previous occupant told me they’d pump the water out a basement window every time they did laundry. But the basement still held about an inch of water at most times and the floor tiles would squish and shift as you walked across them.
It took us about three months to remove the occupant. That, in itself, was a saga. And to this day, Ms. McCarty is a household name at our home and running joke.
The rehab officially began on February 6th of this year. And it officially ended today, nearly six months later. Oof.
Here are the before and after photos. If you want to see some of the in between ones, check them out here.
This is the entryway. You can see the bonus room with the makeshift doors on the left side of the far wall.
We reframed the bonus room to create the third bedroom.
Notice the mold on the baseboards on the left.
Much better!
There was hardwood under the carpet but it need a lot of love!
Here’s a shot of the bonus room after removing the makeshift doors. It’s small, but we made it work.
Bonus room now bedroom.
Here’s the dining area, or crash pad…
Dining area redone.
The kitchen was not only ugly, but a complete mess. The subfloor was completely rotted from water damage.
Everything new. In hindsight I don’t love the LVP color choice, but it works for now.
This was a nook in the kitchen (left side of previous photos but not pictured). We turned this into a laundry area.
The nook, now with a door and laundry hookups.
This is the half bath on the landing between the main level and basement. Notice the floor was collapsing here. We raised this, knocked the back wall out, and connected it to the bonus room (now bedroom) to create a full bath.
Here’s the new full bath. The wall you see here is the old doorway from the previous photo.
The sink from the half bath in the previous photos.
To create a shower in this new bathroom we had to shift the door to the kitchen to get the space.
Upstairs bedroom with junk in it, but in decent shape.
Nicely painted and refinished.
Upstairs bathroom demo’d out.
And all redone.
The subfloor needed replacing here in the upstairs bathroom as well.
Done with new vanity and toilet.
The basement was a hot mess. I’ll never forget the squishing tiles beneath my feet.
Here it is mostly demo’d out.
And all fresh, painted, and clean. What a journey!
What was originally a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath home is now a 3 bedroom, 2 full bath house. Getting there wasn’t easy.
We turned the bonus room (off the living area when you walk in — first photo) into a bedroom (photos #7 and #8). We relocated the doorway to the kitchen to another wall and took over a small pantry to create the bedroom closet and part of the shower stall.
Finally, the half bath that originally sat off the landing on the way to the basement shared a wall with the bonus room (now bedroom), so we raised the floor and busted open the wall to adjoin it with the new bedroom and create a (small) ensuite.
That gave us the third bedroom and second full bath we were hoping for. The other big change, beyond general aesthetic updates, was sealing off the small eating area in the kitchen (photos 13 and 14 above) to create a pantry or first floor laundry. You can barely see the laundry hookups in the wall in photo 14.
The idea here was to force some equity by creating the third bedroom and full bath, obviously. But we also wanted to make the home more appealing to someone who didn’t want to climb stairs and could live on the main level if they chose to.
I think it worked out well.
Beyond that we completely rewired the entire house, did a tear off roof replacement, and updated the plumbing. Those are things you don’t really see but hurt the pocket book quite a bit.
I’m still tallying how much we spent on this rehab, but I know it was in the $50,000 ballpark. That number makes my head hurt.
We’re also still waiting on the financing and appraisal, so I don’t have those numbers yet but I will soon. I didn’t think we had a shot at getting our money out previously, but comps have come up strong in the last couple months, so you never know. At this point, I’d be happy getting most of it out. But with the way this one has gone, I’m not holding my breath.
I did a virtual showing for our Somerset house, stopped by the McCarty House to meet with our electrician, and swung by the Dougie Fresh Duplex to look at getting the Ring doorbell properly setup for one of the tenants.
It felt good to be on the ground doing real estate related stuff again.
The virtual tour went well. If this pans out, it will be the second time I’ve Facetimed a prospective tenant and have them move in without stepping foot in the home before. She seems great, and her background and credit check both came back positive. Promising.
The (no longer moldy) McCarty House is coming along. We’re definitely not as far along as I’d hoped, but I’m happy that we’ve made some progress while I was away. And we hit some speed bumps, too.
We’ve been mostly focused on the main level, because we’re doing some serious changes there. Here is a shot as you enter the home, looking in the the living room. There was a “bonus” room with an arched doorway to the left. Ms. McCarty was using this as a makeshift bedroom.
We blew out the arch and framed it with a real door so we could turn this into a real bedroom. The problem is it’s a small room with not much squarefootage to add a closet. So, after lots of back and forth, we decided to close up the doorway you see on the right hand side (in the photo on the left), blow the wall back all the way into a half bathroom that sits a few feet lower than the main level.
Here’s a better shot at the make shift door that led to the “bedroom”:
The half bath is accessible from a landing on your way to the basement. So we’ve raised the floor of that bathroom to accommodate a small master suite. Here’s a shot from the landing on the way to the basement. You can see how we raised the floor to be level with the first floor:
Also notice the rotted out floor of the old bathroom. This has been an ongoing theme in the house.
Here’s a shot from the opposite side, standing in the new bedroom:
We decided to put a pocket door in to save space. The bathroom is quite small, and I think I’m going to try putting in a wall hung toilet to make it more comfortable.
The basement is also coming along nicely. We’ve at least got it mostly removed. Getting this done cleared up 90% of the stench throughout the house. All the mold is now gone:
Don’t mind our electrician, Gene, relieving himself in that last photo. We don’t have a working bathroom in the house yet. I kid.
It’s definitely some progress, but I want to move faster. We likely have a tenant that’s already going to jump on this house, and I’d like to get her in sooner rather than later.
After leaving the McCarty House I headed to the Dougie Fresh Duplex. I haven’t written about that one yet, but it’s one of my favorites. The tenant that lives in the lower unit is also one of my favorite tenants. She cracks me up.
I looked at her Ring doorbell that isn’t set up, and it turns out I need to call customer service to get it transferred to me since I’m not on great terms with the previous owner (long story). She also had a light fixture that wasn’t working that I managed to fix.
All told, I was home by 1pm and it was only about three hours out of my day. But I enjoyed it. Funny how people think being a landlord sucks. Or maybe I’m still too green.
I met our junk removal crew at The McCarty house this morning. Their quote called for a 40 yard dumpster. If you’re not sure how big that is, it’s pretty damn big.
I’m looking forward to seeing the house once it’s cleaned out, then we’ll be able to start getting to work.
I spent the better part of my day saving two cats.
The assholes we finally got out of The McCarty house left them behind with no power, heat, or much food. We called a couple shelters and finally found the Michigan Anti-Cruelty Society (MACS). We called on Saturday, but they were closed Sunday and Monday.
It wasn’t until today, when we were headed to the house, that we were able to swing by MACS and borrow two live traps and some bait (aka cat food). When I got the The McCarty house I saw both cats upon entering (we think there are just two), and as I was setting the traps one of them came running at the sound of food.
We headed down the street to take marketing photos of a nearby house, came back, and found we’d captured one of the cats. The other trap had fired, but it was empty. So I reset that trap and we headed back to MACS to drop of cat number one.
I then went home, waited a couple hours before coming back, and found this little guy waiting for me:
I was able to get him to MACS before they closed.
This took up the bulk of my day, and it’s not something I’d have foreseen myself doing as a product of purchasing real estate, but I’m glad both cats are now safe and hopeful they’ll find loving homes.
The folks at MACS are terrific people, and clearly care about animals. I don’t know much about them, but I’m glad to see Detroit has a resource like this.
I hate being woken up by my phone vibrating. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a spam caller, so I’ve grown accustomed to rolling over and blocking it out.
Today was the other one-percent.
When I woke, about an hour after the call, I saw that it was actually our live monitoring service for our security system we have in place on our Somerset house.
Not good.
I’ve had false alarms before, but this one felt different. For one, the app showed that the basement motion detector was triggered.
Really not good.
I knew my handyman would be at the house around 9:00am, so I texted him and asked if he’d let me know what he found when he got there.
The electrical meter had been tampered with:
It’s unclear if they were intentionally trying to cut the power before entering or damaged it by climbing on it to get in through the window. The back window was the clear point of entry. The thieves had pushed on it hard enough to both crack it and pop the locks on the inside, allowing them to push it open.
Of course, the water heater and furnace were stolen. They also snipped the cord to our inside camera, and ran water over some of the alarm equipment. But those still work.
Then they locked the door on the way out. Such thoughtful thieves!
This is the second time I’ve had a break in and theft. It’s not fun, and I don’t suppose it will ever be. For now, sadly, this is the cost of business when dealing in Detroit.
After checking in with my handyman I headed over to The McCarty House to meet a junk removal and demo crew so they could take some photos and give us a quote. I’m happy to report that the stove was no longer on, and the house seemed to have been undisturbed since I was last there.
I went down to the Somerset house today, the one we recently evicted our inherited tenants from, in an effort to get some photos to list it for rent. It’s not quite there yet, so I punted on the photos. We have a fantastic handyman doing the final touch-ups, and I love him, but I wish he had another guy to help him move a bit faster.
Since I was there I asked Joe, our handyman, if he’d like to come take a look at our next couple projects since they’re just down the road. He obliged.
Our first stop was The McCarty house and, to my surprise, upon entering the back door, all four burners on the gas stove were on full blast again. There was also a mattress on the floor in the dining room that definitely wasn’t there before.
I went outside to check the garage to know more, recalling that my locksmith had said, “Ha, there’s a car in the garage!”, when we were there changing the locks. I hadn’t bothered to look at it, mentally blocking out that PITA (it’s not easy getting rid of an abandoned car, apparently) for the meantime.
The car was gone. I guess that was the good news.
Whoever was crashing at the house (I had a feeling it was Ms. McCarty’s son), was getting in through an unlocked window in the back of the house. That was evident by the five-gallon paint can that was sitting just below it.
It was trash day, so we got rid of the bucket, locked the window, and I had Kaitlin text Ms. McCarty alerting her that the next time we found someone in the house we’d be having the police come to pick them up.
She had, “no idea” what was going on over there (of course!), but hopefully that’s the last we see of anyone.
Since winning a few houses in the Detroit tax auction, we’ve been working through the legal process to vacate the current occupants. It’s not quick.
Before filing a 30-day notice to vacate we had to wait for the deed. That took about a month in itself. Then we had to wait the full 30-days before filing with the court (nobody leaves the house during or after the 30-day notice). At that point, you wait for a court date, wait another couple weeks for the date the court orders the occupant to be out, and then cross your fingers they actually leave so you don’t have to file an actual eviction and have a bailiff out.
Basically, it’s the same process as a standard eviction. The only difference between vacating an occupied auction purchase and a rental tenant is you don’t have to file a 7-day pay or quit notice. You also generally don’t have a line of communication to the tenant.
In this case, we did have the latter. The week after the auction I left a note at the home, including my contact info. Ms. McCarty (she never gave me her first name, but we did later find it on a piece of mail) contacted me and I actually visited her at the home, and talked to her about potentially signing a lease agreement.
After several weeks of the eviction process coming to a head, and excuses from Ms. McCarty on why she wasn’t quite ready to leave the house and needed just a LITTLE more time, we finally took possession today without having to bring a bailiff out.
Ms. McCarty confirmed, over text, that she was fully moved out of the house and anything left was trash.
So I entered the house today with my friend and a locksmith. It wasn’t difficult given the doors weren’t locked. I went in the back door which opens to the kitchen, the gas stove directly in front of me had all four burners on high.
The power was out, and DTE has clearly removed and locked the electric meter. Someone was still living in the house, heating it with the stove. The house was trashed with enough stuff left behind to rival the abandoned property in our first eviction house.
Worse though… the mold. It’s everywhere!
Here’s a photo of one of baseboards in one of the corners of the living room:
The basement, once clearly beautifully finished, is a moldy mess. Ms. McCarty had previously informed me that water backs up every time they do the laundry. They never resolved the issue, and it’d been going on for at least 9 months. As a result, the basement is completely destroyed with water and mold having traveled several feet up the drywall. Don’t worry, I’ll have more photos in a future post.
As it sits right now, it feels like this house was a poor buy. I purchased it thinking it was a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home, but it’s actually a 2 bed/1 bath. I’m going to take some time to wrap my head around this mess and figure out how we’ll proceed.
Luckily it’s in an area I really like and believe in. Now I have to go to a six-year-old birthday party at BounceU and drive to Pennsylvania.
