I’m new to owning rental units and can use some advice.
I have a property manager in place since it’s too far for me to manage myself. One of my tenants skipped on her last payment and disappeared. A week later the unit was broken into. Both the front and back door were hammered in, door knobs completely busted. Window broken out. Trash left through out the unit and graffiti (black marker) on one small area of a bedroom wall. :flush
What would be a safe estimate to repaint a 2bed, aprox. 1000sqft town home style unit? My property manager is quoting $700 for labor and paint. Since I’ve always done my own painting this seems high to me, is it?
2nd question, what’s a safe estimate for re-carpeting the same size unit?
Here in SoCal, I would expect that $700 to get you about 3 man-days (probably two guys for 1.5 days)
Reasonable carpeting is going to be run about $18-20/yd fully installed. Be sure to ask for a discount off the quoted price for the place being empty. Usually they will knock a buck or two per yard off as its easier for them (no furniture moving).
If that $700 includes materials, which would be at least $150, that would leave $550 for labor. That’s as cheap as it’s going to get unless somebody just goes in there and sets off a paint bomb. That sounds like Houston prices, but you can buy a house there for $60 a sq. ft., or a wacky condo for 20 grand. Come on California, spread the money around.
I have some cheap numbers for ya. I live in Texas just north of Dallas. One of my properties is a 4 plex with each unit being 1000 sqft. On my last fix up I hired a couple of day labors to paint the interior. It wasn’t a professional job but it’s a cheap rental and I did some touch up. I paid $60 for 5 gal of paint and paid 2 guys $80 each to paint for 8 hours. Total to paint 1000 sqft was $220. I replaced the linolium (excuse the spelling) in the bathrooms and replaced the carpet throughout the house. The price for the mid grade carpet and linolium was $990 and the labor to put it all down was $350. I hired a couple of carpet guys to do it on the weekend on their own time. I pulled the old carpet up myself but they took care of the linolium.
That sounds great. It doesn’t get any better than that. But if SoCal’s unit is anything like a nice place, I’d set my radar a little higher, as far as the painting goes.
FYI the property is in Baton Rouge, LA. Apparently there’s an 11 yearold staying with one of the tenants and he has taken it upon himself to destroy my vacant unit. We are now on break-in #3 on the same unit. Wish I could post pictures.
The main things that are going to affect your paint price are cutin, and coverings, If his quote was 700 for a one color blast, then its high. But if there is a seperate color for trim, or the trim gos unpainted then prices can go up substantially
I have just done 2 x 750 sq ft condos with complete rehab. Here’s what we pay (Phoenix AZ):
Painting - $600 full labor & paint
Carpet - $700 for commercial grade, incl. labor and underlay, or $1000 for residential carpet, incl. labor and underlay
All prices including sales tax.
Use local people, ideally those that you have a relationship with. Put an ad in Craigslist.org for local labor. The ones that are low on work will respond and they’ll give you the best prices.
The best thing you can do is to build a team of contractors that you trust for this. You might only be starting, but a team will keep you focussed on looking for the deals rather than chasing up dodgy contractors.