We’ve made some slight changes over at the fire damage three family…. mainly we decided that it was no longer going to be a three family, we are converting it to a two family. The main reason behind this is because the city wanted us to do too many life/safety upgrades to the property that would have killed our budget. They were requiring us to either put a sprinkler system in, or install a fire alarm system complete with pull boxes, strobe lights, illuminated exit signs, beacons, and a fire panel that wirelessly called directly into the fire department. These are things you would generally find in a large office building or a 50-100 unit apartment complex…. not a dinky little three family located on a side road in Forest Park.

 The changes are actually going to work out pretty good. We had planned on holding this property as a rental, but now since it is only two units we are going to retail it. The value of the property actually doesn’t change that much, a two family is worth about the same as a three family, mainly due to the ease in which an owner occupant can buy a two family. A three family is much more difficult for an owner occupant to finance and an investor purchasing usually needs 20%-30% down thus limiting the pool of buyers and bringing the price of a three unit down.

It is now a very large two family with the second unit taking up two floors, kind of like a townhouse unit. The second floor unit will now be 6 bedrooms and 2 full baths…. it’s gonna be huge!

We’ve finished up the majority of the work on the outside. The inside is being sheetrocked. Heres a look;

All the siding is complete along with the roof and the windows. The front porch was rebuilt and the side porch was taken down. Heres what it looked like before;

  So the outside is looking real sharp. Now it’s just a matter of finishing up the sheetrock, painting, and completing all the finish work inside. Before you know it we’ll have this one on the market and under agreement!!!