As An Investment, Carwash Or Apartment Complex?

Patrick

Lazer car washes are the SH** !!! We got em here in New England. the building is about 20x40 has two stalls. You pull up and theres a machine that takes your cash or credit card, then you pull in put your car in park and a lazer sees where your car is and an overhead arm goes over and around your car spraying high pressure water soap wax and what not then rinses then a green light pops up and you drive out and on the way out there is a dryer that stay on for 60 secs. Gets the car cleaner than any other type of carwash. They seems to be springing up around here. There are usually lines waiting to get in. The cost is $10 $8 and $7 $6 depending on how much crap you want on your car. And it appears that they dont waste a lot of water. i would imagine you could have some sort of filter system that reuses the water collected in the floor drains. Ive never seen any employees around. PK

Woz the Painter

Do they have lasick eye surgury at these Lazer Washes?

Patrick

No not yet, but that could be his niche, drive through surgery... The thing is its impossible for your brand new truck to get scratched at the Lazer carwash cause nothing touches your car except water and soap PK

AHS

If you could get a big enough lot, it would be nice to build a self serve car wash & have mini storage units next to it. Would be a cash cow in the right area!

Pennyroyal's

Good luck on either endeavor...but...a friend of mine owned a car wash in the 70's, his experience was pretty negative and the hind sight advice he gave me was to not go with a car wash. His reason being when the economy goes south one of the first things people give up is going to a car wash...it is free to do it at home and it is an easy one to drop from the budget to feel like you are being more thrifty...Good luck. Joe

Pennyroyal's

Go for the drive through liquor store...that booms in hard times!

A+Carpenter

MAYBE NEXT YEAR THEY MIGHT

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joasis

I have 2 sets of drawings on my desk for mini storages....If I would have been asked 25 years ago if I thought people would pay $100 a month to store their wore out, useless junk away from home, I would have said you are nuts. Now I wish I owned a few...cash cow around here. Including lot, construction costs look like $26 a sq/ft.

Ken@K&R

We are currently in the process of installing equipment in a car wash now. I have been told that with 4 self service bays at $.75 for 3 minutes, an auto bay at $5 and a dog wash thats $5 for 5 minutes it pulls in around $1,000 per week. It has 1 person working maybe 1 hour per day to clean up the bays and nasty stinkin dog hair. Takes maybe 1 hour a week to pull out change. At first the $1,000 a week sounds ok but the owner goes through hell sometimes too. After they get a few years old another pump needs rebuilt every other month, a contactor goes out here, a selonoid goes out there. He has a crew that can do alot of repairs but if they can't get it done it's $50 an hour to call in the experts for this area. Another car wash here that is only around 5 years old when we went to look at it the same problems. The system was installed from one place. The repair parts ordered from another made it easy to tell how much was needed for repairs. All the orgional pumps were replaced at least once, the brush system was replaced, an entire control cabnet was replaced with a made on the spot type, lighting was trashed.

Thats the extent of my knowledge on a carwash anyhow.

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Ken

Grumpy

Not to mention the various state, and federal grants (free money you don't have to pay back) available for various housing projects. I periodically research these grants and only wish I had more money and experience and I'd probably give it a shot.

ProWallGuy

Back in the day, I rented a house from a soon-to-retire Air Force colonel. With his savings, he bought 30-40 properties, with 75% of them being section-8 (not mine, thank you!). We stayed there a couple years, and after I moved out, did some small paint jobs for him. The bank ended up foreclosing on all the properties, and he filed bankruptcy. When I asked what went wrong, he claimed that he obviously had problems collecting from the section 8 tenants, but had an even harder time receiving his checks from the government. Always late, often for wrong amounts, and so on. So much so he couldn't cover the problems/delays on his military paycheck, and so it went belly up. Poor guy, thought it was a sure thing for a retirement fund, and look where it got him.

My thoughts, build the carwash. I wouldn't want to rely on anyone else to cut me checks (ESPECIALLY not the government). With apartments, you deal with bad renters, tore-up appliances, maintenance, etc. The carwash would be more under your control.

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slickshift

Eh....both will take a fair amount of time
Unless you get good mangers

Really the least amount of worries is a coin-op laundromat
But I suppose that's a little small for you
Well, with 1-2 mil you could have a couple

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kdub1777

First of all thanks for all the replies and comments. As you can see it might be a hard decision between the two. There are positives and negatives with each. I think the car wash will take less work after it is built unless we hire a property management company for the apartments. We are going to start crunching some numbers, talk with the bank, and see if one of the choices will stand out.

I do like the idea of having a car wash and storage unit complex. This would work great in the area we have in mind. Then I think we can build a drive thru liquor store followed by drive thru lazer eye surgery. It's perfect.

hulk

i know i'm late to this post but my family has owned carwashs for 30 years had as many a 8 now we have none regardless of what people tell you its hard to make money in carwashs the cost of equiment is outragous and your totaly depend on the weather if you have a rain season your going to have problems and vandalism is crazy out of the 8 we had the best one made $13,000 a month and if you have a payment it will be very hard to make ends meet now i know that some carwashs do make money but for every one that does there 10 that don't just my 2 cents

CC1

I disagree with hulk. Car washes are moneymakers depending on the area. I have a close family friend who owns 4 of them. He pulls in around $200K /yr off of each!

Carwash: Has a high setup cost, but low overhead. You don't need a lot of employees, can set it up to use reclaimed water to add to your savings!

Apartments or gated communties: More equipment to maintain = more costs to you. Need to pay office staff/mgr which can usually mean one less apartment to rent.