Modular Additions

kenvest

i have a customer who owns somewhere around 500 rental homes. he's been investing for almost 50 years and along the way he's acquired alot of 50's and 60's 1000sq/ft brick ranch houses with only 1 bathroom. he told me that as of this moment about 90 of his homes are vacant, most of them being the old 1 bath ranch.

the floor plans on these homes are all very simular and don't lend themselves very well to under-roof bathroom additions.

while i don't have the resources to do 90 bathroom addtions, i would like to try and help this guy out. has anyone ever seen modularized home additions?

it would be nice to do a foundation, drop a completed small addtion on it, hook it up and move on. we don't need anything fancy.....

your thoughts?

Glasshousebltr

For what you'd pay for prefab, I'd just stick them and save some bundles.

Stay at it hard and you should be able to knock out a bath add on in 7 to 14 days.

Where are ya at Ken? I might be interested in putting a few together for ya.

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Bob

housedocs

I'm with Glass, I don't see how you could come out ahead by setting a pre-fab addition on a footing vs stick building from scratch.

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kenvest

i'm in charlotte, nc. he hasn't warmed up to the idea of finding a contractor he can trust do so many homes so he's starting to sell these homes off.

charlotte is in the middle of what they predict will be a 20 to 30 year growth cycle and finding contractors here that do what they say they'll do is hard to find. this is especially true for the investor who tends to look at the bottom line a little closer than your avergae guy. i was a modular solution might warm him up to the idea that he could turn these around fairly quickly. at a week or two to add a stick built bath, we'd be at this 2 or 3 years and i don't think he has the patience for that. you'd think a modular of some sort could be done in half the time?

this is a trend in this town. 1 bath houses are hard to sell. a quick, easy and predictable way to add on to these houses could be a money maker.

glasshouse, you wouldn't starve here. we have alot of comedy clubs you could perform in if construction doesn't work out for you

Teetorbilt

I'm with Glass. Think of it as making your own pre-fab. Develop a working floorplan and stick to it. The first couple should work out most of the bugs and then you can go like he!!.

With that many to do, you should be able to find a local builders supply that will work with you. Develop a list for them and have them deliver everything to the site when you're ready.

My bro-in-law did it with entire homes when he lived in St. Thomas, VI. They even packed the containers so that everything came out as needed. I used to kid him about his 'house in a box' but he made a lot of money with them.

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kenvest

i agree that if someone were to dedicate soley to doing this gig, you could probably do well with it. i don't have that kind of "dedicative drive" to a project of this magnitude and at my age, i'm starting to concentrate more and more on paper and money shuffling.

he'll probably just keep selling them off slowly but surely, maybe keep the ones in good neighborhoods and work on them a bit.

if someone we're to specialize strictly on adding basic bathrooms onto the thousands of small brick ranches in this town, you could do pretty well at it. give the customer a few options, not to many though, and have the same crew doing the same thing day in and day out, it could be a winner. basically doing the same thing that patio room vendors do....

thanks for the replys!