Uh bad decisions from my side,
you know trusting people too much The amount of filth and the smell, it
probably hadn't been cleaned in five years Again it doesn't look safe, it
doesn't look structurally sound at all This is the best job I've done
on a house at this price point And a few records were broken Welcome to
the next flip I completed this renovation
in record time and that's not the only record that got broken I've got lots to share with you guys including an interesting story about the previous owner who actually features on this video I'm Steve and this is Flipping Johannesburg so about a year ago the previous owner John
sold this house but the other party breached the contract so I helped him get out of this deal
because he didn't want to sell to them anymore but the problem was he owed them money and was unable
to pay them back. I was interested in buying this house from John so I structured a deal that was
beneficial for both of us with the main conditions being one: that part of my purchase price would
go towards paying back these people that John owed money to and two: that I would help him find a
smaller place to move to. Now finding a place that matched John's requirements was tough. He needed a
townhouse that allows two pets and has a private garden all for around six hundred thousand rand.
Now this is very rare to find but after looking long and hard I found only three properties
on the market that matched this criteria so there was a bit of back and forth but eventually
John made an offer on the one that he liked and it got accepted I'm standing with John here
I've just purchased this house from him and it happened to be a win-win for both of us: he needed
to sell for various reasons and for me it's a nice fixer-upper for my next project. So john I know
you've been through a bit of a tough time recently tell us why you needed to sell this house
exactly. Uh basically a lack of funds, I paid for the house, got a few tenants who didn't pay
correctly or didn't pay on time or didn't pay at all and what would you say led to the the state
of disrepair of this house because the tenants were renting um in the cottage is that right?
Cottage and three rooms. bad decisions from my side you know trusting people too much, that's basically
what led to this. Okay and I'm glad I could help you thank goodness find a new place,
thanks to my contacts in the industry and such and I think it's going to be nice for you to move to
something smaller, it's just you and your pets and um you don't need all the space and I
think emotionally to move on from all of this is a good thing as well.
Yeah absolutely. Steve was a total gentleman, took me to look at a few places he went out of his way to help congratulations on the new purchase and good luck.
Congratulations on your purchase. All the best this is Project T, it's going to be
an interesting flip because the budget's quite tight so I've got to get
creative in saving a bit of money it's a small house but there's so much value here. I'm very
excited to take you guys through, let's do it so this is a 738 square meter stand, four bedrooms,
two bathrooms, a cottage or staff room, garden space in the front and back and a single garage so as we walk in, if we turn to the left
we've got the lounge / tv room through this side leads to the kitchen and if you look past the furniture and the mess, it's really not that bad. Okay besides this stain on the carpet, it's a bit rough so if we head back through this way, through these round archways we head to the dining room and I really don't like these round archways. A simple solution is just squaring them off and it makes such a big difference. If you compare those round archways to the squared-off look here, you can see what I mean so this side we've got another lounge or study area - there's quite a few reception rooms for a compact house, so let's take a look these tiles throughout are actually perfect, I don't think there's anything wrong with them in this room there is a bit of ceiling damage up top which um it's not too bad but I mean
this mess, look at all these feathers oh there's a dead, there's a dead bird there,
shucks. Ya and this natural light flows in through these bay windows and they're
such a cool element, really nice design feature so come this way, let's head past the dining
through to this side which is actually a guest room or fourth bedroom but to get to it you walk
through this bathroom which is in the passageway and it doesn't actually have a toilet it's very
very strange but what I think is that because there's a door leading out here, I think this was
always an outroom, it was never joined to the main house and when they knocked through to join it
they knocked through by the bathroom there and then obviously just removed the toilet so it just
needs to be fixed. I wouldn't even call this a built-in cupboard, it's more like a freestanding
cupboard but something we can work with so the kitchen doesn't actually
make the best use of the space you can see the only top cupboards are
these here on either side of the extractor and this side here and then in terms of the
cupboard doors I'm going to have to replace them as an example if you look at these, the style at
the bottom is different to the style at the top so that doesn't work. I think the only thing that
I might be able to work with is a backsplash tile so let's have a look at the bedrooms,
I might have to replace these tiles because they're a little bit patchy and cracked heading
through to the bedroom here so the room's quite small but it's cozy, the carpets definitely have to go and then the cupboards need a bit of work this is the first bathroom it is really small,
I think I'm going to keep the same layout but obviously modernize everything and make sure
everything's new - the bathrooms really have to be brand new. So if we head to the main bedroom
there's a section of tiling that's different to the passage tile so it really looks patchy
it doesn't look great at all. Then in the main bathroom - it's an exact replica of the first
bathroom but here it's important that I put a new shower in so we've at least got one bathroom
with a shower. Ya it's really small, we can't both fit in here actually. And then the main bedroom,
nice size, we've also got the bay windows here once again the cupboards need quite a bit of work so all in all you can see the house is really
spacious and offers a lot of accommodation for the compact size. Let's head outside. This door handle is very high, look. Unusually high there's quite a few interesting patio structures
here, I mean look at this one, this is attached to the guest room with that funny toilet set up and
you can see it's very lob-sided, it looks unsafe and in my mind you don't actually
need a covered patio here because the main entertainment area is this side
and this is a nice area to have a covered patio but I don't know how I'll work with this existing
structure because once again it doesn't look safe it doesn't look structurally sound at all, so I'm
probably going to end up just taking this down and building a new one. Some nice
speakers here, they've being cable tied on ya so this is your garden, I think
with it being clean and some new lawn it can look really nice. You've got a fire
pit here which will also be a nice feature and then here, there's actually a cottage so if
you look at the main house which can be a four bedroom, you've got a cottage as or a staff room. A
lot of accommodation. The cottage is quite spacious but fairly basic, I'll be keeping the floor tiles
here and generally a bit of a cleanup and a new coat of paint. There's a little kitchenette and a
decent sized bathroom. The house also features an extra length single garage with direct access to the house this is the entrance of the house and have a look at these trees, they are huge and they haven't been maintained for so many years absolute monstrosities so they need a lot of
trimming and then have a look at this section here this can add a lot of value because it's an extra
parking space, the driveway is not that big but this concrete's a bit unneat, needs to be leveled
off and neatened along the sides and then here we need some decent steps going down here at
least. Let's have a look at the front of the house so it's a lovely little house and picture this
cleaned up, neat, trees trimmed, house painted it'll look really really nice and the plan
is obviously to paint the entire house but I think the roof is okay it looks
fine, maybe it doesn't need to be painted but very very excited to get started, it's a lovely
cottage style house, let's get stuck in John really let this place go to ruin, the amount of filth
and the smell it probably hadn't been cleaned in five years. Helping him out was a lot of work
though for me because I had to do everything, he didn't lift a finger. I arranged the purchase of
his new place, I packed all his old stuff, I paid for the moving costs, I even transported his dog.
He really was appreciative though and it was nice for me to be able to give back, put him back on his
feet and really make such an impact in his life so the plumbers are here to the rescue and
we've got a blocked sewerage line. So the tree roots have caused the blockage most likely.
Ah this is so rough. Smelling good Smelling great we managed to clear the blockage you can see we've started trimming a bit,
we're gonna put electric fencing on the front side of the property here but it was a bit
overgrown so we're clearing the top of the wall and then we can start with the electric fence You see the little section above there?
That's going to be like an extra parking space Okay.
So we're going to neaten up the cement
work there but then the tree's in the way Okay.
So it's a monstrosity.
It's also getting dry on one side hey, which means it's coming to the end of its lifespan. Trimming obviously all the dead leaves. Yeah. Clearing all of this, taking all the garden rubble. I saw there was
some outside as well, this old bamboo everything? Ya Neatening the beds. I think it's nice to have these
three palms here, I mean it can be the palm tree house And check how it's right up against the house.
It's just too big, it's planted in the wrong place Yeah it's a pity hey. But I agree with you, those
need to be trimmed up there. Yes. Then Clive, the main section of garden here, this grass - I'm hoping we can just revive this grass and not have to put new what do you think?
Let's rather look at the grass when everything's been cleared. If I remember very well you
said this one you're moving it away. I want to remove the shed yeah because just to
increase the lawn space. so that branch is going through the other tree through.
And out on the other side yeah have you seen that before?
I haven't seen this before. cutting down the big conifer I think it's pretty obvious which house
on the street's doing renovations crazy - all that garden rubble's come from clearing
this side, the front side. Looking better. okay so it's this patio structure here, I think we can use
some elements here, mainly the roof. Yeah the roof sheetings you can. It's too big this thing and I was
thinking now let's say it starts from about here and goes this way. Okay. Because it's also giving
a bit of shade into the kitchen. Yeah you're not getting enough natural light going in. Exactly.
So from here basically all the way to there um and then what I'm thinking is to go with the
steel. Yeah. On the uprights. The structure with these poles I would say take them off. Yeah. And
go steel. Steel uprights. And then I don't know if you would do the lip channel? Lip channel is
best and then you can use the IBR's Use the existing and it looks fine, there's one or two
holes. No that's fine. Would you say the steel lip channels is the most cost effective? Most
cost-effective in terms of longevity, maintenance this is high maintenance. You do the same with the
gutter. It doesn't have to be hidden. It doesn't have to be hidden, we can put
it on the outside which is far quicker and easier and let it match the existing gutters on the
building. I forgot to mention - that structure is coming down. So you've got plenty IBR there as well.
Take the best and it looks like there's some downpipes sitting on top there. Yeah we can
check on what we can salvage. Yes basically carcasses need to stay, I initially
thought about changing layout. Yeah. But because of budget I think we keep the layout and
if you look there it's really fine it just needs a bit of a cleanup. It's not as bad as it looks
on the outside. I mean we've worked with worse before. Yeah look because sometimes you just need
to change the rails or some new components Yes. We need to put new doors and the reason
is these, look, these are different to these different to those. Yeah I mean even painting these,
they look a little bit shot as well. If you look this side, check here, the splashback hasn't
gone all the way up. Yeah. The floor tiles are going okay. They need to be changed and then I want
to just do a feature splash back here guys have starting with the kitchen carcass taking the doors off and they're just uh
doing some repair work on the carcasses As you can see the layout is exactly the same as
the other bathroom but here we need a shower because obviously you have to have a shower
and I think it makes more sense in the main bathroom. I've been looking at ideas on layout
and to me I first thought of the shower screen you know just the glass but access is a bit
of an issue. Yeah because of the basin. What I thought - just a normal enclosure in this
corner. Corner. Yeah the issue is though 900 takes us to there. Comes out pretty far. Mmm, unless
you do a rounded. That's exactly what I was going to say next But then that's going to cut down on the
space of the shower. I think that rounded enclosure makes the most sense here so much dust so we're sorting out the
big cracks here and on this side the guys are making good
progress with the painting painting looks good. Yeah yeah. You like
the color? Yeah Yeah. This is one coat hey Yes one coat kitchen's coming along, almost ready
to put the tops on and the doors tiler is moving very quickly, we've already
tiled all three bedrooms basically and the passage and now they're moving to tile the bathrooms let's see how the new patio is looking the project ran smoothly because I planned it
very well. One of the challenges I did encounter though were the contractors and workers being
quite busy on other jobs and it's definitely this time of the year before closing up for
december guys get very busy. So Paul my kitchen guy had a gap in his schedule to come and do the
kitchen but at this stage we were still busy with some of the build work so we ended up having a
completed kitchen while we were still chopping and chasing and generating dust around it so it
was a bit stressful I was worried it was going to get damaged but it was all fine in the end and it
actually had the effect of speeding us up in other areas and then some other contractors actually
let me down due to other jobs but I overcame this by always having a backup guy in case which
meant there were no delays thank goodness in terms of the numbers I knew from the beginning
that the margins were tighter on this flip it's a smaller house so it does
have some inherent limitations which put a ceiling on the
sales price that can be obtained some of these are: the stand size is compact, it
doesn't have a pool and it's got a single garage however the flip side of this is that the buyer
gets really great value at this lower price point and I know this part of the area very well,
I've flipped a house on this street before so I had those sales numbers in mind during this flip
knowing that I needed to keep the budget in check and the discipline paid off because I
actually didn't exceed budget on this flip let's look at a breakdown of the renovation costs
from the most expensive category to the least expensive. The painting material and labour is the
most expensive fix-up item. Kitchen and bathrooms are next on the list and you could argue that
they are the most important areas to spend on. The extensive garden cleanup explains the twenty thousand
rand spend. Next is electrics and plumbing, very crucial areas to sort out. Then the new covered
patio, floor tiling, construction and build work and tools and miscellaneous. Interestingly the first 10
categories make up 77 percent of the entire spend. Here are the other categories bringing the total cost of
the renovation to just over 305 thousand rand. here it is. Project T, completed in record time and it
is really a dramatic before and after house flip so here it is, the completely
new and renovated Project T this tv room has been staged so functionally
and cleverly, it actually makes the room look a lot bigger. Such a breath of fresh air from
before, no more stained carpets and filth and if we head through to the
dining room you'll see here this is where the round archways were and we
squared them off. Neatens the look a lot such an inexpensive and simple renovation to do to
square off the arches, has that modernizing effect let's take you through the spacious formal lounge we fixed the broken ceiling from before
and we actually kept these old floor tiles an interesting thing is during
the renovation we had some water seeping through the skirting at
the bottom there during some rains so we fixed that and that is one benefit
of renovating during the rainy season so you'll remember there was a bathroom here
without a toilet so the hard decision was do I keep this as a bathroom or do I get rid of it
entirely. So obviously you can't have a bathroom in the passageway leading to a bedroom and
building a bathroom elsewhere would cost too much when it's not actually necessary because the
house already has two bathrooms so this would be an additional one. So the final decision was to get
rid of this as a bathroom and keep it as a passage but then I added this linen cupboard here
to keep the space nice and functional and there is lots of value here with this as
a guest room, fourth bedroom or study. It's nice and neat, we fixed up the cupboards, it's got its
own entrance and a nice surprise - when we pulled up the carpets there was this tile underneath
so it saved me a lot of money, didn't have to re-tile I didn't think the kitchen would turn out this
amazing, a big contributor is this new backsplash tile because I was going to keep the old one but
I'm so glad that I didn't. And then in terms of the layout, it stayed the same. We worked with the
existing carcasses but we put new doors. You can see this nice wood grain finish on the doors. And then
new rustenburg granite tops, brand new appliances and over this side we added a new water point so
you can run your dishwasher and washing machine so the floor tiles from the kitchen this way are
all new and we ran them into the bedrooms for that seamless look. Those old carpets were an absolute
no-go and they were just a collection of filth and then in the bedrooms we neatened up
all the built-in cupboards, fixed them and repainted everywhere obviously. So this
is the first bathroom, looks nice and fresh hey the layout stayed the same but everything is
new and the old bath was a cast iron bath so they're very solid and nice to keep if you can
but it was chipped in quite a few places so the cost and mission of fixing it exceeded that
of just putting a new bath in. Let's head to the main bathroom, you can see it looks even fresher.
I changed the layout here and we added a shower a nice compact, round shower design and this
white tile is lovely if you go close you can see it's got a little pattern to it, so I'm really
happy with my design choices for the bathrooms here's your main bedroom. Wow these blue
accents are really cool I love them, it gives you that Mykonos, Greece feeling. Vanessa
you've done it again with the staging wow and you know this is the first time I've
staged a lower value, smaller house like this but it's making me realize how important it
is and I really want to stage on every flip so let's take a look outside you can see we removed this funny lob-sided
structure that was joined to the guest room it was really not necessary and it
made the space feel quite cluttered the big change is this side where we took down the
old covered patio and we built a new smaller one and the span ends here whereas the old one, I don't know if
you remember, went over this window blocking in a lot of the natural light from the kitchen. What was
really really amazing with this build is that we were able to reuse a lot of the materials so this
IBR roof sheeting is from the old roof and then these steel lip channels that run inside, we found
the exact number that we needed just lying around on site so thanks to reusing materials we saved
about eight thousand rand on this build, amazing so this paving never looked great before, it was
worn, it had a washed out terracotta color, there was a large crack running through the middle and
one of my contractors actually suggested that we seal the crack and actually paint the paving this
this grey and I'm so glad we did because something this simple has such a big impact, looks great. So
previously this section at the back of the patio here wasn't actually covered, in essence there
was a big hole in the ground and it's where these toilet waste pipes link up to the drain below and
it goes down to ground level but what we did is we needed to cover it because you don't want to be
chilling on the patio and fall back into a hole so we covered it with timber pieces that
are supported by some cleats below and it looks quite seamless now because we painted the
same color as the pavers and if need be you can actually remove these pieces to get down to the
drain let's say if you've got a blocked drain for instance and then you put the pieces back, so a neat
little solution. Let's look at the garden we've put some new lawn, um nice and green and there
was an old shed here which we got rid of because it was taking up a lot of the lawn space.
These wooden structures are quite neat it's a nice simple cost effective solution to
create a bit more privacy because that wall with the neighbor is quite low that side. And
overall it's quite a dramatic before and after you can see the cottage looks a lot
cleaner, new paint has a big effect it was lacking a clothing cupboard so we
added one and generally we didn't do a lot of renovating for budget purposes but it's neat
and the new owner has many use cases for the space so you'll remember there was a big conifer
tree here but it was in the way of us sorting out this landing area and what we did to
fix it is we built a wall along the front and along the back side so that we could
fill it and level it off, make it a bit neater and then we built some nice steps going down so
it's nice and presentable the front of the house this grass is all new and you can see on the house
we painted everything except the roof and we went for that charcoal look on the external doors
and window frames but I mean this contrast from before, this big dumping ground now it's this green
lushness and it's been realized its full potential when deciding what to price this house at my
starting point for comparatives was the house I'd flipped before in this street, very similar house
to this but it had a few pros those being: it had a double garage (this has a single garage),
a bit more parking space and it had a pool but it also had a few cons: it was a three
bedroom house (this has four bedrooms), the entertainment area was not as nice
as this and it didn't have a cottage so I had to factor all these in when pricing
this. Now that sold for 1.56 million in 2019, two years ago so already an upwards adjustment
needed to be made on that price. Another thing that was important was I looked at what
houses are on the market for in the area and then importantly the most recent sales prices
that were achieved in this area. So you can see a lot of analysis goes into this and at the
same time I had to keep in mind my margins and the fact that the house needs to sell quick,
so you can see it's a dynamic approach as well this is the best job I've done on a house at this
price point and a few records were broken. Firstly this is the quickest I've renovated a house, I
had one week of planning and then four weeks of work until completion. we pushed really hard. Then
with the listing, I wanted to put the house on the market at a competitive 1.75 million however after
consulting with the property pro Arthur Baron he suggested we go to market at 1.8 million and
so that's what we did. Then came the other record: one day after listing the property we received
an offer of the full asking price - 1.8 million I actually still cannot believe it, this is a
first. In addition to that we also received five other full asking price offers. Absolutely
crazy. I guess there's so much demand for brand new houses and there's not a lot of them,
the market is competitive at the moment and the interest rates are at an all-time low so all of
this lends itself to a record-breaking sale I purchased the house for 930 000 rand, there were
some transfer and finance costs involved, renovation costs came to just over 300 000 rand which brought
the total cost to just under 1.3 million rand in one day the property sold for 1.8 million rand
and after the sales costs, the net profit figure came to 426 thousand, six hundred and seventy five rand.
Now the time period from cash outflow for the purchase and cash inflow from the sale was four months
therefore this flip produced an annualized return on investment of one hundred percent.
These figures are in South African Rands here are the figures in US dollars
for those that are interested if you haven't already, make sure you click
above to watch the Project H house flip where the profit was double this one and I had to deal
with big problems like theft. so congratulations on your new purchase, you must be really really excited and I mean you were quick out the gates I think you you viewed the day we listed and then
the next day your your offer came in so tell us how did you find out about the house so
quickly? Okay so I'll be 100 percent honest - with the help of Arthur Baron obviously, I have a family member
working there and we coordinated and viewed the property same day, we did the offer same day and we
prayed from there and everything kind of went the way we wanted it to go because honestly I fell
in love. And how did you feel when other offers came in and there was a lot of other interest,
did you think you were going to lose the place? Yes I did actually. There were plans set in place
from the estate agent already obviously to have an open house and that all went ahead so here's
me thinking as a first-time buyer you know someone's gonna fall in love like I did and say
like I'll offer you like three bar and then what am I gonna do? But yes to answer your question
I was a bit scared of that part but here we are so nothing bad happened. That's awesome.
And what stood out for you, like what really sold it for you in all honesty I would say the outside, the
lights and the bay windows and the beautiful palm trees, everything was just perfect and
then when you came in the house I was like I don't remember what I loved outside because you
come in here, you're like new kitchen, new bathrooms that's probably the most important because you
know cost wise buying a property and having to redo things like that. That's awesome, ya it's cool
for me to get that feedback because I often don't being a renovator I don't get to see what people
really really enjoyed you know, so that's pretty cool. Yeah and then are there any changes you
would make, obviously it's newly renovated but what would you add or change?
so back to bay windows, obviously, that's sort of the perfect area to add seating and storage. That's a good idea.
You know, pillows and I'm the decorative type of person that would want those kinds of things so yes that's
probably the only thing I would add other than that I think I would be a bit stupid to want to
add anything because there's nothing more to add ah that's amazing, that's awesome. And then yeah
lastly, on the house, so it's three bedrooms, there's a guest room and a cottage, will you be using
all these rooms? Will your family be with you? so my son and I will be moving into this house
alone believe it or not. And the cottage will generate an income. Wow. So we'll be renting it on
an airbnb basis. That's so cool to hear. Airbnb is probably the most noteworthy thing about this
house and for a first time buyer. It's amazing for me that I got to obviously create a house that is
your dream house, so it's really fulfilling for me so congratulations again and all the best.
And the same to you I mean you have to also note that you need to know what you do, you know what you're
doing, the capabilities of renovating a house because you did this as part of your job, you do this for a
living but in essence all the money that's gone in, all the efforts, all the hard work literally has
made somebody's dream come true and I don't think you always go into a project thinking that because
as long as it comes out better than you got it your job's done but in terms of
making people realize their dreams, knowing what you want, everything's perfect, I
think it's a real massive gift on your part so I need to thank you as well.
You're welcome, you're giving me goosebumps. No that's really cool like making an impact is I mean making a difference is amazing
and that's what is fulfilling for you know doing what I do so thank you. the sales transfer takes a
few months so we carry on with maintenance right up until ownership has transferred. Now usually it's small things like garden service, cleaning, general maintenance but it also gives us time to
iron out any other issues that may crop up so in this case there's a few areas of damp in the house
and there has been a lot of rain in Johannesburg recently so in this formal lounge if you look up here there's a bit of moisture that's come through the wall here, it's not a lot but it is noticeable
and it's a similar thing down at the skirting here and then in the kitchen, on the ceiling there's
a bigger leak there which needs to be sorted out so let's get the professional's assessment of
this damp here. So Praga, what do you think this is Okay from what we see on the outside it
looks like the water is just seeping through the rafter join on the plaster, so it's not a
major leak we just need a little bit of sealing between the rafter and the plaster and
should eliminate that problem. Same with the bottom it's a very slow seep but it just
needs a little bit of sealer at the bottom cool well let's go have a look outside and see what it
looks like from that side okay if you look at that point, it's where the water runoff from your roof valley comes down so the fact that it's been running there quite often, sort of, you know uh
damaged the timber a little bit but not too bad but it just needs to be sealed up. That's the point
where it could be soaking in if you look at there you just probably need to put a little bit of
sealer to seal that little gap to prevent the water from soaking in so, Praga what do you think this most likely is? Okay, most likely, it could be from a roof tile, maybe a cracked roof tile or roof tile that moved off with the heavy winds we've had recently but we'll assess it, we'll get on the roof and see exactly what's going on and uh take it from there.
Okay and then we'll also have a look in the ceiling to see if there's any other damages that we can see so we're in the roof and we're having a look just above this bit of damp in the kitchen you can see the damp spot there So does it look like a leaking pipe? There we go, it's a leaking pipe. Oh there's the drip. Very small leak So to fix the problem you can see we've sealed around this rafter where the gap was where the moisture was coming in so here we've actually chopped quite deep, we've sealed off with some damp seal and now we're going to fill again with concrete so that the damp will be a thing of the past so you can see we've sorted out the problem and we've sealed up around this rafter on the inside we did a light sand on the damp areas we then applied damp seal and then the finishing coat and in the kitchen we sorted out the leaking pipe so the damp is a thing of the past my philosophy is doing things properly and taking pride in your work otherwise what's the point I want to say a big thank you to the guys on the ground that actually did this amazing work - my team is the best This was such an epic flip, I enjoyed every minute of it so thank you for watching. Please subscribe to my channel: Flipping Johannesburg and follow me on social media and
stay tuned because the next one's coming very soon
