Real Estate Investing 101: Top 5 Most PROFITABLE Renovations

what's up you guys it's Graham here so I'm here with this special guest some of you may have met him before but those that haven't should probably meet Kevin we're gonna be talking about the most profitable renovations that you can be doing anytime you renovate a property this could be whether or not you intend to flip it or you're buying something for a rental this is probably what's going to end up getting you the highest ROI and let's get right into it I think number one would probably be the kitchen and the kitchen doesn't need to be something that's overly expensive you don't need to spend $50,000 on a kitchen but it does make a huge impact and from what I've experienced the kitchen is really often the selling points of any home whether you're renting it or trying to flip it or sell it in today's day and age it's really the central point that everybody goes to in a house where everybody's hanging out in the kitchen and what's adjacent to the kitchen family-room in the dining room that's the heart of the house the rest of the stuff can be hidden behind walls oftentimes people focus on reball in kitchen before even like the master bath because nobody's really looking at the master bath anyway especially now the number one thing a lot of people are doing is really opening up the kitchen and that's like the easiest thing to do and that's the basic renovation it's just like let's open up the kitchen start with the holy go with the walls and then number two I would say would probably be the cabinetry now yeah and if you're someone like Matt McKeever your market doesn't necessarily need brand new cabinetry you can often just paint the cabinets that are there and oftentimes that's just good enough there are some great examples that you can see online where people take old 1967 these oak cabinets and they either spray paint them white the best color is usually like a Swiss coffee semi-gloss got a little bit of you know Sheen to it and just enough pigment so you can really cover that oak well and some other people now they get into these gel stains where they can turn these old original cabinets a little bit of sanding and then a gel stain of gray or dark espresso color yeah people look like they get these custom cabinets and all they've done is transform the color of old original cabinets now they don't have to fix the walls behind them they don't have to replan the whole kitchen there's a lot of Labor and it's stalling the kitchen in itself yeah I totally agree even things as small as little handles like this oh my god it's so easy and this is something fun to do too you get to go to Home Depot or really anywhere and they're like 50 cents to $2 each it's the easiest thing you can ever do and you can even do it yourself with the screwdriver oh my gosh the and match the hinges while you're at it so all of a sudden take the doors off lights and pain up put new hinges on when you go to reinstall them anyway you're doing the same screwing any way from hinges yeah it is all screw on the $2 hinges and put a nice new one in yeah got a class stuff kitchen for very little money some people say oh I've got a house that's worth $80,000 why would you spend 40 grand on a kitchen remodel which some people do when you can get away spending two three thousand dollars painting and updating the hardware and look at the kitchen cabinetry and you get just as far almost and one other thing that's really important - I think our countertops and this is something that often dates a property and it doesn't need to be very expensive to redo them and I've noticed to some imitation counter countered but they're imitation stones or whatever they are look just as good as the real thing like visually from like a foot away you can't tell until you actually get up there and touch it do you realize like wait a second this isn't real marble and put the but a do P part of it is do P I don't even know if that's a word but people come and go hey is it stuff like it could be I don't know but some of these things too are more durable like marble stands that's one of the biggest things you'd like you set a wine glass down it has like a little wine ring it's a box oh gosh on granite all the day you get a seal it's tough every year even a slight quartz is just like it's but I think I spent like eight or nine dollars a square foot on that quartz but it's white and you put anything down on it and it leaves just just like this nastiness of just the dirt and knowing Graham you got a good deal on that cord sometimes people spend like 50 bucks a foot ya know get the less expensive stuff nobody cares especially because I think both of us always advocate megabee living in the place forever turn it into a rental in the future and why do you want to leave your tenants with some high-end Brazilian marble or Italian granite or quartz or whatever cares it's been the local granite yard and get something cheap agree number-two flooring especially because you're thinking and that long-run mindset that eventually this property is going to be a rental or maybe it's a rental out of the gate don't spend so much on flooring the best kind of flooring you could really get right now is not like a hardwood or some expensive porcelain it's something that's easy to install and relatively inexpensive and that's what's called luxury vinyl plank it's essentially just like a laminate or looks like a wood but it's scratch resistant and waterproof and don't go too cheap on them yes I neither time ended up making this mistake on my first property I ever got I got this laminate flooring and I got it because it was on sale at Home Depot from like a dollar twenty nine down to like 99 cents something on sale but anyway the floor looked amazing and it was super cheap to install and I was able to do for us I'm like 1,800 square feet for next to nothing the problem was that after the first tenant you would end up like spilling things on the floor and when it came time for the tent to move out and another new tenant to move in the floors are kind of like peeling up on the side the edges hand you couldn't find replacement little bits for this and I ended up just redoing the entire place for slightly more expensive laminate flooring and the hard part is installed it's it's the labor it's that's what kills you on on the projects look you could spend two grand on on the material but then you've got the time the property's not available to be rented that's costing maybe a hundred bucks a day and then the fact that people gotta install it the other thing with this vinyl plank flooring is it's great for pets because there are pets on accidents all that stuff is waterproof and like scratch resistance of really into that stuff like and with that too carpet is one thing that was one mistake I ended up making this was one of the tripods I guess the triflex I bought ended up doing carpet in the bedrooms because it was at the time a few hundred dollars cheaper per room and I think we had four rooms that had to go in and like you know so I think I'm like okay we can save like you know $800 so I went carpet but one of the tenants ended up moving out after a year and the whole carpet needed to be replaced and it became more expensive so at that point I was just like you know what you gotta put in laminate and that carpet gets so nasty - you have to go in there with like I really think love yeah so just go laminate honestly just just a decent good-quality cheap laminate will make the biggest difference especially if it's a rental property do you need electrical gloves I do actually thanks yeah yeah one so number three I would say bathrooms the third most important thing you should focus on anytime you're looking for a high ROI renovation a lot of people focus on the bathroom the powder room and also the master bathroom are really important don't know what a powder room is anymore these days I do comment down below let us know if you know what a powder room is Google what is powder I'm gonna quickly post the blog what is powder room so I get those search results there we go but but ya know a powder room just a room for the guests it's it's usually the the bathroom that just has a toilet and a sink in it there's no tea no shower no bath just a little side guest bathroom but these those things are so easy to renovate and you can usually renovate a bathroom maybe like 3 grand 4 grand I think I spent 7 grand on my bathroom and that was everything with a new shower rearranging all of the plumbing tile good like it's not that complicated and often you can buy almost everything you need on sale at Home Depot in terms of vanities and they have whole setups too with just like everything you need diffic it ok for like 400 500 bucks or even like less than that I've seen them I bought one for like $80 shut up for me I don't know where you get sales at Home Depot that's what you want to do to have sales you just go on a sale day and get whatever is on the clearance item and for rentals nobody knows that's a really good takeaway actually is that tenants they generally didn't come from a place of being a home owner or not always but oftentimes the tenants they don't really realize what different qualities are for fixtures and finishes as long as they look clean place is gonna rent yeah I think it's more about functionality function for a rental Vallot doesn't necessarily need to be high-end unless the area demands that yeah if you're going in Beverly Hills do not buy the $80 vanity you're renting anywhere else that's true you know even in bathrooms some a trick that you can do is retiling can be a big portion of that seven thousand dollar budget yes and so now there are companies that will actually come out and they'll do an acrylic coating a spray over all of your tiling that you have pre-existing so what we've done is on properties that are like getting ready to go up for sale or for rent we'll take a property that has this 1950s pink tile - or like green or have you seen those avocado green tiles so original tiles and just mask everything up and spray the tile white acrylic all of a sudden everything's white looks like it's brand new and bonus on top of that all the grout lines are gone another neat addition for toilets is low started carrying this Kohler toilet seat that has this little LED strip in the back of the actual toilet seat it lights up the water and it was forty nine bucks or something like that like there's gonna be a link in the description and Amazon affiliate link if you guys want to borrow my link know if you guys want to buy the coolest line of toilet seats ever I'm gonna find it on Amazon the link is gonna be in the description make sure everybody orders that from my channel so number four I would say is really important any time you're doing a renovation is lighting and one of the best things you can do especially if you're buying or renovating like a 60s 70s 80s property with a popcorn ceiling at the same time you scrape that popcorn ceiling honestly just put in recessed lighting it's really one of the best things you can do and again it doesn't need to be that expensive it adds a huge amount of value Kent lights are awesome especially what I recommend is put them on a dimmer as well and the best thing you could do if LED retrofit kits they're super cheap like 50 bucks put in the hundred watt LED retrofits which sounds crazy that 100 watt equivalent so for LED they're only like 14 watts but anyway those are the brightest ones you can get and you want to get the ones that are 2700 K 27 RK is is the color temperature those are the ones that look warm not that cool blue that looks too you know doctor's office II but anyway you put those 100 water's in way too bright for normal use but you put them on a dimmer so that way people can dim them to sort of a normal comfortable level but when you go to show that property it lights up and looks huge yeah cheap easy do it totally great and while we're on that also scraping the ceilings if you get the popcorn acoustic ceilings you know just scrape them off and use a respirator when you're scraping this no you don't need to do that you just did a hand you just get that don't sue me for saying for joking we're making we're making jokes here sarcasm this is not financial not health related advice alright number five I would say is probably landscape and this is something I feel like a lot of people overlook because they don't think on a rental or any sort of flipped landscape really makes that big of a difference from my experience it really helps set you apart from everything else just to have something that is aesthetically pleasing and again this doesn't need to be something you spend a ton of money doing landscape just something that is clean and presentable and here in Los Angeles succulents tend to be extremely popular and trendy and that is extremely easy to maintain because one of the biggest concerns especially as a landlord is that your tenant is going to go and ruin and kill your lawn and that's a valid concern there's most tenants saying I don't care about the grass and I don't I don't want to water the grass I don't want it my water field at time bunk down yeah yeah this too like the grasses dies but if you do some low maintenance landscape between gravel succulents something ditches they cannot kill is amazing and really help set you apart it just adds to the character and the curb appeal of the house get the perennials these are the ones that last longer term they generally require less watering anyway and they're Hardy for tenants which party intendant's is usually Denison on I agree and also mulch just you get that little little wood chippy looking mulch with weed bear with Weaver you combine the two and that just creates magic it's super easy to maintain and tenants cannot mess that up so that was five tips so far but I think we're just gonna keep going for the few extra bonus tips for those that have watched all the way through you get the advantage of the bonus tips I would say an extra bonus tip would be mouldings yes especially around doors and windows it's when you're replacing the floor usually you put a new base something that's really in right now is a four inch MDF Craftsman style baseboard just google that 4 inch Craftsman style baseboard it's very very sleek and simple the other trick you can do now as well as carry that molding up around door trims and windows really frame those windows since it's so inexpensive to buy this mold and you're usually looking at 50 to 70 cents a foot and then it just gets nailed on after it's painted it's really not that hard it makes a huge difference the thing to know as well is cosmetic additions for a tenant you have to be careful you don't want to go crazy over improving for a tenant but giving a tenant something that makes their property feel a little bit more homey and custom like some inexpensive molding can actually help when it comes time for that lease renewal and they start shopping around seeing what else is available and then comparing the properties that maybe don't have the new hinges and doorknobs or poles in the kitchen or the flooring or this trim molding which is all overall relatively inexpensive that $80 vanity and whatever but maybe it's just enough to help them stay an extra year because turnover is expensive I totally agree you shouldn't but in the very bottom button now on a vest and I thought that was only for a suit no no yeah a little bottom one barely out I don't know I'm gonna have to look that comment below down below let us know on a suit that is not double-breasted you leave the bottom button open I think we both agree on that yeah strap on a vest though you shouldn't button the bottom button I'm 90% sure I've never looked at all let's find out down below and if you watch to the end we're gonna reveal whether or not that's actually the case so as always you guys thank you so much for watching I really appreciate it and make you guys check out that light up toilets a link in the description as is also meet Kevin's channel link in the description but before you check out his channel to check out the toilet seat I'll find the best one on Amazon also if you watch it all the way through and you haven't subscribed yet make sure to gently tap the subscribe button because the problem Kevin subscribed and I'll show you what happened to his phone it's it's it's not looking pretty yeah so that happened when you smash the subscribe button so instead just gently tap the subscribe button also feel free to add us on Instagram I think we pretty much posted there daily so if you want to be a part of it all the links are in the description thank you again for watching and until next time [Music]

Channel: Graham Stephan

Views: 470,449

Keywords: real estate investing, real estate investing 101, how to invest in real estate, real estate 101, real estate renovation, renovating a property, renovating a house, renovating a kitchen, renovating a bathroom, real estate investing for beginners, real estate agent, real estate agent career, real estate agent day in the life, passive income, passive income 2018, how to become a millionaire, home remodeling, most profitable renovations, investing 101, meet kevin

Id: kW76liexoBY

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 20 2018