Like many rowhouses in Baltimore City, this house is dissected by the stairway.  Talk about stupid, outdated design.  The stairs actually cut this very small house in half.  So basically, you enter in the living room, walk 10 steps, and your greeting a small opening into the kitchen or the stairs leading upstairs to your right.  Its tough to make a house like this feel modern and open.  But, I think we at the very least opened up the kitchen / dining room.  We also made the best use of the small space in the basement

Here’s a short video of what we’re doing in the basement.

Look how small this kitchen is.  We’ll change all that!

Finally, I had a little fun making a video of the new parking area.  Shhh….don’t tell me wife about this one.  She hates when I smoke cigars before noon.

Post from: Craig Fuhr

My Insane Rehab -- 775 Yale Ave, Part 2

For now, let me take you back in time.

Feast your eyes on 775 Yale Ave – 21229.  This 2 bed, 1 bath tiny rowhouse in Baltimore is a massive departure from the full-gut real estate rehab projects that you normally see me tackle.  Honestly, when I looked at this house – I initially thought – “Hmmmm…..so small.  What can we really do here?”  Well let me tell ya, we turned this Motha’ OUT!  You’ll have to stay tuned for the after pics, but for now look at this crappy piece of mess in its original state.

Again, its 2 beds, 1 bath.

For the rehab, we’ll finish the basement with a new full-bath, combine the kitchen and the dining room into one fabulous kitchen, gut the original bath, add new plumbing, update the electric, add a new parking area in the rear, and will also add 2 feet to the rear deck to make it much more livable.

We acquired this property right off the MLS.  It was a bank-owned property that we made ridiculous offer on – and low and behold, the offer was accepted.  Just proves once again, crazy offers do work.

You may be asking, “Why add new plumbing?”  Good question.  Vandals, a kinder way of saying CRACK-HEADS got to this vacant house (as they often do) and stole most of the copper.  They also used it as a crack-house for a while.  At some point they decided to use one of the closets as a toilet, and even left us a little gift.  That’s the glamorous side of RE investing, huh?

Here are the numbers:

$ 68,000  Purchase
$ 36,000  Rehab
$169,000 ARV

Even after holding, and all other soft costs – we should make a pretty tidy profit on this one.

Here are the before photos: