Before you look at any property for sale be sure and go to the property appraiser’s office or assessors website and get a sketch of the property so you can check out the square footage of the home under air/heat. Most investors do not employ this strategy and end up leaving money on the table by not knowing how many square feet a house really is. Every square foot that is air conditioned or has heat means dollars for your deal.
The reason for this is simple. Many times homeowners will add square footage to a home by adding additional rooms or finishing off carports or changing garages to additional living space without getting the proper permits. This means dollars for you if you follow through the steps to get it to permitted area.
When a home is appraised the appraiser is only counting that space which has been permitted correctly in the total value of the home. So if there is significant area that is living space that was added without permits this is a problem you want to fix in order to make the greatest profit on the home.
We recently purchased a home where the home owner had added 800 square feet of living space to the home without permits. The appraiser would not add this area to the value of the home since it was an unpermitted addition. By fixing this problem we were able to add $100,000 in value to the home we were buying. Folks this is HUGE!!!
We used an engineer to draw plans for us, he submitted them to the county for a permit, we got the permit and the square footage then became legal square footage that we could add as value to our deal. This is a strategy you definitely want to learn! Many investors do not know how to make illegal square footage into legal square footage and significantly increase the value of the home.
By spending a couple thousand dollars to get this done, we added over $100K to our deal….AND we got the seller to pay for it as part of the sales agreement.
For all the information you need on finding deals for your real estate investing business check out my website at www.marketingmagiclady.com While you are there be sure and sign up for my FREE monthly newsletter!!!!