Let Microsoft Rehab Your Duplex

I saw a really easy duplex rehab opportunity yesterday. And it wouldn’t require a hammer, nails, or even a mop.

In fact, it could be rehabbed using Microsoft Word.

Because the only thing it needed was notice to the tenants that increased their rents.

And it reminded me that sometimes, in a world filled with HGTV, there are more kinds of rehab opportunities than those that involve a paintbrush.

The property I looked at was being sold by an estate. Having owned it for decades, the elderly couple who it had once belonged to were realizing terrific cash flow in retirement because they didn’t have a mortgage payment.

They had also come to like their long term tenants, and didn’t want to risk seeing them leave as the result of increased rent.

Or, it seems, by asking them to sign a new lease.

While the remedy here seems obvious, it isn’t to a lot of duplex buyers and investment property investors. They simply look at a listing as being overpriced in relationship to its revenue stream, and move on.

What they failed to realize, is that they could have bought the duplex for a value based on the rents that were in place. And “rehabbed it” within 90 days of closing into a cash flow machine — without having made a single trip to Home Depot.