Now that we covered the first four steps of the 7-step process let’s go over the final three steps of rehabilitating a home for resale. If you’ve read my past two blogs, you’ll know that the steps we’ve already covered are: creating a plan, preparing the scope of work, hiring a contractor, and signing critical documents.
Step 5
This step is the most crucial step of the rehabilitation process, the actual act of rehabilitating the house. Throughout this step, you will encounter these five different stages:
- Demolition and cleanup: During this stage, you will remove from the inside all the unwanted/damaged walls, floors, piping, electrical wires, plumbing, etc. On the outside, you might want to remove dead trees, bushes, decks, fences, etc.
- Foundation and framing issues: This stage will be for the completion of the skeleton of the home.
- HVAC, electricity, and plumbing: This is the stage where either your contractor will complete these steps or subcontract them out. Once this is complete, the building inspectors will double check that the installations are done correctly and are up to code.
- Insulation: The plumbing and electricity should be properly inspected before you complete this stage. Most places will require another round of inspections to see if any of the wiring and piping have been harmed in any way.
- Painting and trim work: This is the last stage of managing the rehab and where you’ll begin to see your vision of this remodel come to life.
Step 6
The second to last step of this process is to make sure everything is the complete and up to code. You might be thinking, “didn’t we accomplish that in the last step?” However, there are always going to be small details that go unnoticed, and you’ll want to catch these before potential buyers do. Also refer back to your contract with your contractor to make sure all the work that was promised was completed.
This is also the step where you’ll deliver the final payment for a job done well. If you had a good relationship with your contractor up to this point, you could begin to lay the groundwork for your relationship in the future should you ever wish to rehire them.
Step 7
Finally, you’ve reached the last stage of rehabilitating a home. This step is more commonly known as staging. You’ll want to clean the house and prep it for the potential buyers to see. Don’t forget that first impressions are lasting impressions! Take the time to fix up the outside as well.