In this walkthrough video, Joe Homs presents a live tour of a 2‑bedroom condo flip in a senior community in Laguna Hills, CA. He outlines the acquisition price (~$210k) and the planned $100k rehab budget, projecting a resale value of $425k. He explains the dual permitting process required by the city and the homeowners association. The renovation includes splitting a large bathroom into guest and master baths, installing a new kitchen with soft‑close cabinets, quartz countertops, and vinyl flooring, adding a skylight, central HVAC, double‑pane windows, full electrical rewiring and panel upgrade, asbestos popcorn‑ceiling removal, decorative stacked‑stone fireplace, and a washer/dryer for resident convenience. He discusses material choices (vinyl over laminate) and the “cookie‑cutter” approach to flips. The video also highlights contractor management challenges, noting repeated site cleanliness issues and the potential termination of the current contractor. Joe ends with a call to subscribe and promises a follow‑up video of the completed project.
Chapters
Welcome. In today's video, I'm going to walk you through one of our current projects. This project is in Laguna Hills, California. It is also in a senior community, so you can imagine the dealings that we're having to do with this project. We purchased this project for around $210,000. At the end of the day, we're putting about $100,000 into this rehab, and we expect to sell it anywhere between $425,000 at the end of the day. This project is totally permitted. Not only is it permitted with the city, it is also permitted with the homeowners association. 2 different entities, same permitting, different process for each, but that's what you have to do in this community to get a project up and running. So come on in. So these are 2 bedrooms, originally 1 bath. So we've split up the 1 bath, which was a very large bathroom, and I'll show you as we walk along that we made it into 2. So we made it into a guest bath and we also made it into a master bath. I guess we can start over here in that there was a wall here. It was non-load-bearing, which means that it's not holding anything up, so it's easy to take out. And as you can see, it opens up the space. So we put in a brand new kitchen. These are the cabinets that we normally use. These are our higher end with soft closing, as you can see, soft closing doors and drawers. At the end of the day, we're going to put quartz countertop on top here. The flooring is vinyl flooring, which we use pretty much exclusively now. Vinyl flooring. We've gotten away from the laminates. The laminates are very— I guess the best way to say it is they're difficult if you put water on them and they start to warp, and then you get calls back at the end of the day, 2 or 3 months after you sell the place, You guys didn't install the flooring correctly. So anyway, we've gotten away from that. We put vinyl flooring. Vinyl flooring, you can put a hose in here and it's not going to do any damage to the floor. Pretty much everything was the same in here. It was designed a little bit differently. The refrigerator is over on this side, so we moved it over on this side to give a better flow. We're doing a farm sink on this one. So you can see that it comes down a little bit more here, and it's a farm-type sink. It's just, it's, we've done about, I'd say about 10 of these, and they pretty much all look the same. When you're flipping, you want to do like a cookie-cutter process. So you're going to see in the next project, I'm going to take you to the completed product. You're going to see the same paint on the walls. You're going to see the same cabinets. The kitchen sink changes up a little bit every— it just depends on what the designer of the project wants to do, which is my daughter. So whatever she wants to do. Let's go back out here. And in each of these projects, we've decided to add really just a decorative fireplace. It's the focal point. And in this one, we decided to put it on this wall. The other one you're going to see, it's on that wall. So it really just depends on where you want to put it. Obviously there's going to be a shelf up here, and then this is the place for the TV. They're going to put some stacked stone, which is right here. This stacked stone is going to go from here all the way up, so make, make a basically a focal point. I know you can't see much other than the hole, but what you see above me is a skylight that we put in. These places are really dark, as you can see right now. And I'll show you at the other place we're going to go to, once we put that skylight in, it's like, whoa, wow, it's like amazing how much light comes in. So we do that. This place also does not come with heating and air conditioning. It had a heater on the wall and an air conditioner, one unit, just a big giant box. That's the way they built them. So we had to install a central heating and air conditioning unit. That's about $7,500. You can see we have can lights as well that we put out throughout the house and in the kitchen. All the windows and the doors get replaced. These are double-pane, so they were single-pane before. They were kind of metal. These all get replaced. Okay, so more energy efficiency. As you come back here, the first bedroom we go to is just a regular bedroom. Not much going on here other than a closet from floor to ceiling is going to go here from this wall all the way to this wall. So have a closet from one end to the other. When we come out here, this is where we originally had the one bathroom. And I know it's hard to imagine, but this bathroom went from here all the way to the other side where we have the other bathroom. We did bring out this wall So this wall was originally in line with this doorway here, and we brought it out so we captured more space. So you can see that we have a regular guest bathroom here if you want to go in and take a look at it. Vanity, toilet, and then the shower. So we got the central air conditioning heating unit. We put it— we installed it right in here, and I— if you can see, it's a really tight spot. Over here to my left, you'll see that this is a whole brand new panel that was installed. Everything was rewired here, and so we had to upgrade the paneling and the electric and the wiring. So all that was done behind this door, and I'll let you open it up. This is where we've decided to install a washer and dryer, and the reason is because this community has like little community rooms with the washer and dryer in it for residents. But as you get to be my age, you'll understand that I'm not going to walk that far to wash my clothes. So we decided to put it in here for them, just a matter of convenience. So if you can pop in there and take a look at that. Okay, so now this is the master bedroom, and there was a wall there, and we decided to take that wall out and put a slider again to open up the space to light. and give us more light in the bedroom. There will be a closet, again same thing, from wall to wall going right here this way. It'll be a wall-to-wall closet, and then that's the master bathroom that we put together. If you go in there, you'll see a shower, which is what we normally do in the master bath, toilet, and then it should also be a double vanity. Well, they haven't put it in yet, but there'll be a double vanity in there as well. So If you want to pop in there and take a look. Okay, so that's pretty much it what we're doing here. Oh, there was popcorn ceilings here throughout, and this place was built in the '60s, so guess what? There's asbestos there, so that had to be properly taken care of. We hired a company to come in and take care of all that stuff and remove it safely. So that's another one of the— And you may have asked at the beginning, You know, you're putting $100,000 into a 2-bedroom condo. That's part of the reason, things like that, the dividing up of the bathrooms. It's really like, you know, adding, adding a bedroom, you know, because we had to rearrange the plumbing, the electrical, everything. So all those things add up. So yes, it's $100,000, but that also includes, at the end of the day, we put all the appliances in. So that pretty much includes everything. They're literally just going to walk into the place, just move their furniture in there, which is what I'll show you in the next project. Okay, so let me step over here and I'm going to vent a minute. Okay, this contractor— and I've been in the business for over 40 years and this is not unusual. I try to avoid it, but it happens. Here we are Friday, A little after 3 in the afternoon, and as you can see, nobody's here. I didn't kick them out. Last time I came, there was nobody here as well. As you can see outside, all this trash, which is embarrassing to me because they're not supposed to leave anything outside because remember, we're in an HOA, so they don't want anything left outside. And you can see all this trash out there. I've asked them to remove it 3 or 4 times and they have not done so. So as you can imagine, these contractors, this is the last project that they'll do for me. They're actually on their way out. I'm also thinking about firing them and having another contractor come in here and finish the project and then just charging them for whatever that contractor charges me. But contractors are the most difficult thing that I deal with in a flip, and I'm telling you, you know, be very careful when you hire contractors. We were here before, but all this trash should not be there. Okay? That it should not be there. And I'm like at the point where I'm really almost done with with this contractor and just tell him, you know what? Come pick up your stuff. Not much of his stuff around here, but pick up your stuff and you know adios, and we'll hire somebody else to finish the project. So if you have any questions, please get a hold of me. You know, subscribe and like the channel just down below, and, and then I'll see you on the next one.
