Cost to restore a building?

[MattN]

Hey everyone. I have been perusing the commercial real estates and found a place with a great location and it is a registered historical building. Sweet huh? Well the building is in pretty rough shape. The angle they took the photo of is probably the best they could have picked.

I was just wondering if anyone knew perhaps what kind of cost it might take to get a shell of a building in a condition where it could be a place of business.

It's great in that the main level is all wide open so there is plenty of open room, I'm just wondering what kind of magnitude of pricing I could expect to repair it. Apparently there is some money available for the facade from the city perhaps 30-40k.

Thanks.

[Rivalrys]

In 1998 I restored an building built in 1890 in downtown Macon, and made it into a small college bar. It had been a clothing store for the last 50 years! It was small (roughly 3000 sq ft) and we gutted the inside and built everything back and spent $120,000 just on plumbing, wiring, building new bathrooms, refinishing 100 year old hard wood floor, repairing tin tile ceiling,bulding small kitchen, small bar...etc......we spent WAY TOOOOO much for what we did....but we had fun doing it....

[MattN]

Hmm, that's actually much less than I feared. Thanks for the info.

[Ringerrr]

Im in the same boat as Matt but located in NYS. Rivalry, is your bar still open? When you say you spent "way toooo much" was it because you dug a big hole you couldnt get out of or that after everything was said and done you realized you could have spent less and still gotten the same return you are getting now? I am torn between buying the property or leasing it....to lease the gutted property and drop $100-$200k into someone elses property just doesnt sit right with me but yet alot of bar owners in my area dont actually own the property. Did you guys buy or lease the building? Rivalry, did you do alot of the work yourself or hire contractors? How long did your renovations take? My property Im looking at is very similar to yours, 4000 sq ft, completely gutted.

Let me know when you get a chance.

[Rivalrys]

Ok, here is a brief history of the project:

I owned a bar on the other end of the same street. On the other end of the street was a popular nightclub, so I rented the empty building across the street from them to feed off their late night crowd.

The rent was $1300 per month and it had 3 floors, basement (storage, ran full length of main floor), main floor, 2nd floor offices. I hired 2 handymen that I knew to tear out everything and start building walls, hired an electrician to re-wire and that was probably the most expensive part of the renovations, hired a plumber and saved some money because he is a gambler....he quoted say $10,000 for the job, I asked if I could break it up over 3 payments in 3 months, he said sure so I gave him $3000 to get started, he finished the job and 1 month later him and some friends were going to Vegas and he needed some spending money, so he offered to cancel the $7000 balance for $3500 cash right then....needless to say I was at the bank in 5 minutes withdrawing $3500....

I spent WAY to much by not managing the workers time as efficiently as possible, the payroll is what I spent WAY to much on, tearing down and rebuilding.....everything too 7 months. Icould have done it in 4 months with the knowledge I have now.

I lease all my property, I have recently looked into purchasing, but there are so many good buildings around here sitting empty, it's hard to turn down a good deal. But I still think late at night about how much money Ihave put into improving OTHER PEOPLE'S property!! grrrr...

I sold that bar in 2001 (after I bought the nightclub across the street and sold them both at the same time).

Be sure to check out city and county grants and super cheap loans on building renovations!

[MattN]

The problem I ran into is that you can't always just renovate, you have to restore, which is much more costly and limiting as far as what kind of corners you can cut and what you can even do.