Baltimore Real Estate investors You Just Dodged a Bullet.
That’s right, the whistling sound you just hear rushing by was the bullet you just dodged. This bullet was in the form of a new regulation for fire sprinklers. In it’s original proposal the city council wanted any house needing renovation affecting more than 30% of the floor space to have fire sprinklers installed. This could have added as much as $10,000 to the cost of a full renovation. This is because to support the fire sprinklers older houses may have needed the main from the city to be upgraded.
That could have been a real nightmare for investors who didn’t know about the law or hadn’t planned for the extra expense. Fortunately lobbying by investor groups got that provision removed and only new construction needs to comply. Careful who you vote for becuase your legislators have a significant impact on your cost of doing business.
Join the Property Owners Association
Baltimore is a liberal city in a very liberal state. You need someone on your side to help fight against laws and regulations that are anti- landlord, anti- investor, and anti- business. The Baltimore Property Owners Association lobbies both the city and state to help stop bad laws. I suggest you join. Without them your next rehab might have cost you $10,000 more. Here is the Baltimore Property Owners Association website.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Paul (1 comments.) // Aug 7, 2010 at 10:46 am
Wow did not even know that was before the city council. Baltimore needs to make it easier for renovations not harder by adding cost.
2 Ned // Aug 8, 2010 at 8:26 pm
>Baltimore needs to make it easier for renovations not harder by adding cost.
Exactly Paul, Most people would think that vacant houses are a bigger problem in the city than fires. Fortunately real estate investing groups showed them how increasing costs to renovate are a strong disincentive to do renovations.