Emily Breaks Down the Cost of Projects for Investors

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills, fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed Data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today, with Indeed. Get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home, and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at americacures.com. Pay for by pharma. Alrighty folks, I have already decided who is going to be speaker number one on day one

1:05year four. And it is this young lady right here, Emily. Yay! What's going on, Emily? How are you? I'm good. How are you doing today? I'm doing extremely well. I asked the community a couple of weeks ago, who do you guys want to hear speak next year? And your name came through loud and clear. So I know better way to, you know, satisfy the audience and throw you out there first on day one. What do you think? Well, that's honor. I mean, that's nice that people would say that. I appreciate that. That makes me appreciate everybody, and that's an honor. So thank you. Well, let's just in case people don't know who you are. You are lots of things. You're juggling lots of different balls in the air. So if you were to kind of give us your resume, who is Emily? So I would say I've pretty much done everything in real estate except for be a lender. I am a general contractor. These days I only work on my own projects. So my own rentals and my own flips, trying to pull myself out a little bit to actually be a GC, not on the site doing the projects moving slowly. I was a real estate agent.

2:06Now real estate broke around my own brokerage. And I was an investor before I was any of those things. And so I've not done loans. That's not my area of expertise. And I'm still learning all the options for loans and things that are possible with financing. But all the boots on the ground groundwork, I've done it. Very, very cool. What about the evolution? Because I think that's a lot of fun. Again, step one, if I understand it, was you were an investor and then you morphed into a GC. You got your general contractor's license. So talk about that evolution. I started as an investor because I was fortunate enough to work for another investor. And so I learned all of the boots on the ground side. They did all of their own work. I mean, there was, they owned a trailer park. And what year was this? Sorry. What year? So this would have been 2007. So this was before everything blew up. And I remember driving through town. I wasn't involved in real estate other than that I worked for these people. But even as a teenager, I remember driving through town and feeling like there's no real estate

3:07signs. Because before everything crashed, things just went under contract before I market. Everyone's realtor probably brought deals directly to them. And so I remember even as a senior in high school, noticing all those real estate circulars, never anything on them, what you, you know, there's nothing available. And then noticing that shift, even not being in that world. So that was when I started working for them. Very, very cool. So again, you go for being an investor to a GC, that's, that's not a normal progression. I think I've heard that maybe two other times in 30 years. What was it about being a GC that excited you? Was it controlling costs or budget or timing or what was it, why, why a GC? So I had worked for my employer during high school and college. I had learned a lot of those skills. And I would always have people, because I started buying rental properties when I was in college. And so people knew I was doing projects, I was renovating a bathroom, I was doing XYZ. And they would say, Hey, can you come do my bathroom? And I would always tell people I couldn't because if God forbid something happens, I don't have the insurance to protect them and they're all, I don't have the coverage.

4:09I would always tell friends, I'll help you, I'll come show you, I'll walk you through it, but you can't hire the job out to me. And so when I got, I was working, I got my real estate license. And so I was investing, but I wasn't a GC yet. I got my real estate license. I started working under a broker and there were so many people that needed little things. They would hire someone, they would take a deposit and they would ghost on them. And so the broker I worked for, she had people who were clients that needed, they needed a house painted or they needed a bathroom tile or something pretty basic. And they were in a bad spot and I bet I could literally go do this because I had quit my job to go into real estate, but I was just baby real estate starting. So I didn't, I wasn't crazy busy. I need, I could have used the extra income. And so I was like, I'll go get my license and I'll do the construction and the real estate until the real estate picks up. So I went and got licensed, got the insurance so I could help clients, not even my clients because I didn't have that many yet, but clients of agents in my office getting their houses ready to sell.

5:10Love that, love that. And then you're an agent at the same time, you're basically you're filling a need. So I love this, this idea of just finding an opportunity, finding a hole in the market and then you just go, I can do that. And then you figure out how that's a, that's a very solid attitude to have because a lot of people would just sit down and wait for other people to come and you're like, no, I'll go do it. That's a, that's strong. Thank you. That's, that's really cool. Well, I would see my broker saying, well, they paid someone this much to do this job. And I'm like, they're paying them that much because I really know what labor costs because I was doing it on myself. Right. So I kind of had that shock to now hiring things out. I'm like, I, I, you're used to doing it yourself, but then you're moving so slow doing everything yourself. But so back then, I was like, they'll pay me $6,000 to paint the inside of their house. Hell yeah, I'll go do it. And so I would just do real estate during the day. And then like seven to, at night to two in the morning, my husband used to be a teacher. So he worked at night a lot. And so I would go work on, he'd be at work. I'd go work on a house at night because a lot of these people had moved out and moved along. And they were very cool.

6:11And did you move from being just an agent to now having a brokerage? When did that happen? When I hit two years, so you have to have your license for two years. I think most states, my state, two years before you can get a broker's license. And my broker was awesome. She knew that she was on her way out and wanted to exit. And so she asked if I wanted to buy the business a few months in. And I, we all knew I couldn't do it. She made a plan with me. When I hit that two years, I had bought a building and renovated it. I had all my licensing ready to go all the classes to take in and we activated it. And then I took over and purchased it at that two year mark because she really worked with me to do that. So that's not normal. What was it about her or you or like, was there a past relationship? How did she identify you as the person she wanted to work with for two years? You know, nearly two years to kind of sell her legacy. How did that happen? Well, first of all, she was ready. So she already had had a plan and had been discussing it with another agent in the office.

7:16And they decided they did not want to move forward. I, they, it sounded like they had a lot going on with, you know, family and personal changes. And maybe it just wasn't the right time. I don't, I don't know. I wasn't involved in that. So she was ready to make the decision already with somebody else. And I think I was just the next person that she asked because I was there. But when I started, I went to her, I took, I took my resume to all these offices, dropped off a cover letter. This was back in the day. You still should show up. You still should show. Yeah. People call me and be like, Hey, do you like me an assistant? And I'm like, not if you're calling me like this. So I took my resume in person, left it with her office manager. And she was kind of phasing out. She was very active, very good. But she was towards the end. And she apparently did not want to train anybody because if you do a good job, it takes a lot to train a new agent. And so the office manager is a girl I had gone to high school with. And the owner Mary had said, I'm not taking somebody on. And the office manager said, you should hire her.

8:18She smart and she works hard. And so because this girl that I went to high school with, gosh, at least six years, because I had finished grad school at that point, six years earlier, knew me and vouched for me. She hired me and gave me a chance. I ran into her at a come and go the other day and I gave her a hug and I said, you changed my life, Rachel, literally by you vouching for me from just knowing me sort of in high school. I got this job that completely trained, changed the trajectory of my life. That's so cool. That's so cool. So now you have a GC license, you have your brokerage license, you've been investing for over a decade, like what else are we doing? What else you got going on? Well, we as a me and my husband, I'm not actively involved besides the back and my husband has a food truck. So I'm adjacent and I do all the ads and stuff for that, but I'm not in there on the day to day. And then most other than that, everything's just real estate investing. And my husband does real estate photography for all of my brokerage and for my flips and all of that, because when we started, there were no real estate photographers in town.

9:20Everyone was using their cell phones, it was full of photography. And so he completely self-taught. He got the aerial photography license for the drone, like the FAA. He did all of that so that my listings could be set apart from other agents in town. Very, very cool. So kind of like, what did 2025 look like for you? What was 2025 like? 2025 for me has been a year of transition really intentionally trying to work on my mindset and how that affects what I can do with investing. Because I had kind of slogged along for the 12th years I had been investing. I had worked really hard and I knew people, like my mentor and people that had invested, but they did it 30 years ago, plus. And so I didn't know people that were investing today in the same way that I was. I didn't have a community, I didn't have investor friends. And so when I started to see kind of what was possible, because in my little community,

10:22usually people come to me for help. And I was like, I need someone above me that I can get lessons from. Because I didn't even know until, man, like two years ago that a DSCR loan was a thing. I just thought, once I get this many loans, I'm either going to have to pay one off or go commercial or, you know, I didn't know that I could keep buying stuff once I hit 10. And so things like that or the options for financing and creative things. And I had a friend that bought a trailer park and the owner carried the 20% down and the bank did the 80%. So he bought a trailer park and brought no money to closing, which I was crazy. I mean, I just didn't even know these things were options because I didn't have any friends that cared about real estate. So when I would see people who were doing these crazy awesome things, and I've been doing it for 13 years and at that point, maybe I had 10-ish properties. And I'd meet somebody who had been doing it much shorter and they had a, I would say, better portfolio. Some people are too risky, too fast, but they knew the tools I didn't know. And they realized, wow, there's so much possible.

11:25And there's all these properties I would have bought. If I knew a DSCR loan was a thing, I would have bought that one and that one, you know. And so it just made me realize, I'm still very cautious in how I grow. But now that I have these tools, there's things that I can be doing differently to optimize this. And so it's really shifting my brain about how can I grow now that I know what's available to me, that I had no idea existed before. Yeah, it's funny you bring that up, because when I look back at my first five years of investing, I was very much, you know, my computer and, you know, I thought I had to do everything by myself. It wasn't until I got engaged in the community. Back then, it wasn't even as easy it is today, right? We have the school community as an example, which is awesome. But, you know, you really do got to get in the weeds, so you can just find out what your blind spots are. Yeah, you don't even know what, you don't know what you don't know. And so then you figure it out, like I was telling Dallas, my husband last night, there's probably five to seven properties I would have bought if I knew a DSCR loan was a theme. And I just thought, well, I don't have the reserves, because I have this many properties and then I have a percentage.

12:26So after the down payment and with a DSCR, I could have done it, especially when interest rates were good, it for sure would have made sense. Yeah. I have a real estate broker. I work with investors here, but everyone uses cash or commercial. I have told so many people about those in my market, people that have 20 properties that don't even know those are a thing. And so it's just crazy what you don't know exists. Yeah. Yeah, folks, you got to get involved in communities. I'm trying to do my best to make our school community one run until I have time to place where you can go active forums, accountability groups, all that, something I think about and work on daily. So again, check that out. Emily's in there. What is 2026 going to look like? You know, again, you're speaking January of 27, so if you were to look into the future, what are you going to hopefully tell us about 2026? I am shifting from what got me to here can only get me here and it worked. But now I'm in a funnel because if I physically myself can flip one or two houses a year and that's doing everything that's doing my drywall, that's doing my, I mean, unless it's a new

13:27panel, I'm running my outlets, I'm installing my lights, all that type of stuff. What got me here got me here because I didn't have the money when I was starting to hire everything out, but now I'm bottlenecking. So it's not going to get me to the next step. And so I'm really shifting. I have a flip that I started and I'm hiring things out. The last one I'm wearing, this one I'm hiring even more out, kissing some frogs because you hire a contractor. It's not quite what you thought. Can you live with it or does it have to be torn out? And sometimes it's one or the other. Sometimes you can work with it, but sometimes you have to tear some work out. But trying to create a system so that now instead of one or two houses a year, I can potentially be flipping four or five houses a year. So then I have more money to invest back into buy and holds. But that helps with that additional active income. So I can be buying more buy and holds and keep the reserves I'm comfortable with. And so I'm really trying to shift. And that's a fear spot for me is hiring things out because I've been burned and just go

14:27through those punches of creating a system so that now I can scale what I'm doing. And it's not Emily working on a bathroom at two o'clock in the morning every night. Yeah, that's that that has to get tiring. So what I would say there is you're looking at a strategy where you're going to produce chunk money and that chunk money is going to become down payments for buy and hold. So, you know, flip two, keep one or whatever the strategy is that that's and then you're able to do, you know, more because you only can do two solo. So, you know, maybe in 26 you do four or you do five. Is that kind of the plan kind of double the output? That's the hope. And also understanding because I think if you come from that construction world and talking to some of the guys in the groups that are contractors doing everything, they're taking you forever and they can't get out of their head that well, I can do it and it costs this much and I can hire it out. So if I can do twice as much, even if I'm making a little bit less per flip, but I'm talking more volume out and I make a duplicatable system, then I this year, maybe I can 2x next year, that can even be something more, but you have to get out of your head and understand

15:27yes, I'm going to make less, but I've told my husband this a million times. If I assigned a dollar value to the time I put in when I'm doing all the construction myself, I'm sure I would cry in a corner because I've never done that and I bet it's like 6 cents with how many? Yeah, definitely under minimum wage. Yes, and so if I know I'm going to make less per project, but if I can pump them out much quicker, my holding costs are less because I'm doing a line of credit against equity on my product or my properties and so I'm paying interest and then as I finish one, I'll pay it back until the next one comes. And so there's a lot of things that those expenses go down and again, we're pumping out more and so it's a transition while I make a little bit less, maybe this year, maybe and then next year, then we can really accelerate. Yeah, so this year is about proof of concept kind of working out the rough corners, if you will, of doubling output again by you not being the bottleneck, knowing that it's going to be some rough edges, but the whole idea is so that 27 is where you can just drop

16:28the hammer and it kind of double from there. Yeah. And you get tired. The other thing too is I love what I'm doing. But for instance, I have a flip that we have someone else framing right now. I have someone else plumbing right now. I have someone else. I have a lot move. I'm not there. I wasn't there yesterday, but they were there working. I was on another project. And so the cool thing is because I have a DIY YouTube channel, my thought process is I'm leaving a bathroom. I'm going to do a full tutorial of demoing a bathroom, waterproofing a bathroom, tiling a bathroom, because I think a lot of people will try to do a bathroom themselves. That's something to talk about. And then I'm hiring out the rest of the house. So then there's pieces I'm doing and I'm dedicatedly focusing and having fun with that section, but I don't have to worry about well, I have to film this footage on the bathroom, but then I got to frame the basement tonight, right? And so I'm just taking out pieces and still being involved slightly, but not all the way where it's dragging on me, because I, I've almost been doing this for 20 years. So people say you're young, but I've been in construction for almost 20 years now. My hands are fired.

17:29I mean, your body wears out. Yeah. That's amazing. Well, you know, it's something I did years ago with the GC in my market, where it's a, was I broke down a house at a GC just to give real estate investors costs, kind of estimates. You can, we can put big buckets around these and frame. I just don't think a lot of investors know what stuff costs. So let's, let's do, let's go start on the outside, you know, let's say painting and again, feel free to put on all the caveats that you want, but we're just trying to give people estimates. Let's say it's a one bed, or let's say it's a one story house. Let's say it's 1600 square feet, and you're just, you're going to get a bid to paint the outside. But give, give people a feel and what are the variables that you can tweak to, to, you know, do that. So I would say one thing you mentioned that is important is it's a one story house. A lot of times with roofers or painters, they're going to charge you a hazard fee because you have to be harnessed in or they have extra rules. They have to follow or they bring scaffolding. So one story house is important. If you have a tall house, this is going to be different, especially on roofs.

18:31So one story house without a lot of damage, sometimes older to homes, there's a lot of prep. Also, if it's built before 1978, you have a paint laws that if there are any sort of scraping, they're supposed to be following a lot of people don't pay attention to this, but it's something that you can get deemed for. So if it's about 1978 or after one story home without a lot of repairs, they're not having to patch and do a lot of prep work. I would say, and this is really going to vary because when they're busier, they're going to bit higher. If we are in a different market and I have an average cost of living area, I would say not less than six, probably up to like 12,000. That would be what I expect to pay for painting. Yeah, six to 12 again, prep work, two tones, right? You know, you do the base and the trim differently. There are lots of variables there, but I'm we're just trying to give people ranges. I think this is, this is helpful. Let's assume you had to replace a window. Let's assume it's not a custom window. Let's assume it's a home depot window. You just go there, pick it up, throw it in, what's it cost to buy a window?

19:34I think they're going to labor. They're going to charge you three to four hundred dollars per window. If you're just doing one, if you do more, you're going to get a discount and they're probably going to bid out labor on the whole house. But if you have one window replaced, I would expect to probably pay between three to four hundred on the window, depending on the size, depending on the function of the window. Things that don't open are cheaper, so they're called picture windows. You know, they'll have like in a living room. They'll have one window that's a big glass pane and then one that opens. The more functionality of the window, the more expensive the product is going to be. Yeah. And then I think you're looking at three to four hundred a window on labor, if it's just one window. Very cool. Well, let's say you got to replace a roof. Those roofs, you know, don't last forever. They're 15 to 25 years, depending on where you are in the country. Again, feel free to give all the caveats, pitch, you know, all those things. What's a roof cost? So we're going to look at how tall up you are, because again, as it would be a hazard fee if it's higher, I have seen roofs where roofers come in and say they're not pitched enough. They need to be a membrane. We just had one. And then we talked to the city and they said, no, that roofer was wrong.

20:36This one is okay. But sometimes they have to change the pitch if it's something real old or you're going to do a membrane. So membranes are always more expensive. That's where you have those modern style houses. It's a low slope or a flat roof, so they're going to fail faster and they cost a lot more. I hate flat roofs. Yes, probably 10 years ago, when I renovated my office building, it's 1800 square feet. It's a flat roof, really accessible, like two stories, but it's got, it's flat, but it's got like brick up the side, it's not like you're going to fall off. That roof was $18,000. And I will probably some of the other downtown buildings, what they've done is they've pitched them and then they've made them slopes. I was renovating in a whole office building. I couldn't afford it at the time. But when that fails in the future, I will probably frame it out and have it sloped. But just that flat roof, really basic, really easy 18 grand. But flat roofs are crazy expensive, a basic asphalt shingle roof in my area, a couple things to think of. How many layers are they removing? Is the demo going to cost more because they used to put layer after layer after layer.

21:39I just flipped a house or I'm in the process, but we just did the roof. It had three layers of shingles on it. But we couldn't tell because they had put the flashing over some of the walls. And so they start demoing and there's three layers there. We didn't even know. So the demo is going to be more. The other thing is if they get into the roof, and if you have an older home, a newer home, they're going to sheet it with plywood before they do the waterproofing and the shingles. And older home, they used to put slats. If the slats have more than like a minimal like 18th inch gap, my city makes you sheet the roof before you angle it. So then you have the sheeting which on and 1600 square foot average, you know, one story house is probably like between 1500 and 2000 more dollars for materials and labor. So sometimes we'll have a roof and they'll say, Oh, it's going to be eight grand. Oh, no, one. Now we need to sheet it. It's 2000 more dollars. Right. I can't tell you till you rip it off. Yep. Yep. So the last two roofs I did, I did one that was a probably 111200 square foot house with the one car garage and they had to take off three layers of shingles and they had to

22:43re-sheet. And that was just over $10,000 for me. And then the one I just did on the flip, I'm doing now that we just started, same house same floor plan. So about 1100 square feet up minus the one car garage detached larger to car garage. This roof was actually a little bit less expensive. He did not have to re-sheet it. He put it in his bid and then he, I guess they were sheeting you couldn't see. And so that one cost me just under 9,000. Okay. I like it. 8 to 15 on the average roof, but you start getting into a fancy house with pitches. So if you have a lot of pitches and peaks and valleys, these are basic houses like this. If you have a four sided or a fancy house where they have all these different, you could be $45,000 for a roof. Easy. Yeah. Very cool. Anything else on the outside? We should talk about decks or fences or anything like that. Fences get people a lot. Offensive. Yeah. There's a lot of wood. And materials are expensive now. So I don't think you're ever going to see a fence less than five, but most people they get a bid, especially for like a vinyl fence or something.

23:44Most people tell me it's like 15 grand. I do fences myself because I'm not paying for that yet. I'm not paying for that. But my clients, they get a fence and it's always around, you know, $10,000 to $15,000. Yeah. Very cool. Well, let's get inside the house. Let's go flooring first. Okay. Let's assume you're just going to put it, I don't know, LVT or whatever you recommend. What's flooring costs for a, you know, 1200 square foot house? So I think you're probably going to be, I would say 350 and up for your product. You want to look at how it clicks together because I have installed floors. I really like the way life proof LVP goes together. It clicks and it stays. I have installed some floors that I don't like the interlocking system very much and I would not use those brands again. So really look in the store, take some out of the box, see how it clicks together, make sure it seemed really secure. The other thing too is some of those floors they go together and this is flush. And some have a little bevel in there. Well, I feel like the bevel is a place where error can happen because if you don't install right or you're install or doesn't, they don't really, you know, maybe it's in click quite right.

24:44The other thing with that bevel is it holds dirt and dust free. So I like an LVP that goes like this. It's a personal preference, but pay attention to how it clicks together. Play with a box in the store. So I have not found something less than 350 square foot that I like and feel like we'll stay on the test of time. And then I think you're probably going to be about three bucks a square foot probably to install. Maybe you have a handyman that does a lot for you and he's doing a lot of projects. But if you have a floor guy, I bet you're looking at two to three square foot for installation. And then, you know, you might have a trickier area where they charge you or they're putting trim back on or they got to do coping around the bottom. Those would be maybe like three, two to three bucks a square foot for putting trim back. All right. Let's assume we want carpet in the bedrooms and the bedrooms only. Okay. What are we doing there? They don't put carpet in your bedrooms. Okay. I will have carpet in a rental. I have never had somebody, I mean, I used to no longer anymore. No, and I love I live in a cold climate. I have carpet in my house in the bedrooms. I have carpet in my basement. It feels warm in a basement.

25:45I like it in a cold like I live in Wyoming. I will not put in a rental. So if I buy a rental with carpet and it's okay, it stays, but once it's trash, it's LVP afterward. Got it. So if I'm flipping a house, I put carpet in the basement only. I don't put carpet. I don't put carpet anywhere else, but if it's a rental, I don't do any carpet. So I don't really know a lot of carpet install costs because most places will, you know, will install it for you or they build it into their pricing. But I don't think there's any case where I would recommend carpet and a rental. Love it. I agree with that entire lie. I used to put it in. It used to be the thing and I haven't done it in a decade. Yeah. Yeah. It just hasn't happened. All right. Let's do painting. Let's just assume it's a spray and pray. You know, nothing fancy. You're not doing anything. You're just spraying the walls. What's painting cost for inside house? Try to think of the way you can make this cheapest for your installer is you let you find a light enough color where you don't need your ceiling, your walls and your trim to be a different color. And if you assume in a rent and I know people say, Oh, I have nice rentals that everything's the same color. If you cost, if you cost it out to do the trim different, the walls different in the

26:47ceiling, which is what they're going to do in a custom home, that is going to be more labor for them because they have to separate it off. If they're spraying and they're taping everything off and spraying, they can do that much quicker if it's all one color and it's easier for you to touch up. I have a binder. Yes. All my rentals. They're this color. And for years, I did a color styles kind of change. Now I'm doing a new color, but I know they're all this color in this sheen. So when a renter moves out, I don't have to guess. And if I have a mess up right here, I can just go and touch that area up. I don't have to repaint the whole house. And so if you go one color, it's going to be cheaper. Maybe you don't do that for a flip, but maybe for rentals, that's what you do. Well, I would say you're probably looking at minimum of probably $4,800 to have the interior of your house painted. Again, unless you're using a handyman who's doing a lot for you, but a painter is going to be $4,800. I would say probably $9,000 depending on the interior of your house to paint. And then big houses obviously vaulted ceilings, stuff like that, you're going to get more expensive.

27:47Like it. Like it. Again, let's go to the bathroom next. Let's just assume you want to replace the toilet, replace the tub or it will do a gut job next. Let's just assume you want to replace, you know, the tub and toilet. Okay. So I'd say probably to replace the toilet, you're looking at the cost of the toilet that could probably be $199 up depending on the toilet you pick and probably 250 for labor. I feel like most of the flowers, they're probably going to have a flat fee for a toilet, not necessarily like an hourly rate. And most of the people I talk to, they say they're getting charged about that much to replace the toilet. A tub. Man, this could really escalate because you're on your floor, your tile goes up to your tub. So the odds that you're getting the same tub that fits in that space. And then the, either you have an enclosure around your tub or you have tile that's coming down to it. And part of that's going to be broken out. So a plumber to replace your tub, that might be a couple hundred bucks. But then you're either going to have an enclosure going back up or you're going to have tile that needs to be repaired plus waterproofing if you're doing tile versus an enclosure. Yeah. What do you like? Do you like tile? Like let's say you buy it, you got to rip out the tub. Do you just do enclosures and call it a day?

28:48And this is rentals. Yes. Yes. And then you're going to have everything because my background was entiling. And I realized, and I just thought, oh, I can do it. It's so easy. It's just the cost of materials. But then I realized the time and this is a contractor conversation. You're prepping it. You're waterproofing it and, and then after you waterproof it, then you're going to put in the tile after your tile, you're going to, which doesn't usually take a day, it takes a couple of days, then you're going to grout it. Then you're going to come back and you're going to seal your grout. And then, so you have all these days, even if you could do it in a day, which you can't and it doesn't go that fast, you have to wait for these products to set up. If you do an enclosure, you can do an enclosure, especially if you do a direct to stud and closure before your drywall, you can do that in an hour and a half. And then it's drywall and it's done. And so I have switched to the enclosures because I can, it takes me a day versus three weeks to get a bathroom done. And so it's the cost of your time and the delay of getting it on the market and the delay

29:51of the other projects you could be working on, not necessarily, hey, I can do this for myself for free. One thing I would say, if you do an enclosure, if so, if your tub comes down here and the enclosure comes down right on your tub, when I do tile, I like to extend it a little bit further past the tub for that splashing, you always get that little area where kids and parents, they get water and then you're always repairing that drywall. So if your enclosure doesn't come out, and some do, depending on which one you get, you might want to do an accent of tile around it. I've seen that just to protect that drywall right there because I fangon rentals, people are not careful with that splash though. Yeah, the other thing to think about again, as a landlord or rental is I would not get more rent for a tile bath than a enclosure. It just would not affect my rent at all. And what I realized is there are builders in my area building $450,000 houses, which is a pretty expensive house here, and they're putting an enclosure in. And then my $1,100 a month apartment has large format two by four tile.

30:53I like, no, kid, like stop doing this and stop it. Yeah, everyone, I think I want to do a video for my YouTube channel. That's different. I want to do this or I have this product left over, like I have a lot of tile I got to get rid of before it goes out of style. I'm going to flip this flip I'm working on because it's left over. I've been leaning towards enclosures and there are some nice looking enclosures now and it might be more expensive than the tile. The nice looking ones are pretty pricey versus a cheap tile, but the time there's no comparison. Love it, love it. Now let's just assume it's a full gut you walk in, you're like, I got to rip everything out down. Take out the sub floor, the sub floors got weak spots, it's clearly been had water damage too long. You walk into a bathroom and let's assume it's a full bath. What's your brain go? You just go 15 grand? What do you say? I think it depends on who you have and who you have relationships with because I know some people that are doing a lot of volume and they have a contractor or a handy man with a contractor license that works for them pretty regularly and they can get a bathroom

31:54done for $5,000. That's very rare. If you asked me to do your bathroom for $5,000, I would tell you not a chance. No chance, yeah. You're giving them a lot of work maybe they're doing your bathroom and your kitchen and your whole house and that's the piece of it. I would say you're looking at 10 grand up minimum, that's a lot, a lot of labor and a lot of time. Yeah, it is. All right, let's jump over to the kitchen. Let's just start easy. Let's assume you want to save the cabinet boxes, but you want to, you know, I don't know, paint the doors or what a new hardware. Let's assume the boxes are good, but you're going to take the doors off and dress them up a little bit. What are you doing there? So you have a couple of options. Painting, you can hire it out. You got to make sure that the person you're hiring is prepping this right because everyone will paint cabinets, but you're going to be doing this over and over again if it's not prepped and it's still never going to ever hold up like a laminated cabinet would, you know, but I would say for proper prep for cabinets and to repaint, put everything on, put it in new hardware, you're probably looking at least to 2000 for proper prep. A handyman will come paint your cabinets for a couple hundred bucks, I'm sure.

32:55But you got to get that coat off of that, that poly that's on the old stain or whatever you're going to hand it down, you got a prime, you want them sprayed, they're going to look better. So everything removed when you sprayed and then put back on versus taped around so you have that little edge where there's a little bit on everything. I think for a good spray job, you're probably going to pay 2000 bucks. I think you could find a handyman that would do it for you for 400, depending on what type of rental you're renting. Yeah, but there's also companies that will just do doors. So if the boxes are good, but the profile, maybe the design is really dated on the door, you can get a new shaker style or slim shaker or flat panel front, you send them your measurements, they'll send you the new doors and then you can paint all the bodies of the cabinets, they'll give you the pantone and you can just match it or you can get them raw and then you can paint everything. So people think, well, the doors are not that much cheaper than replacing everything, but if you don't want to pull out your appliances, you don't want to recharge your garbage disposal and your dishwasher and put on a new countertop and pull your back splash that has to come

33:57up for your counter to come up. These are things that, yeah, it's not that much cheaper, but again, your time and everything else around that project, maybe you just replace the fronts. There you go. I like it. So what is your favorite countertop these days? For I put laminate like a nice, relaminate and a bunch of my rentals, but I also have rentals that I have left the cabinets in. So I have bought houses that the cabinets were okay to save. If I do new cabinets and I'm buying and holding for a long time, cheap granite is nice because granite can withstand heat and staining. Courts, everybody likes courts because it's lighter colors. It's kind of that pretty style, but you can't put a hot pan on courts and court stains. And so it kind of, if you have that light with the gray vein that everybody likes and you spill coolate on it, it's going to stain a lot worse than a granite would. And so I have, I have some with laminate because I don't want to put an expensive counter

34:57over an old cabinet, but if I replace a whole kitchen, I'm probably going to go in with a granite. And then for flips, I'm using courts because aesthetically, that's more of the look that I feel like buyers are looking for. All right. Let's just assume now you walk into the kitchen. You say everything's got to go down to the sub floor again, the whole idea of sub floors week bad. What's a kitchen cost? Okay. If I do a kitchen myself, I can get my cabinets for $5,000. I can get my countertops for $5,000. I can get my appliances for $3,000. And then maybe we're relocating some plumbing and electric. So maybe we're looking at like $2,000 in labor there. If I hire it out, I've never hired out demo. So we're probably always going to demo ourselves, but probably it's fun. That's fun. Demo's fun. I eat demo. Oh, yeah. No, but my husband will demo for me. So he hates, he's not into the real estate thing, but if I can give him a sledgehammer, he'll do that. You're crazy. Yeah. I always say, like Hulk smash. I go, Dallas smash, and then I just give him a sledgehammer.

35:58Some eye protection. And yeah, go. Go nuts. So, um, so I would say if you're having somebody install your cabinets, you're probably looking at probably $5,000 minimum for the cost of your cabinets, plus I would say $700 in up to have your cabinets installed. Again, if they're doing more for you, they might build it in a little bit if that's the only job. And if it's difficult, I flipped a house once. It was an old house with a sloping floor. And so there was a lot of leveling that had to be done to get those, and your cabinets have to be level for your countertop guy, for your backslash, for everything. So if it's a more laborious job, that's going to cost a little bit more. But I'd say, you know, $700, maybe up for cabinet install counters. When I buy a stone, I get it from a local place. If I pay four to 5,000 or maybe 3,500 to 5,000 depending on the size, that includes the install. Laminate. I could get a laminate countertop for probably there's places that do this cheaper, but here their cost is really high to get it in. And the labor is annoying. I've talked to them a lot about this. So if I get a laminate that they're fabricating for me, I'm still going to pay $2,000 to have

37:02that installed in for the materials. If you get those home depot ones that you, you know, you put the corners together, those are just a couple hundred bucks plus labor to install, but they have to fit with your layout. If you have any double-sided overhangs or anything that's not going to work. Got it. Other thing I've done, I do want to mention this for countertops. I did an epoxy countertop. So I had an existing, yeah, so I had it, I had cabinets I saved, but I paint it in a rental. I've had this rental forever. They're fine. And I had a laminate countertop that somebody had really messed up. There were burns and they had flipped some of the edges off and stuff. So I got it all level with like Bondo and sanded it down. So everything is nice and uniform and it looks good. And they have epoxy you can buy for countertops. And I did a faux marble. I like hand painted the marble on and had a vaning in it. And it's beautiful. It looked and it was labor. So I did it for a YouTube video. I had the time of practicing getting the faux lines, but I have this countertop that if

38:06you didn't know, like some people like, is this quartz? I'm like, you know, it's laminate with epoxy over it. It cost me probably a hundred and fifty bucks in materials plus my time. And it's beautiful. So if you have a countertop that's solid and you're not wanting to pull everything and you have some time, there's a lot you can do with epoxy and it's pretty resilient too. Never, never even thought of that. Very, very cool. Well, you send your YouTube channel a couple of times. Where can people go check out this beautiful thing you create? What's the YouTube channel name? So that one is all the DIY projects and the renovations. That one's called you can DIY home. And I just show if you need to know how to waterproof a shower. If you want to know how to tile a bathroom, all those things that maybe when you're starting out, you can't afford to hire out. I kind of walk people through those projects. All right. So again, it's you can DIY home for this one. So it sounds like you have an additional YouTube channel. What is that? So the other one, I realized that maybe the people that wanted the DIY projects don't want to hear me talking about investing. They're doing them in their own homes. So I split out a real estate based channel and that one's just Emily A. Lopez.

39:10And we just talk about real estate only on there. There you go. Very, very cool. One thing I want to talk about with you is you had a interview with Steve Rosenberg and Gus. That was fun to listen to. Yes. Steve Rosenberg is somebody I know. And I'm just curious, what, what, what are your takeaways? That was a couple of days ago, what, what, what have you done since then? So we spoke to Steve. I want to say this was at least a month ago. We just released a couple of days ago. But so I've been marinating in the changes I need to make. That was one where it really, you talk to people sometimes and you go, wow. And I think if you know him, he said he mentioned, he knows you. Some people just inspire you and obviously he has that type of a personality. He's like a Tony Robbins, like a, you know, really an elevated personality. And so it made me realize that I needed a business coach, not a real estate coach. And so with my business in the, and I'm not somebody that hires like coaches or gurus. But he's just genuine.

40:10Like I talked to him and I realized this guy knows this stuff. And so I actually hired Steve as my business coach. So I could get some systems in place for my real estate brokerage because I'm running ragged. I am doing all my Facebook ads. I'm doing all my Instagram ads. I'm up till midnight creating posts for social media. And so I'm like, I know something's wrong. Again, I'm bottlenecked because I've done everything myself. So I need someone to help me strategically hire where it's smart, keep things in house where it's not. And so I'm really trying to shift. I've done a time tracker. Yeah, I'm just going to ask about the time on it. Yeah. Oh, sure makes you sick as he breaks it down into 15 minute increments. So I've done this before an hour increments. But when you just go, even when I'd work on a project and I'd say, I just spent this much time trying to decide on this layout, I need to just decide and move on. And so really just again, trying to optimize what worked for me until now was doing everything myself that can't be what I'm doing moving forward.

41:11And so really trying to systematize all these things so I can scale them better. And so that's what I'm working on right now. That is awesome. Well, folks, again, as we started this video, Emily's going to be speaker number one at year four, day one, speaker one, let us know in the comments. What would you like her to focus on? If you had a chance to listen to her speak, what for 45 minutes, what would you like her to go over? She's obviously doing so much. I think the overarching theme of year four is going to be what's working now. So she's definitely going to be summarizing her 2026. But folks, let us know what you think, Emily, any closing thoughts? Man, I think honestly, with real estate, I would just say you guys just do it. When I sat at that aura celebration and the lunches and talking to people, people are so, I feel like a lot of people want permission from somebody or somebody to reassure, hey, is this the right thing or you, in your own mind, you get to decide if it works for you and you can and you see all these people doing it and it's working.

42:12So there's no reason if it's working for somebody else. If you do your research and you're careful and you make smart decisions, then it's not going to work for you. And so take the step, move forward. You just saw, I talk, everyone I talked to had a property or a couple properties and was doing something in a different way. So do what works for you, but just move forward. Love that. And again, where can people go find the Stephen Roseworks? Is that on the second channel, Emily A. Lopez? Yep. And that's also on the podcast streams everywhere, but it's tiny. So it's hard to find, but if you go to my Instagram, we have the link. If you just want to listen to the audio, if you want to watch it, it's on the Emily A. Lopez YouTube channel. And then it's also collaborative with Gus O'Filly's YouTube channel too. Awesome. Well, thank you for all that you do. Thank you for being an active member in the community and saying yes to being speaker number one day one in year four. Emily, have a great day. Thank you. I look forward to it. Yes.