Co-host or Guest (13:09)

It.

David Green (13:33)

So this is the master bedroom, first of two bathrooms, updated years ago. So you see a tile shower, but nothing super modern. All the furniture, these are the chairs that we took out of the garage. One of the things I'll do often is I'll convert a garage into a movie theater room and a short term rental because people don't really ever park their cars there. This is one of the guest rooms where we have bunk beds. It's been a little updated since then. And then this is the third bedroom. There's also another bathroom, the second one in the hallway. Now this furniture had to be moved from one of the other properties that the city shut me down in. So we we moved it from that one to this one. A lot of the furniture is still there, but we took what we could and moved it over to this property. I had that accent wall painted, but the flooring was already here in the house. We had to move. You can see like they. They renovated the kitchen before they sold it to me. That was part of the problem. They didn't get permits when they renovated it, which no one ever cares about until it's a short term rental. And this is the game room. You could make this into another bedroom. I just don't think we'll really need it for the area. You won't have so many people going. And now here's the backyard. That white stuff is fencing that we had to take down because we didn't get a permit before. White plastic fence was put into the backyard, and it kind of separated these two areas. And that's the adu. So you got kind of like an overview of what this house looks like. All right, now here's what it looks like in the backyard. And with the adu, which was a big reason why I bought the property. So I bought it intending to rent the house out and the ADU out separately, where you could choose to rent them together when you bought the property, or I could rent them out separate. So I had this white fence that you can see in here put in the backyard just to separate the two areas. And. And they both. They both had access to the backyard from separate places. So it looked like it was going to work out pretty good. That's a laundry room so that the ADU in the back could have its own laundry. City was very mad about that. And here's the entrance to the adu, which was repainted by me and retrofitted to be hurricane safe. It's a pretty cool little setup here. You got your kitchenette. You got your seating area in the kitchen. You got a full bathroom with a shower and a toilet and a sink. Got your AC unit in the wall there. Everything you need for a pretty fun little Florida vacation. And then a closet and a little sitting area like a workspace station. The hairy arm and grunting actually are something you have to pay extra for. They don't come with the house. Here's your full bathroom. They really got the most out of this little space. It was a cool, cool deal. I was excited about it. Again, all of this was here when I bought this property. There was nothing wrong with the construction. There was nothing unsafe about it. The city's argument was it is one foot too close to the fence of the neighbor's house. The neighbors didn't complain about it at all, but that was enough to shut it down and shut the power off. And you can see this is where like the rest of the backyard of the house was, which we'll get to in a minute here. All right, now this is going to show you what the house looked like after it been sitting vacant for a pretty good period of time. Overgrown lawn.

Co-host or Guest (18:06)

Instead of just hopping the back, I.

David Green (18:08)

Searched for another way in.

Co-host or Guest (18:09)

I found there was a driveway here, at least this gate.

David Green (18:15)

So this was a gate that goes into the other side of the backyard.

Co-host or Guest (18:22)

So this is the side and this.

David Green (18:25)

Is the side yard. So things had already been disheveled pretty much. But there was a shed here which we could have used for storage of, like pool equipment and toys and stuff like that. And I was going to take this little backyard space and make it like a seating area with a fire pit. But that didn't happen. We had to clear all the stuff out of that shed. And then this is what the backyard looked like at the time that I bought it. So you got this really cool pool, a slide, a security fence, and look at that gorgeous pergola that we've got. So, like, that's what you would have been able to stay in. There was a TV back here. There was electrical run. They have these shades that come down. There were chairs back there. And we had games set up that the guests could play in the backyard. Beautiful South Florida sky. And as you can tell, it's pretty much isolated from that adu that's in the back. We had like that retro fridge in the back here. You can see in the pergola. The house has been vacant for quite some time when we're taking this, but we have these cafe lights that were put up to make it a nicer space. That's the entrance into the game room. And then you have this backyard with this Astroturf. Really nice looking space. Again, this is the pergola that they claimed was unsafe. Got a privacy wall back here. I mean, that's awesome. We had these chairs set up and tables. This is what it looked like at the time that I bought it. Obviously that all had to be ripped apart to satisfy what the city wanted with the property. But you can still see like this what the vision for this property was. And it was pretty much turnkey right out the door. I didn't have to do hardly anything to the property. I even got a complete brand new roof as part of the negotiation. When I bought it, they replaced the entire roof, which is a big deal in areas where it rains a lot. Here's another look of what that pergola would look like from the side. To me, it looks like great construction. Much nicer than most of the ones you See out there that are kind of put up hastily and cheaply. Solid, solid foundation. Really nice privacy wall that's made of that Pyrex material that won't rot. The. The shade screens, you can see that they've got them throughout here. There's electrical that was already run to it. So you have your fans for cooling. You have lights in here, you have lights strung around it. And then you had a big screen outdoor TV so you could watch it while the kids are swimming in the pool. Everybody having a good time? All right, so with the pergola removed, this is what the backyard looks like now. No fence, no pergola. I mean, isn't that a huge difference with just like the appeal of what that looks like and how the pictures would show up and what the guests would actually have access to? Again, you can't use the adu. The kitchen had to be removed. The bathroom had to be removed. It's basically just a structure at this point that sits there and is used for storage. Destroyed so much of the value in the property for no reason. Now, I was recently in South Florida trying to get this thing into as good of a shape as I possibly could while cooperating with the city, getting the furniture squared away, working on the movie room, working on the game room, working on the backyard. So now I've got some pictures to show you of where we're at now, even though we're not completely finished. So here's one of the shots of the backyard. We've got some lawn furniture back there. You can see that the new roof has been put on. It's been cleaned up a little bit. Here's another one. It had recently been raining. You can see the rain splashing in the pool, but without the pergola, it doesn't look nearly as good. But we've got some lawn chairs. I found these on Facebook marketplace for $50 each. And several of them there, you can get some pretty good deals for short term rentals. Looking on Facebook now, if you've never seen night in South Florida, the sky, it's incredible. I mean, that. That picture you see right there with that blue sky and white clouds is like every night. It is gorgeous out there. And we hooked some cafe lights that you can see on the fence, and we cleaned up the pool some, and so that's a pretty gorgeous view. And we've got some more of these night pictures that came out pretty nice. If you've never visited there, I highly recommend it. One of my favorite places to go. All right, here's another Shot of the backyard from a different angle still, I think looked better with that white fence that used to be up. But you can see the cafe lights stretched all the way across. You can see the rest of the deck chairs and the table that we have here that was moved over from a different property. And that night sky, gorgeous. All right, here's a good shot of what the entire backyard looked like in the daytime. Still need to pressure wash those bricks in the backyard, clean up some of the debris and the Astroturf. But you can see there's a fire pit here that I found, some Adirondack chairs that we bought with color. This is going to be a cornhole throwing area. And I'm working with the city to see if they'll let me rebuild a pergola that won't be as nice as the one I had. It will probably be a lot smaller. So I had to spend money to tear it down and then spend more money to build it, plus spend money for all the permitting fees rather than just letting having them just let me keep the one that was there and maybe pay for permitting fees when it was there. But they, you know, the golden rule, they have the gold, they make the rules. All right, this is a picture of what it looked like when they forced me to convert the garage into living space. We had to bring the entire floor up to the same level as the house. So normally when you step out of a house, you step down like one step into a garage. They made me bring the entire thing up to be the exact same level, and I had to pay a bunch of money to do that. So this is a shot of our contractor showing us the work that's being done. If you've read my book Long Distance Real Estate Investing, you know that I am a very big proponent of having pictures, videos, and evidence from the contractor sent to you before you pay them for the work that was done. So that's what this was. This is us replacing the garage door that had previously been there. We actually kept it to where you could see the garage door from the outside, but there was a wall on the inside that separated it, and they said you couldn't do that. So we had to take down the full wall, take down the garage door, and then build this wall, which just makes the house look really silly and makes it pretty much impossible that it could ever garage again, even though all the other houses on the street have the garage. So that's why the property is going to look a little silly when you see it with the after Pictures where we're at now, it's been plastered and painted and you'll see that. But I need to put some kind of design in this area right here. And then we've got a flower area, like a bunch of potted flowers that go in the space before here to add to the aesthetics. The garage floor before it was turned into the movie room. Now this is fun too, because the city wanted to make sure that we never ever, ever were able to get plumbing to that adu. So they forced us to come in and reroute the plumbing from the house that was included in the adu because there was a kitchen, there was a shower, there was a toilet and a sink away from the ADU so that it wouldn't have water to it anymore. And I had to pay for all of that. Rather than just capping it off, telling us we couldn't use it. This is what they forced us to do to be able to just get power to the house turned back on again. This was the garage before the floor was floated up. This is what it was looking like. We had this AC unit that we did put in there. It was one of the few things that was adjusted to the property before they made us come in and raise the floor. All right, here's the kitchen that we had to rip apart so the city could inspect everything that was done by the owner that sold it to me before I ever owned it. So this is the contractor ripping it apart so the inspector can come in and look at everything that was already there. How many of you ever bought a house that had a remodeled kitchen? Did you have to go through this? Did you have people that showed up and said, hey, you just bought this house, but we're going to make you tear everything apart in it so that we can inspect it on your dimension. Then you're going to have to pay to put it all back together yourself, or you're just going to have a house without a kitchen. Here's an example of all the stuff that had to be sent to the house so that it could be used as a short term rental that sat there for two years before we could ever actually use the dang thing. Just imagine that they would rather have a property sitting in this condition than able to be used to bring in tourism, to bring in business to the local restaurants and rental shops. Nobody wins in this scenario. Now this is the game room, which is kind of the door you will take to go out into the backyard. Needed to be swept up and cleaned, but it's not in Terrible shape. And we've done some improvements to it. So this isn't the best angle, but you can tell it's already coming along. So these doors over here are where the laundry is. Because we couldn't put it in the garage. I was able to find these arcade games, which are normally around 400. Depending the area that you're in, you could get them used for 400. If you're lucky, you can get one for 300. Usually they're in the 400 to 500 range. These are actually newer models that work a lot nicer and have better graphics. I got all three for $400, which is a lot of driving, a lot of looking online, and a lot of time spent talking to people. And I was able to move this foosball out of one of the other properties where it was. So we're going to have a rug put down over this floor. We're going to have wallpaper put up in the room to make it look a lot n. And then we've got maybe a TV that we'll put in here as well. And this will be a fun little game room that should help with the bookings. Now, unfortunately, I don't have very good pictures of the movie room because it's still in the process of being completed. But it's going to be pretty cool when it's done. You can't really tell from these pictures. I don't know why TVs always look smaller in pictures than in person. But this is a monster TV. This thing's 85 inches was not light to put up at all. It was very heavy. You can kind of see these LEDs that don't show up very good in the picture. But we put them all around the top of the movie theater. These are surround sound speakers that I bought when we originally bought the house with the receiver. And a subwoofer here that are going to be going in the corner. So you'll get a surround sound experience. And then there are eight chairs in this movie theater to sit in. I'll also be getting some movie theater posters to be putting around the outside. This one here shows a little bit more. You can see some more of the chairs. And this is me making a video to highlight the property in my new favorite T shirt there. Grunt style, baby. This is says, be immortal. And I love that shirt. You're also going to love this movie theater if you guys visit this property. And I've got a cheesy little short video that I can share with you that shows the Rest of the movie theater currently being. This is currently being edited for social media. You guys get a sneak peek here.

Co-host or Guest (29:53)

Now you may think, David, you converted a garage into a movie theater. What's the big deal about that? Well, my friend, that's because you're assuming that things. Well, my friend, that's because you're assuming that this was done with common sense. But the city didn't just allow us to do this. I had to spend $25,000 because this garage had been converted from a carport into a garage in the 80s without a permit. Now you may also be thinking, but David, every other house on the street did the same thing. And you'd be right. The difference is not every other house was meant to be a short term rental. So if you want to watch a movie in all of its glory, you want to enjoy Hallmark, or maybe you're one of the fellows who just want to kick back and watch a football game after a day of deep sea fishing while somebody prepares your catch and you have homemade sushi. Please come take advantage of this because it's driving me nuts that I spent this much money to have a movie theater that nobody can use.

David Green (30:48)

It's not pretty, folks, but it never is when you see how the sausage is made. However, sausage isn't so bad once it's been fixed. And we will wrap this puppy up by including some pictures of just how gorgeous the property will be when it's finished. This is the Florida sky in the daytime when it's not raining and the lawn has been mowed. These shots were taken while I was on a run actually around the neighborhood. One of my favorite things to do when I'm traveling at different short term rentals or different investment properties or going to different meetups is to kind of get to know the area and make sure I get some exercise in. And this is probably one of our better pictures. We. These are the, the cornhole boards I told you about. They're going to go in this area. Behind it we've got spike ball. We got these Adirondack chairs. This is giant Jenga. So this backyard will be nice when it's finished. We'll have a new pergola in this space back here. We'll probably have an awning that comes off of this space. There will be people that will be able to enjoy this property that is just minutes from the beach. If you guys have never been to Pompano Beach, I love it. It has these huge big piers that go out like boardwalks over the water. You can watch pelicans diving into the water and coming up with fish. There's people that are fishing right off of the piers. I really should get some pictures of that for the next video because it's incredible over there. You're also super close to Lauderdale by the sea. Just like a six, seven minute drive probably. It's just a fun area. If you like South Florida, but you don't want to deal with the debauchery or the insanity of Miami, this is where you need to be. It's actually incredibly close to where valuetainment records their podcast. I've. I visited them while out there working on these properties and had a really good time. So you guys can search YouTube for David Green Valuetainment. See some of the interviews that I've done with those folks. Patrick met David's crew, but it's right over there. If this is somewhere that you guys ever want to go, we can put you in touch with the best restaurants, the best things to do, fun stuff. You can watch a movie in that movie theater room that will be decorated. Enjoy the backyard, see if you can beat my score on the arcades. Lots of fun stuff in this three bedroom house. I'll be doing another episode when it's finished that has the finished product. The after stuff. It will be night and day different, but I hope you guys enjoy that. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to bring a short term rental to life, usually you just see the before and the afters, but not the middle. And that's what I wanted to do is just share with you guys what goes on in the middle as well as why I haven't been making as many videos that show the properties I've been buying. Because I haven't been able to buy anything, frankly. Because for two and a half years I've been stuck in this position where they won't let me fix the problems and they won't let me sell the house and they won't let me rent the house out and you're just stuck in a vice grip with nothing that you can possibly do. So it's very frustrating. But I know many of you are dealing with frustration yourself. So this isn't a feel bad for David video, but it is a you're not alone video. Hopefully some of my misery can bring some joy to some of your lives as you know that you're not alone. And this nightmare fuel is going around. A lot of people have a case of it. Let me know if you've got some questions that I can help you with by going to davidgreen24.com ask and submitting your question. If you if you're frustrated about the market, if you've got a similar situation where you're stuck and you didn't want to say anything about it, if you're curious how to avoid something like this happen to you, any questions you're thinking about after watching this video, go there and submit a video and we will put it in a future episode of the David Green Show. Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel, the David Green show, and that you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you don't miss future episodes. I'll see you guys next week.