Matt Faircloth: What's up, YouTube? Guess what?
Time for another Day in the Life. Check it out. If you like what we do on this YouTube channel,
including Day in the Life, Mentorship Monday, Market Hunter Thursday with Herve, and all the
other crazy stuff we've got coming down the pipe, smash the subscribe button. This is going to be a
longer series where you guys are going to follow us on the road out to one of our properties.
That's what day in the life's all about. We're putting boots on the ground. We're bringing you
guys with us. Check it out. We are about to board a plane. We're here in Philadelphia, about to head
down to Charlotte to go visit two sites and lots of properties. And we're bringing y'all with us.
Justin Fraser: Today, we are going to
see our two properties. We've got our first property, Diamond Ridge in Winston-Salem.
We've got to check on our renovations and make sure things are happening. Douglas Square,
reports from the property manager have been great, but we got to see for sure.
Herve Francois: What I plan to get out of this
is the relationships that we've developed with the brokers. They've introduced us
to a couple of properties right down in Winston-Salem that we're going to take a look at.
Matt Faircloth: Justin, where are we going?
Justin Fraser: We are going to go
check out our property, Diamond Ridge. Quick tip, drive your properties at night.
Matt Faircloth: Why?
Justin Fraser: Why? Because I want to see
how well lit up my property is. I want to make sure that there's no dark spots, and that the
property shows well at night. It looks totally different at night than it does during the day.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah.
Justin Fraser: So, let's go check it out.
Matt Faircloth: 11:03 at night. So, cool. All right,
guys. And you guys are coming with us. All right, Justin. So we're here at Diamond Ridge.
Justin Fraser: Just pulling up. Just pulling up.
Matt Faircloth: Let's see. We got
lighting really solid there on this building.
Justin Fraser: Look at our wall packs.
Bright lights on the outside of the buildings.
Matt Faircloth: On thing I saw that I'd like to point out is
there actually wasn't any up-lighting on the sign. For these guys first watching this YouTube content
here, this is a Diamond Ridge. You guys should check out 336 and some other content we have.
Justin Fraser: Every one of these wall packs, we call them
on the edge, on the corners, on the breezeways. All very deliberate, big, bright lights.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah, show us a wall pack, Justin.
Justin Fraser: A wall pack. That's
that light right up there on the top.
Matt Faircloth: Okay. See that? Okay.
Justin Fraser: That's a wall pack.
Matt Faircloth: Do you recall what that costs?
Justin Fraser: A few hundred bucks.
Matt Faircloth: Couple hundred bucks.
Look how many lumens and lights that kicks out.
Justin Fraser: It's these lights here.
You see those big street light looking lights?
Matt Faircloth: Yeah.
Justin Fraser: We had a Duke Energy come out and
replace all the old, dim bulbs with these bright wide LED lights.
Matt Faircloth: What did you pay
in all the lighting that you did out here?
Justin Fraser: Oh, we spent about $25,000 in lighting.
Matt Faircloth: On both sites, though.
Justin Fraser: Yeah, both sites. We're talking
about the lights in front of every door here. So, you can see the lights in front of every door.
And then the wall packs and the installation, a lot of them needed some wiring redone as well.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah. Man,
look at this corridor here. Look at how lit up this is.
Justin Fraser: Remember the first time we ever came here?
Matt Faircloth: Yeah.
Justin Fraser: This corridor was black.
Matt Faircloth: This was pitch black, right? If you
guys watch the 336 video, you'll see how dark this whole area was. But look at these breezeways here.
This is where people walk home, right? And it's nice and well lit. They just feel safe.
You know? We're just going to have less crime issues at this site because of how well it is.
Justin Fraser: We take away any dark corners,
any incentive. Any places for doing business after hours, we get rid of all of that.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah, right.
Justin Fraser: Right? We do have some
out lights here. So, there should be this light in front of this door right there.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah. Right there.
Justin Fraser: Yep.
Matt Faircloth: That's a situation.
See this? This is why you drive at night, guys. Because you can find this. Because guess what?
The property manager likely goes home at five o'clock.
They are not out at their site. They're not going to drive your site at 11:00 PM at night.
Justin Fraser: No.
Matt Faircloth: That's on you. That's on the owner to do,
right? The property manager's not going to do this. You cannot expect them to
do this. And if you expect to abdicate that to them, it's not going to happen,
right? But if you want to behave like a tenant and drive your site late at night for your
tenant that works at the local hospital, working second shift or something like that coming home,
and they want to feel safe and you want them to stay here longterm because they feel safe
in your complex, you need to come out of here. Or somebody on your team needs to come out to
your complex and drive it late at night and see what it feels like. This place feel safe.
Justin Fraser: The feeling is totally different.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah.
Justin Fraser: I would walk clear
across this property with no problem right now.
Matt Faircloth: I'm curious who's
18 wheeler that is parked in our site right there. See that?
Justin Fraser: Yeah.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah. Hmm. Let's look
into that. You can see all the way across the other dealership over there, Justin, and this
has always been one of Matt's visions, is that I just want this property, that property right there
to get a shot. I want for people on that road right there, which is Peter's Creek Parkway, to
be able to see that complex and say, "Hey, maybe that's a place I'd like to live." I mean, this
was all full of brush. After a lot of money, a lot of trees being removed, it just opens things up.
Because if people don't know your complex or your property is where it is, they're not going to just
have that glimpse and go, "Hey, maybe that's something I'd like to consider." You know?
Justin Fraser: And I'll tell you one other unexpected benefit
of clearing all this out. There used to be a foot path over here.
They were coming in right through here.
Matt Faircloth: Right through here.
Justin Fraser: So, now that
we're clearing that out, and we're going to fix that fence when they're done
chopping those trees, we're not going to have that foot traffic anymore.
Matt Faircloth: That spot right
there. Yeah. We have hired local police officers when they're off their shift to
come and to do some patrols here, you know? And there was a police officer sitting on patrol in
front of the leasing office, Justin. We sat and talked to her for a little bit.
Justin Fraser: This is just her third time out, but other
people that she's worked with have been here many times before. And you know, she just said, "Keep
the place well lit." She didn't want to say it was a quiet night, because if you say that things
tend to not get quiet. Tenants did not like that we were doing police patrols. So, tenants that
don't like that we're doing police patrols, they handed in their keys. And that is okay with us,
because that means they're probably tenants that we didn't really want here in the first place.
Matt Faircloth: Yeah, it actually opened up some inventory
for us to renovate, which has been great. Which we're going to show you guys tomorrow. So,
stay tuned. We'll show you guys some turned units, and what things are starting to look like as we
continue to turn the insides of these complexes. You guys are seeing what some of the exteriors are
looking like, but the interiors are another story, which I'm excited to check out tomorrow too.
Justin Fraser: I'm glad we did the drive by,
number one, because we got the chat with Kellogg, our police officer. We tot to see
the impact of the wall packs that we may not be able to see tomorrow. And we actually saw one
or two areas that are still kind of dark. So, we need to make sure that all the lights are
on and energized, or maybe even we need to add in a little bit more lighting. So, now we know.
Herve Francois: This is how
we really start renovating and turning around a property, making the tenants feel safe and
making it attractive for tenants who have not lived here yet, thinking about wanting to come.
Justin Fraser: We're here at Diamond Ridge. And we have
two levels of renovation. We're doing a renovation level and a turn. This is a turn unit. I'm going
to walk you through our scope. This entire process should take five days. So, if someone moves out
at the end of the week on a Friday, our crew gets in here on Monday morning for a trash out.
That entire week, we work through the scope. By Friday afternoon, this unit is ready to be leased.
That is our goal for all of these units. So, let me talk you through what we're doing here.
This unit was trashed when we got it just two days ago, and our maintenance guys are in here working.
We just asked them to step out so we can walk you through what's happening here. So, come on.
Let me show you what's happening. First, we clear out all the trash. We need to get the trash out
of this unit. Then, we come through and we look for the major things that might be broken. Okay?
In this unit in particular, our appliances are in decent shape. We just have to clean them up.
The counter tops are in pretty rough shape. So, that is an option where we might go with a
refinish. We might not here, with the counters where they are. We're going to resurface these
countertops like we do in our whole renovations. We also come in and we paint the cabinets. The
doors, the insides, everything gets a full coat of paint and a nice new set of knobs.
These cost like five cents at Home Depot. So, we come in, we're going to leave the sink. We're
going to lave mostly everything in place. For the tile floor, obviously, it all needs a clean.
As much as we can, we want to leave everything in these turns. We just want to get them clean.
Let me show you what's going on back here. Roaches, pests, we do a big treatment. We make
sure that there are no pests when we deliver this unit back. We're going to do things like
make sure the doors are all working. We've got a door knob here that's crushed. So, this door knob
is going to get replaced with something that works properly. Obviously, all the end plates, the light
plates, the switch plates are all going to get fixed. The bathroom is really where we're going to
spend a lot of our time and energy. This bathroom looks pretty dirty and it looks pretty rough,
but it's going to be a really pretty quick turnaround. We leave the vanity.
We leave the mirror. We leave the light. Everything gets a fresh coat of paint,
gets touched up, gets to looking really clean. Thankfully in this unit, the shower tiles are all
in really good shape. What we do have in some of our units is a sliding door here. As you can see,
we had this. These little dots here are where that frame was punched in the wall. So, we're come in,
seal that up, caulk it over. And it actually looks pretty good and gets that slider out of here. So,
that's a nice upgrade. We are going to clean this out. Sometimes we glaze the tub if needed.
Sometime we glaze the tiles if needed. In this one, we will not. It's in pretty good shape.
Just needs a good clean. So, clean this whole unit up. Make sure the knobs are all working, the light
switches, the vanities. Everything is going to be consistent and clean. The last thing, we come
in here. The floors are in good shape. They just need a clean We're going to do some detail work.
All right, we are here in a renovated unit here at the residences of the Diamond Ridge.
This unit just finished up yesterday. So, I want to show you guys around.
First off, look how awesome this unit is. What a cool feature. That's the second bedroom. But
if you, you know, COVID times, if you wanted to use that as an office, how cool, right?
So, we've got some really awesome big tile floor. Lots of light. This is a really rainy day, but the
light that comes in here is really awesome. Those are relatively recent cabinet doors.
They're not something that we did. We did have, however, resurface this countertop.
This is our show me something cool sink. For every renovation that we do, we like to do a
show me something cool feature. In this unit, in this property, it's this awesome, huge farmhouse
sink. It cost us an extra 60, $70 for this big, big sink. But you know what? Tenants love it.
And when they walk out of the property, they say, "Man, that was cool. Like there's cool
feature here." So, for a little extra money, we put in this really sweet sink. And tenants
love it. We put in new appliances. We put in the new, bright LED lights. What an awesome layout.
This carpet, I believe, is new. Here in the bathroom all we do is resurface,
and it looks really great. Clean it up. New vanity. Awesome looking bathroom. We are really
excited about the renovation. It looks great. The tenants are loving it, and I hope you like it too.