Hard Flooring in a Condo? Sure but....

Want Hard Flooring in your Condo?
Great idea but....

Did you realize that condos with hard flooring  get higher sales prices & higher rents?

Before you do any new hard floor installations in your condo please contact your HOA and see what Acoustic restrictions they have regarding hard floor installations.  Typically the associations want carpet on all floors above the first floor due to the noise carried to the unit below.  Know your Acoustic Restrictions and the Max db levels you have to adhere to.

Avenue One Condo sold in 2018 Case Study
I have a client who made an offer on a unit in the Avenue One condominiums in Irvine.  The problem...

There was Pergo flooring throughout the condo and it was located on the 4th floor.

Once we opened escrow the seller's agent disclosed to us that the HOA had fined $1,000 per month to the current owner and furthermore would not let the escrow close until the hard flooring in the bedrooms and in the living room were replaced. The seller gave us a letter from the HOA stating that the hard surface was installed without their approval, it should not be in the bedrooms and that any installed hard floors need to pass an ACOUSTIC TEST!

My client really liked the property so we negotiated the price further with conditions to be able to work with the current tenant to replace the current flooring with carpet.  Once replaced, the HOA would allow the property to close escrow.

My client in the meantime decided to have vinyl, in lieu of carpet, installed in the bedrooms and throughout the rest of the condo.  This hard floor install created the same issue with the HOA and again they demanded an Acoustic Test!
The acoustic test results required that the decibel level could not be higher then 50 db.  They check this by running multiple tests while gaining access to the unit below.

Long story short, we got lucky and the vinyl which was higher quality passed right at 50 decibels.

What the initial listing agent should have done was take the property off the market and replace the flooring with carpet. Because they did not do this originally it cost their seller $3,000 in fines, over 15K in property value and they fell out of escrow 3 times.

Condo Notes:
You do not have acoustic flooring issues on the first floor of a condo. However if you are on the 2nd floor or higher and someone is living underneath you then your will have flooring Acoustic db restrictions.
Conclusion: If you want hard flooring in your condo (It will get you a higher sale value and higher rent) First, I would talk to your HOA to see what acoustic flooring restrictions they have.

How did this Seller get caught with hard flooring you ask?
One of the HOA board members saw a picture of the property for sale. In one of the pictures the listing agent uploaded pictures of both bedrooms with hard flooring.  That HOA board member reported it to the association and the whole fiasco started.

Acoustic Test Videos

https://youtu.be/Y8V--zXYzwM

The interior Acoustic Test.  The engineer gave us ear plugs for this.

https://youtu.be/ZxmveeZxpJY

This is a description of how the acoustic NOISE machine works.

https://youtu.be/d0EW5uAaG-c

This video displays the noise created by the first test.  The Machine runs for a minute while an engineer is in the unit below testing the acoustic levels

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The Schwier Group - RE/MAX ONE
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