Flip houses, get money: Freshman turns to fellow students

Dave Hartman spent spring break during his freshman year in the basement of an Oakland house wading through sewage.

“I resolved some fairly substantial plumbing problems. It wasn’t exactly Punta Cana,” Hartman said. “I did put a ton of work into the houses, but I bought them extremely cheap. My guess is that relatively few students would want to tackle the challenges I tackled.”

As a freshman living in Bruce Hall in 1999, Hartman was disenchanted with living in the dorms. Frustrated with paying roughly $500 each month for those conditions, Hartman began looking at houses for sale in the area.

Hartman found a house in December of the same year, but it wasn’t much better. He convinced his parents to give him the money that was meant to go toward his college tuition, and he bought the cheap house and the supplies to begin repairs. 

Hartman then began to rent out the house to other students and used the rental income to pay tuition on his own, and then make a profit. Though most students don’t have a large sum of money saved to purchase a house, refurbishing and renting to other students became a viable source of income.

Michael Springer, a sophomore biology major, rented a house this year through Walnut Capital, a Pittsburgh-based realty company, and said he would consider doing what Hartman did, if he were able to purchase a house.

“It could be an easy way to make some money. I also think that college students treat houses with more respect than most people think,” Springer said.

Lack of money and time, however, deter Springer from fixing up and renting out a house. 

Hartman said the house he bought was in various states of disrepair and looked as though it hadn’t been kept up. Back then, he said, “I didn’t know the first thing about how to repair houses.”

That didn’t stop him. Over the next few months, Hartman researched how to fix up houses and sometimes paid professionals to work beside him. In April of 2000, even though some of the rooms were still gutted, Hartman moved in and began to rent other rooms soon after.

Shannon Rooney, who graduated from Pitt in 2002, lived with Hartman during her senior year. 

“It was an easy decision to rent from Dave because half of my friends were already doing it … It also saved me from hours of touring busted heaps in Oakland — the benefits of which should be pretty obvious,” Rooney said.

Rooney said one of the main reasons she chose to rent from Hartman rather than a realty company or another means is because she wanted her money to go to someone that she knew and trusted. He also met her three standards when it came to housing.

“I was looking for the perfect combination of cheap, safe enough and livable,” Rooney said. 

Scott Hartman, Dave’s younger brother, followed the same college trajectory. 

“Encouraged by the success I had with the house, my younger brother, Scott, decided to attend Pitt as well, and he bought a second house on Dunseith Street in West Oakland,” Hartman said. “We fixed that house up with similarly great results.”

While the two were at Pitt, the brothers started a small realty company, and their success continued after they graduated. 

“After I graduated, we purchased a third Oakland house, and then a triplex in Mount Washington, before we both decided that we wanted to be teachers rather than landlords,” Hartman said.

Hartman is planning on selling his houses this coming spring.

“I do like rehabbing rental properties, and the extra income has been wonderful,” Hartman said. “But, at some point, I’m essentially working two jobs, [but] there have been a few times lately when my 3-year-old son says something like, ‘Daddy, I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t want you to go work on rental properties tonight.’ So, I have to sell.”