The last few weeks have been pretty bust for me. In my personal life I have been swamped. I was literally going from 8am through until just past midnight Saturday and then back out at 8am on Sunday and got home around 6pm. A very long weekend and when you add in that I was tossing and turning all night Saturday into Sunday I am exhausted. Anyway, on to some updates. The house has been rented. The tenants are a couple moving to a larger place from a studio apartment they have in the city.
They seem like nice people, so they passed the "gut" test. For the rental criteria, they passed everything. Financials were OK, current landlord for one gave a great reference.
The guy currently splits time between his parent’s house and his girlfriend. She has a loft apartment which makes it a tight fit for them both to live there. His financials were good, everything on credit looked good. I wasn’t able to get a hold of his previous landlord from another state. That was something that gave me cause to give a second thought.
For the lady, she was OK with her financials. No recent delinquencies. Not a great credit score but an OK score. Current landlord gave a good recommendation. Pays on time, no issues at all. The current landlord and I got into a conversation about how there aren’t many landlords now that call and check references. It’s refreshing to talk to someone else who does. The previous landlord gave a mediocre recommendation. She said that the place was kept nice, rent was paid on time and they even gave a full refund of the security deposit. The issue that she had was the tenant was in a tumultuous relationship and this caused social issues (arguments, etc). I’m not sure if this is the current relationship she is in now. I didn’t really get the opportunity to bring it up in conversation and I really wasn’t that concerned with relationship arguments. Both candidates qualified for the place independent of each other so if there is a split, it should be OK.
Either way, the place is rented and I am back to full capacity. It’s nice to see the bank account for the rental business growing instead of shrinking.
We generally expect some things to be wrong when turning over tenants. I know I expect painting to need to be done if it is more than 2 years since the tenant moved in. This tenant was in the place just shy of 2 years and all the walls needed repainting. They also needed a good scrubbing.
There were some repairs that they had done such as a new bedroom door. I was told that one of the tenants put their hand through the door because it had been sticking. Either way, the new door is nice. Unfortunately there are issues. First, the casing around the door was damaged when they went to replace it. Second, when they were removing the old door it looks like a chunk of the header was ripped off. Nothing that would be structural to repair, but definitely cosmetic as the all the wood is stained and not painted.
2 areas of rug had to be steam cleaned, the back bedroom and the upstairs hall. The movers put a decent sized ding in the ceiling that needed repairing, etc. The bulk of the items were small.
One big issue I had was with holes in the wall from nails. They were proactive in that they attempted to fill the holes. Doing the final inspection I saw that the repairs needed to be sanded and I could have filled it better myself so it would not have needed sanding but they get an A for effort. Long story short the A turned to an F when I went to sand the stuff. Whatever they used never cured. It remained pliable like chewing gum. I ended up digging all the stuff out of the holes, sanding what was stuck on the walls with my orbital sander then refilling the holes. What would have been a 20 minutes job if they left the holes turned into about 3 hours. Not fun.
The other big item I have had trouble with was deodorizing for a cat. I know, I normally have a no pets policy. This tenant was good and worth it that I decided to take the chance on pets. The cat apparently liked the storage room…a lot. It became the litter box from the smell of it. Anyway, I have had success in the past with Odorcide 210 for pet odor removal. One treatment didn’t get rid of the odor so I gave it another shot. I’ll be heading back today to see how the smell is.
All in all I ended up with more damages that I expected. I am sure they will also be surprised by the number of charges on there.
To play catch-up on what is going on with the rental world, House #1 is back on the market.
The tenants gave notice they were moving and left at the end of February. I had 1 day of showings for the property where I had 3 prospective groups come through. Of those 1 wanted to "cut a deal" to do work for reduced rent. He had a valid business but I’d be breaking my own rules to accept work done for reduced rent. Especially since his landlord reference was also his boss, who was also his Uncle. You can see where all the eggs are in one basket and that basket is biased.
The second and third sets of prospective tenants were nice but each had their own issues that caused me to reject them. I can deal with low credit scores but when someone goes below 525 I just think "Wow". In addition to the low scores both of these groups had addresses that didn’t match up to the credit reports. Lastly, one of the applicants from the groups was someone who was 40+ and the only thing on his credit report, at all, was 1 parking ticket which was not paid. There were’t even any inquiries for credit listed on the report at all. The addresses he provided didn’t match to his credit report, just too much which seemed off.
Sorry for the lack of postings lately. I haven't abandoned the blog, I've just been traveling. Alot. There hasn't been a week in the last 4 that I haven't been on the road. My easiest week happens to be this week where I am only traveling for one day. It will be a long day at around 19 hours but still a one day trip. Next week I'll be gone for 5 days starting my traveling on Sunday and returning home on Thursday. After that I should have one more one day trip then a break for a week or two to try and get back on track with life in general.
An update. I have a bunch of information to continue the "Honest Company or Scammers" article. I haven't had the time to assemble all the different pieces together to form an article, possibly two, from the information. This is really taking shape.
Update on Condo #1, I received a call last week to let me know that the rent was going to be late. In case anyone forgot this is the guy who has been with me for years and has a history of good payment with me. I know he is going through a rough patch at the moment and want to cut him some slack. I let a late payment fee go last month, but this month it will be enforced. Paymnet shoul dbe received in about two weeks
Update on House #1, I received the rent check in the mail on time. It has been deposited but i won't know if it clears or not because I used Netbank.com and all their deposits were just acquired by ING direct. Because of this ATM deposits are no longer accepted. Between the federal holiday and the mail, I won't know if the check is good for about 1.5 to 2 weeks.
I haven't had much time for life, let alone investing. I'm behind on the news, blogs, you name it. I can't wait until things die down a bit to give me some time for my enjoyment.
Friday I received the rent payment for Condo #1. I mentioned in my post last week that this was the first payment where the rental increase was due. I received the full rent plus the late charge. We'll see if September's rent comes in on time. Hopefully the payments will now roll through as scheduled. There was no note included, just a money order. I have had a very good relationship with this tenant up to this point. I hope that my sending a letter instead of calling didn't offend him. I gave an explanation why in my letter to him. I included a quick note with the receipt for payment thanking him and hoping all was well. I'll have to make it a point to give him a call when my schedule clams down a bit.
September will also bring in the first full month's rent payment due from house #1. Up to this point there was the pro-rated month's payment due for moving in early and the first full month's rent was included with the security deposit. Hopefully that will come in on time and all will be good….until the next problem of course.
With as crazy as my traveling schedule has been I need the properties to be problem free for another month or so. After that I should have some time to dedicate to them should they need attention.
web log for us – those that realize that "passive income" isn't always so passive
We generally expect some things to be wrong when turning over tenants. I know I expect painting to need to be done if it is more than 2 years since the tenant moved in. This tenant was in the place just shy of 2 years and all the walls needed repainting. They also needed a good scrubbing.
To play catch-up on what is going on with the rental world, House #1 is back on the market.
Sorry for the lack of postings lately. I haven't abandoned the blog, I've just been traveling. Alot. There hasn't been a week in the last 4 that I haven't been on the road. My easiest week happens to be this week where I am only traveling for one day. It will be a long day at around 19 hours but still a one day trip. Next week I'll be gone for 5 days starting my traveling on Sunday and returning home on Thursday. After that I should have one more one day trip then a break for a week or two to try and get back on track with life in general.