Capital Expenditure PSA

[Anna Buffkin]

More than once I have warned new or would be landlords that buying the property is the easy part.  Owning and maintaining is the hard and expensive part.    I was reminded of that first hand this week.

My tenant called me Saturday to tell me the roof was leaking and texted me a picture.  Ok. I figured I would need to replace that roof in 2019 or 2020.  I guess we will do this a little early.

Wednesday night, I get a call the HVAC is out in a unit.  This unit was old and this was not unexpected.  My contractor called me and recommended replacement as the unit was old and the repair would be over $1000 on a unit that was starting to nickel and dime me.  I bit the bullet and said replace it.  

At this point, I'm almost $9000 in CAPX in less than a week.  I get a call at 9:30 last night from my contractor.    His tech had been out there 4 hours trying to get the duct work to stay together.  The ducts are falling apart under the air flow of a quality newer unit.  Ok. Do what you need to do and bill me.

On top of that I have a vacancy in one of my condos which I thankfully took a deposit for Tuesday.

The good news was I had money set aside for the ac unit and I was able to cover the roof with cash generated from my rentals.  If I hadn't had the cash, I also have a line of credit available for things like this; however, I would have been in trouble if I were new investor with no reserves. 

Thanks for reading my CAPX PSA.