Life Balance or whatever you call it.

[Pat Goodyear]

I apologize that this post is going to be long. I have been a landlord since 1996. Self manage. By career I am a Nurse Practitioner and a Reservist. I love my career and don't intent to quit to landlord fulltime. I have always, even through busy seasons, felt that it would eventually calm down and be manageable again. For the last 12-15 months, it has been crazy all the time. My turnover is usually low, but it seems tenants have been moving almost monthly. During all of this I decided to move to one of my rentals and rent out my home of 12 years. For the last 6 months, every day off has been spent working on the houses: painting, sanding floors, cleaning, etc. My attempts in the past to find labor outside my immediate circle have failed miserably with poor work ethic and overcharging. The few people I did use - one is collecting unemployment, the other 3 got W2 jobs. 

The tenant of mine who just moved into my house, unbeknownst to me, wrecked the apartment she was in for 7 years. They burnt so much incense the walls were soot stained. I had to wash them before painting. I gave her a move-out checklist, with cleaning, but her end response is "Pat we lived her for 8 years...what do you expect?" I started getting hostile and ultimately she is in my newly painted, cleaned home so i took $200 of her security. My lease has always said no incense. Every smoke detector was missing. So, anyway for the last 10 days, I have spent ever moment I'm not working over there to get it ready. The new tenant (who is actually a current one) is moving in 7/3. That is because her and the downstairs tenant (who has rented for >15 years) have been fighting non-stop over noise issues. Oh and I got a lead violation and have until August to fix it. 

Anyway, on top of all this I am a single mom to 5 kids - 13yo to 7 yo. One of my 11 yo's came to work with me all weekend. So, in dwelling on this some thoughts:

1. not enough routine inspections, actually none. Need to do them more often to find issues/problems

2. No cheap labor - lawnmowing, painting, cleaning. Everyone wants $20++ an hour which becomes outrageous at 12 hours a day

3. Tenants are dirty. They have no concern about cleaning before moving, even with warnings and checklists. They put out too much garbage and the city fines me. 

4. I lack processes to streamline things and with 20 properties that doesn't work anymore.

I would appreciate any thoughts or ideas? I have considered getting a property manager, but worry that things will go to h3ll and I'll pay even more. 

[JD Martin]

Thoughts:

1. When you self-manage, work comes in "seasons". Sometimes there's nothing going on and sometimes there's 5 places all being attended to at once. If you remember that it comes in seasons, that can get you through the rough patches.

2. Some of your wounds are self-inflicted. You had an 8 year tenant that made a mess of walls (walls generally need to be painted by then anyway), but because you didn't have a system in place you let her now move into your house. On the flip side, you didn't need to show or find a tenant for your place, and that has some value.

3. Handymen - this is tough for everyone right now. We seem to cycle through them because there's a lot of what I call "Meth Money Mondays" out there - they work long enough to get their meth money on Friday and you'll never see them again on Monday". But you can parcel some of that out to professionals. We have a professional service that mows our properties; we don't need to find handymen at $20/hr. When a property goes vacant a phone call tells them to add it to the mowing list, and we get a bill at the end of the season. To fuss, no muss. Same thing with painters, etc.

4. Always remember that part of what you are being paid for as a landlord is the fact that a good number of tenants do not have things in their life in any semblance of order. So make sure you are being compensated with good rent numbers for these things.

5. The 13 year old is old enough to get paid for some of this work. Make it worth his/her while.