The dreaded clogged toilet call

[Bryan Richardson]

Today first time in three yrs, I got it. The dreaded call "toilet and shower is clogged and wont drain".

So this house is less then 5 min from me. I went over there and after about a hour or so of snaking(there is no clean out, so I pulled the toilet) no success. I had to call a plumber "after hrs", if I would of called them first I would've saved 120 bucks.

My lesson here. Just call some one, it would've saved me 120 bucks and over a hr of my time.

Plumber is still not done and I'm crossing my fingers I wont need to replace the main line!

[Frank Chin]

Originally posted by @Bryan Richardson:

@Greg Jeanfreau

I think this will be the last time I try to fix something my self, not worth it. Also the problem was a sanitary wipe tenants fault. With that said though, the kid has taken very good care of the house. It looks just as good as when I left it,over a yr ago. I think I'm going to cover the bill this time.

 I second that. I started investing in real estate with my mother in law, she with a load of cash, and us with high paid W2 jobs. We had little time to run around and do plumbing fixes. Started off with several older triplexes, and we'll get calls on clogs, toilets not flushing, changing faucet washers etc.

My mom law was from the old school, couldn't understand why we pay a plumber at the time to change a washer for $85.00. She couldn't understand that we had jobs paying $100K,  not 9-5 jobs.

Anyway she tells us about a friend of hers, invested with their sons, and they do every small repair, that the mom boasted they never call everyone. Suggested we do the same.

Then some 20 years later, we were talking about small repairs with my mom in law, and she bought up the subject of her friend and her 2 sons, forgetting she mentioned them to us once before a long time ago. This time, she mentioned her friend finally had to sell the properties after holding it for 6 to 8 years because small repairs was such a pain. People are constantly calling. As they invested in the same areas we invested in, I said they should have done OK, and they should have made at least $250K for each triplex as properties in NY went up that much over 6-8 years. So she pointed out that if they had it for over 20 years like we did, each would have gone up $600K, so we're way ahead of her friend.

In the final analysis, we're almost $1MM ahead at that point capital gain wise on the first two triplexes we got, compared to her friend, and we bought even more after that. But we were only able to manage doing so paying for small repairs which in my estimate ran at the time $3,000/year, which we could have done ourselves. It might have cost us $50K or so over 20 years, but in the end, to be $1MM ahead on just two properties is a very good return paying plumbers $85 to change washers, to clearing clog toilets.