12.12.14 Landlords Part of the Solution to Homelessness
Friday, December 12
I recently saw an article about a nearby county working to end homelessness through a program called SideWalk 100. The idea and the result was moving 100 people off the streets and out of shelters and into permanent housing over a year, starting with a few local faith community leaders and a cou...
12.04.14: Our experience as a Customer of Airbnb
Thursday, December 04
We’ve used airbnb, flipkey, and vrbo in the past few years. We stayed in a suburban apartment for our WA DC trip. We rented an old farmhouse in Denver for a vacation with my parents. We have a beach house reserved for another vacation with my parents this Christmas.We also rented an apartment ...
11.26.14 Thanksgiving Reflections
Wednesday, November 26
On Thanksgiving weekend and every day, I have so much to be thankful for:- Accumulating $100 in royalty payments on my e-book. Not making me rich, but a steady stream of passive income to help me splurge on real estate books I’d like to read.- Security. One of our tenants was robbed this month....
11.21.14 Landlord Association Encourages Renting to Criminals
Friday, November 21
The quarterly newsletter of one of our landlord associations (we belong to two) had some articles about renting to criminals.THE DEBATEThe politically correct terminology is proving housing to offenders. The argument is that offenders have successfully completed their jail time and need housing....
11.14.14 Using Facebook for Screening
Friday, November 14
We've been pulling up applicants on Facebook for quite some time. We look to see if there are photos with pets that aren't declared, extra children that aren't declared, talk about drugs or guns, negative comments about a current move out or rocky employment situation, lots of cussing, really d...
11.07.14 - Terrible Tenant Saga Finally Ends
Friday, November 07
Wow, I wanted to celebrate this week… we got our exasperating tenant out!How it played out: Received $100 more from tenant. Only $5 went toward unpaid rent; $75 was applied to rent fee, $20 to screening fee for roommate application. Informed her we needed $1200 by November 1st for her to be abl...