All Forum Posts by: JT Spangler

Nice! I've procured some of the Allure Ultra for my SFR; should be installing in the next few weeks.

@Micah Copeland Ok, thanks for the info. I'm closing on a place next Friday, and will probably be heavy with the rehab before I head home for christmas, but I'll put the meetings on my calendar and see what it looks like.

@Micah Copeland Have you actually been to quite a few of the meetings? I subscribed to the email list, but every meeting they messaged me about seemed like (1) I had to pay to attend, and (2) had a speaker who was going to be selling me something. Is this the case?

I'm closing on a place in East Nashville next week where this is the plan. So in a few months I'll be able to let you know how it's going. Unless you want to come by the following week and help us paint and hang sheetrock. :)

With an applicant like this, I suspect any amount of digging will give you multiple reasons to (legally and ethically) disqualify her. Pull credit is step one, I think.

Keep us posted with what you decide to do and how it's going. You've gotten a lot of good advice here, but I think you're going to have to learn a lot of skills you don't currently have in a hurry to pull this off. 

I know Mike Butler (Landlording on Autopilot) recommends including in your lease agreements that a service call that is due to an issue that is the tenant's responsibility (and he gives examples of which ones those are) will be charged a service call fee (like 25 bucks) + repair costs. This is supposed to encourage them to fix things themselves, or get them to be more proactive on alerting you.

I've never tried it, because my concern is that tenants would instead just clam up to keep from being charged and I'd end up with a bunch of deferred maintenance nightmares. 

But I suppose there might be a kernel of that that you could adapt for your purposes since it's an issue that keeps coming up. Truthfully, though, they live in the unit and you don't. Leaky fixtures are your responsibility (even if you charge them for the fix), but you can't possibly fix them IF THEY DON'T LET YOU KNOW THERE'S A PROBLEM. And water bills because they didn't tell you about a leaky fixture are certainly not your cost to bear. 

I think this is more a tenant-training (and possibly tenant screening) issue than a repair issue.

I'm assuming this property is NOT in Santa Cruz, right?

I don't know your area, but I'd be pretty thrilled to find a sub-100k duplex with that cap rate and monthly cash flow. If you have an exit strategy that you're comfortable with, I would probably jump all over it.

I had this happen with my roommates in my primary residence. Both of them had been paying $300/month for the past two years, when market rents are more like 500-600/month (per bedroom). They were both month to month. I sent them rentometer links to show them that they were way below market value, but told them because we had a good thing going I only wanted to increase to $400. One of them said that was too much for him and moved out (to a place that charges him $450, go figure), and I rented his room in a week for $500. 

I still have great tenants/roommates, and an extra $300/month in my pocket.