All Forum Posts by: Alan Pederson

You don't have to write a new lease. Just write up an addendum to that lease that states you are increasing rent and add the part about the discount for paying on time. I wouldn't add the last part but that's your call. Here's what mine looks like. I increased the rent and changed the late fee on mine.

Here in Texas, having A/C and ceiling fans are a must so that's not even on this list of extras.

All of the houses I have are equipped with garbage disposals, tiled showers, granite or quartz counters in the bathrooms, refrigerator with ice maker, washer & dryer hook-ups, garage door opener, and decked area in the attic for storage. My brother-in-law said I was foolish to add a garage door opener for the one house that didn't have it because it would just be something that people would tear up. I disagreed with him and told him that one of the best parts of renting a house is that you can park in the garage. It would be a pain in the rear to have to get out and open the garage door every time by hand. It was $200 to install so it wasn't a big expense.

The house my son rents in Colorado has a ring type doorbell and the owners mounted a small monitor on the wall in the hallway close to the door so my son can see who's at the door. It's motion sensitive as well so anyone who comes up on the porch is picked up by this device.

I paint everything with Swiss coffee white in either an eggshell or satin finish. White goes with every color furniture your tenant might have so I would stick with it. You could always tell your new tenant that you would be willing to paint an accent wall a different color of their choice.

you could probably fabricate one out of a piece of scrap wood.

If you change the faucet for the tub make sure you check the flow rate of the one you buy. The one that was in our house was rated for a kitchen sink and it took forever to fill up. I changed it with a 18 gpm faucet and it fills fast now.

38 seems pretty small and $60 per unit also seems really cheap

I lived in a C/D class neighborhood growing up and we were very poor. My mom kept the house spotless. It's not the neighborhood, it's the people. Even some well off people don't keep their house clean.

You don't want to deal with roaches, ants, termites, or mice. They do a lot of damage and you might not find out you have a problem until it's a big problem. This could be expensive to take care of. I would not hesitate to put out bait traps or have an exterminator come out monthly to spray. I would also look at getting new tenants. You have to protect your investment.

Are you using a realtor?

You have a 10 day window to get your inspection and based on what they find, you can request repairs be made, you can back out of the deal, or do the repairs yourself and try to negotiate the price based on repairs needed. I bought my last 2 houses as is. That means I wasn't going to ask them to repair anything. When I had the inspection done, it showed me most of the repairs I needed to do. They didn't catch everything so just because you have an inspection it doesn't mean there aren't problems. We had a broken sewage pipe that had to be fixed ($2,000) 3 months after we bought the house and we found mold and termite damage on both of those houses while doing other repairs. This damage set us back an extra $1,000. Once you decide what you want to do, your realtor (or you) writes up the proposal and submits it to the seller or seller's agent. They then decide what or if they're going to do the work. You negotiate it between the 2 of you.

If they decide they're not going to do anything and your not comfortable with doing or paying for the repairs, you just tell them you're walking away from the deal.

@Kenneth Garrett

You are 100% correct.

Everyone feels that way before they do their first deal. I was excited and terrified at the same time. 3 months after my first deal I was ready to do another. It's very addicting. I think of it like this: instead of the money sitting in my bank making next to nothing, I have it sitting in a house (so to speak). If things go bad I can always sell the house and get most of my money back. Look at your risk vs reward. If things went bad, I would lose about $10k-20k. How long will that much money last if I was retired living on $100k a year. Maybe a month or two. If things go good, I can make $400-500 a month on a rent house, the value of that house should go up about 3% a year, and 3% of the house will get paid off per year. In 2-3 years I will be at my break even point (the $10k-20k I could lose) and after that, I will at least make some profit no matter what happens. To me it was worth the risk.