All Forum Posts by: Bill Kramer

@Debasish Bhattacharjee I had a sub do this to me. Use honey, not vinegar.

I strung him along, continuing to pay small amounts (I still needed the work done anyways) and waited a week or so and casually brought up taxes and complained about my tax guy and asked him for a reference.

He actually told me the large company he used. So I went there, had them do a mockup of my taxes and mentioned the sub sent me as a referral. Turns out, the chick knew him! So she looked up his tax returns and gave me his SSN for a "small fee"

I filed, sent him a 1099 and fired him. A little underhanded yes, but it worked.

7 years ago I made the jump into self employment. For YEARS I grinded away at factories, always dreaming of the day I could stop. 

One day, I told myself there's only one way to see this through and I just gotta dive in. No savings, no Bill's paid in advance, none of that. I put my back against the wall, and dove in headfirst. At the time, my house had burned down, and my family and I were sleeping in the living room at my friends house. It was now or never.

The best motivation I have ever had was riding that bleeding edge of actual starvation and homelessness. You learn to swallow your pride, and get creative in how to make whatever your doing profitable. 

I'm not gonna say I haven't failed, because more than once I had my utilities shut off. Usually because I didn't stay humble and got cocky. But I learned each time I failed. They were hard lessons.

8 months after the jump into self employment, I bought my first foreclosure. 

Make the jump. Be scared. Fail. You will not regret it 10 years from now. The entire time, you will grow both spiritually and financially. Dont forget to smile the entire time, because you are doing something 90% of the population only dreams about.

You got this! 

The price difference is due to the prep, not the actual act of painting.

You will see every imperfection/thin spot with the cheap guy. The expensive guy, you will be hard pressed to find a defect even if you tried.

If it's too good to be true...

One would think there would be a demand for a STR specialized contractor that handles everything. Kinda like how they do with turnovers in a regular rental.

Thankfully, I am getting educated all the time. I like people to be held accountable on all sides on the fence.  Fairness is a double edged sword after all.

There are some key words at play here: autistic (special needs) child and support animal.  

I have been to fair housing seminars to get certified in order to be a vendor at many apartment complexes locally. We were shown many absurd scenarios of discrimination that had nothing to do with protected classes that actually went to court and won. They taught us how to act and behave so as not to trigger a lawsuit. If you want I can easily cite examples.

One of those scenarios was eerily close to the original post. Discrimination comes in many, many forms. The lease works both ways. And this tenant has a very strong case on her hands. 

My advice is based off those seminars taught by a leading attorney/law firm. Maybe he was misininformed, I dunno. But I know he drilled it into our heads. And he even gave dollar amounts to backup how expensive fair housing lawsuits are. It was shocking how much $ is involved in those suits and how easy it can be to trigger them.

I would say the landlord has to make every reasonable attempt to address the person violating their lease, hold them accountable, and if that doesn't work, evict. By cherry picking what clauses to enforce and what not to enforce and with whom is discriminatory.

It starts with something minor like noise, but cracks turn into caverns as they say.

If it wasn't in the lease, whole different ballgame. I would never put in a lease anything I wanted to enforce randomly. And I would hope any decent lawyer would advise the same.

You can't be held to upholding the lease you had your tenants sign equally?

So when this woman moves out, and you try to hit her with charges, you will win in court even though she has proof you refused to uphold your side of the contract?

If a tenant doesn't report a water leak for months, and waits until catastrophic failure they can't be held liable?

I'm stupid in this area, and honestly want to learn. Personally I would be having a talk about paying for the repairs, as it kinda is the tenants fault for not reporting it in a timely manner. Especially if it was noticeable.

Begin a paper trail. Submit all complaints in writing and dated each time she violates the quiet hours to the landlord.

Since you get enough documentation, make a demand to your landlord that since they are unwilling to enforce the lease EQUALLY you will be breaking your lease and relocating in 30 days.

See what happens then. Fair housing and such...gotta enforce equally.

Anyone I pay cash to, i go to my bank and write a counter check to cash and put their name in the memo field.

January 1st, i get a printout of all checks i wrote to cash and now have a verifiable paper trail.

This has solved many a payment dispute as well, as I can show the actual check with the date that I paid my subs. Sometimes their memory is lacking...

Hire a private investigator to go around finding past clients asking how to find him and explaining your situation.

It will destroy any positive word of mouth/referalls and hit him hard where it counts. He will then find you.

I had a sub bail on me and screw me good on my current project. Turns out, he booked alot of work in The same neighborhood. So when they came over to check on him after he was gone I gladly invited them in and showed off what he did and explained the situation. He lost at least 3 customers over that.