All Forum Posts by: Brian Johnson

Hi All, 

Running into a bit of an issue with our current tenants that haven't paid the water bill in a few months. I recently received a tax notice for City of Madison so I reached out to them to have them take care of it immediately. Got the whole 'ya we'll take care of it' and they still haven't. Before I got into being a landlord I had an old mentor that provided his forms to me and one of them is a 5 day remedy notice to resolve the breach of contract, in this case not paying utilities, or we would move to send a 14 day notice to vacate the premise.

Since it does specifically state in our lease that they need to stay current with utilities or it's a breech of contract, is it alright to send this over to them and start that process? Some of the notes within this doc say I should try giving it to them in person twice then send it to their mailing address if I can't reach them. The issue is that they currently aren't residing in the unit. So would emailing them this notice be sufficient?

Seems a little aggressive, but I feel like this is the step I need to take so they can take this seriously. Just want to make sure I'm approaching it right so it doesn't backfire. I have reached out to them a couple times now and they have acknowledged they would pay but since they haven't I figured this makes sense. Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks!

@Ray Johnson Hey Ray, yep we are putting money aside each month for repairs. We aren't even close to depleting those funds yet, but I try not to use them and save it more for an emergency situation.

So at the end of the day I'm not worried about having to fork over money for the repairs. I'm more concerned that my tenants might get pissed at me because I can't fix the dishwasher in a day since it'll take 2 days before the repair guy gets out to our place. 

@Matt Long Yeah I think that is my take away lesson with the fireplace inspection this year. I just need to be a little more proactive. Thanks for your insight!

I think I kind of missed the whole point of what I was getting at in my original post. I guess I'm more curious if this is how other rental properties are? Does it potentially take a few days before a landlord can get to an issue? If so is that ok? Maybe I'm simply just caring too much haha.

As another example. I need our gas fireplaces inspected, and the soonest I could find is 3 weeks out from now. These are the kind of things I wish I could just knock out myself, but I'm handcuffed to whenever these guys are available. Bah!

Hello All!

My wife and I purchased our first duplex ~4 years ago, and overall it's been a pretty good experience for us. We bought a place that was in great condition for the most part so we have rarely had to deal with any issues with the place.

However, we just re rented a few months ago, and little things are starting to happen. Currently the dishwasher is kind of leaking but it's a small amount. So we called an appliance guy to come out. He couldn't find anything and said it was just plugged up since the previous tenant was using too much soap. We though that was the end of it, but it's coming up again!

Our place is owner occupied, and I wish I had the skills to just fix a dishwasher or the A/C if it goes out (fan outside the house broke like a year ago), but sadly I cannot fix any of this stuff. I know computers, not so much the blue collar skills that I so desperately need. 

So onto the question of this thread. When an issue pops up on the tenant side. Should I'd be making more of an effort to try to fix stuff myself/learn how to fix it? Obviously I know learning how to do this stuff will save me tons of money down the line, but I'd also like to maintain a professional feel to our house, and have professionals work on anything broken.

At the end of the day, is this ok? I absolutely hate telling my tenants 'oh hey sorry about that, let me call a repairman to fix it, and oh, they won't be out for another day'. It makes me go crazy because I want to offer excellent service, but then having to outsource and worse, wait an extra day or more because the guy I called is booked.

Has anyone else gone through similar feels? Am I doing this completely wrong? How should I go about repairs so that it's more efficient and effective? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. - I'm sure some will advocate for a PM to take over, but we aren't really making money on the property as is and would have to just passively give money to a PM just for that ONE occasion that might pop up a year. 

Originally posted by @Account Closed:

@Brian Johnson there are a lot of factors at play. It depends on your credit and current interest rate to see if you would be able to get savings. Can you share for the community a bit more information about your current range of credit and the interest rate and principal on the loan. Once we know that, it will be easier to make recommendations. 

Thanks for reaching out David! My credit score is right around 800. My current interest is 4.75% and the principle remaining on the duplex is 258k. If there is any additional information that would help please let me know! :)

Hi All!

I have owned a duplex now for almost 4 years. It was my wife and my first home purchase in Wisconsin, and it's been awesome to have the capability to have an owner occupied place coming from living in one bedroom apartments. While it's been great, it also hasn't made me 'rich' haha. In fact, renting out one side doesn't cover the whole mortgage bill.

I've had this idea for a little while now, but thought it might be best to ask this community. Currently my mortgage is about 2250/month, and the rent we get from one side is currently at 1525/month. So we typically owe about 700/month. Don't worry, I'm still putting a few hundred aside a month in my emergency fund in case anything hits the fan! (Place is in great shape, and in 4 years have had essentially nothing serious happen).

All that being said, I was wondering if there was a way to lower my monthly mortgage, ideally to get it down to about 1500/month so then we would be breaking even and I can stash even more cash away to buy up my next property. I've heard one way is I could pick up a 40 year mortgage. Not sure how I feel about being in debt longer, but at the same time I feel like this would allow me to save up faster to get more property. Then eventually save up and pay it all off. I'm a pretty frugal guy so I don't like to stretch myself too thin. 

So with that, are there any alternative solutions? Another thought I had was maybe finding a hard money lender, let them pay off the mortgage and then just pay them back? Again, not sure how realistic that is. Please let me know your thoughts! I'd greatly appreciate it :D

Thanks!!

Hi All,

Currently looking for new tenants as my current ones gave me the notice that they will be out at the end of July. I've been getting a steady steam off hits off of craigs list and zillow, and I just showed the unit to a prospect yesterday. I have some reservations, and would like to share and discuss with the veterans of this forum. :)

First thing is that the prospect showed up before the scheduled time. To me this was good because it means she's serious and she seemed very professional overall, but as we were walking through she gave me the 'I have to be honest speech'. Apparently her ex husband and her were evicted from a place like 5 years ago. According to her it was actually more on the ex and her eviction charge was 'dismissed'. So that definitely produced some red flags off the start. However the more I talked to her the more it seemed like maybe she was in a bad situation.

The current place her and her fiance have been at for the past 4 years has a good housing reference. According to the landlord they've never missed a payment and that's good news, right? I have a few more reservations though.

She said that she owns a cleaning business and her fiance works in construction and also sub contracts. On the application she wrote that she makes 3000$/month and then the finace makes 8000$/month. My gut doesn't believe this because she only provided one pay stub for both her and the fiance. How do I know these weren't one time deals?

So now we get to the question. :) I'm still considering this family, but obviously my gut is telling me no. I feel like if I could ask for tax returns of 2017 and maybe a recent bank statement to truly see their financials, I'd feel better, butttt is this legal to ask for?

I just want to make sure I'm not crossing any legal lines by asking for too much, but again part of me wants to believe maybe she just was in a bad situation now they are just getting on track. If they produce almost 11K a month, I'd think I'd be good. Especially with the good housing reference, right?

What do ya'll think? I would appreciate your feedback! Thanks!!