All Forum Posts by: Brittany Guimond

Reporting back — thanks for all your help on this one! We found a tenant right before the beginning on September and offered them $500 off if they signed a lease starting 9/1, and it worked! Their credit wasn’t great, but they gave me the backstory and they were very communicative. It was down to our unit and a competitor unit, so when I explained to them how pet rent works in Colorado (max of $35/month total), they decided to move forward with us. It sounds like a lot of landlords don’t know about the new(ish) law and I assume knowing that helped us stand out. Either way, it was 1 month of vacancy and a LOT of marketing efforts before we found our tenants, and they’ve been great so far. Best of luck to everyone out there dealing with the slow market, it’s tough!

Hey there fellow landlords! Anyone else challenged to find tenants for your property? We’ve had our 1/2 duplex on the market since late July (a few days before the end of the month, so about 30 days now) and we haven’t had anyone serious come through yet. It’s priced competitively using area comps (even slightly lower), it shows well, and we even allow dogs (no cats). We’ve shown it several times, but no one seems to be really motivated. We’re thinking it could be seasonality, especially since our place is ideal for families and perhaps most families have done their moving for the year before school starts. Anyone else experiencing this?? How long did it take to find your tenants??

I’ve always bought used appliances, we like FB marketplace and a used appliance store on Broadway (I can’t remember the name). We roll the dice, but we buy name brand with center agitator (we like Whirlpool). We’re going on 11 years with one, and 2 years with another. 

@Alan F. you are my people!! Haha, thanks for jumping in to expand on the bigger picture. You are lightyears ahead of me in terms of understanding the full scope. I think it illustrates the importance of talking to a few HVAC technicians (not just one) to better understand the whole cohesive picture on a property-by-property basis. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and on existing properties, it's incredibly dependent on the existing infrastructure, budget and rental strategy.

As long as you have ductwork in place, I strongly recommend NOT putting in A/C and instead going with a heat pump. Heat pumps are incredibly efficient, use far less energy than a conventional A/C, and are used all over the US and internationally in all sorts of climates. They are the way of the future and I suspect we'll start to see them more and more as energy costs continue to increase.

If you have the ductwork already, you should NOT need minisplits / head units on the interior walls (these can add up $$). This can be a differentiator from the competition, for example say in your marketing description something like "save money on your energy bills in the summer!" (we do this now with one of our LTRs that has solar and it works). 

What's more, you can use a heat pump in the winter too, so when your furnace finally goes out, you're covered with this ONE solution (versus needing to get another gas furnace, adding yet another benefit to tenants in that they can keep energy bills low all year round). And to be clear, you will need a furnace or a blower to run the heat pump, but if your heat pump is the device running the heating and cooling (vs the furnace itself), it will be cheaper to run and use less fossil fuels.

Cost-wise, installing a heat pump only should be comparable in price to an A/C. Also, the state of Colorado is expecting to see some additional tax rebates come out summer/fall 2024, so if you can wait it out one more summer, it might be worth it. However, it's unclear if those rebates will be available to landlords, right now the tax credits available through the inflation reduction act (different than the rebates I just mentioned) are only available to homeowners right now. Additionally, the city of Denver and Xcel also offer rebates, but your HVAC installer will know about those so just remember to ask.

All that to say, I recommend touching base with your CPA about it first, if you have one. My CPA understands these rules so we usually check with him first. 

Here are a few recommendations to get quotes from, and I recommend getting quotes for both a heat pump AND a high efficiency A/C and determine which solution is right for your biz and property:

- Total Mechanical Solutions https://www.totalmechanicalsolutionsco.com/

- The Weather Changers https://theweatherchangers.com/

- My Electric Home https://myelectrichome.org/

I'm a landlord myself and we're currently weighing our options for our rental right now. I've heard too many horror stories about swamp coolers leaking, causing mold and ruining roofs. 

I'm also a GREEN-designated REALTOR and I spend A LOT of time researching and practicing sustainability, but at the end of the day, it has to make sense for your business. If your plan is to buy and hold the property for several years, I strongly recommend opting for the future-proof solution. Reach out with any questions!

I'm in Colorado and in our market, we RARELY see the house-hacking income cover all the expenses. I'm not sure about your market, but cash-flow is getting harder to find with high costs all around, like interest rates, taxes and insurance. If your strategy is buy-and-hold with long-term appreciation and eventual cash flow, you'll be alright. But if your goal is to cash-flow out of the gate and your market can't support that strategy (unless you find a killer deal), then you may consider a pivot. 

We knocked $500 off a tenant's first month's rent on our Arvada LTR to incentivize them to sign the lease. Perhaps knocking something off or waiving pet rent (since you can only collect $35/month with the new Colorado law) if you allow pets...? 

Speaking from experience — we did the "delayed gratification" thing prior to having kids by buying a small home in a good location and adding value over time, and we are SO happy we did it that way. Kids changed everything (at least for the first few years) forcing us to reprioritize for a bit and put the wealth goals on the backburner (hello daycare costs). When we finally felt like we had a handle on everything, we moved into a multifamily and househack it while renting our modest first home with excellent cash flow. Looking back, we're happy we invested when we did and had TIME to let it appreciate. Both energy and time are what we leveraged when we didn't have kids, and now we're reaping those rewards. Whatever you do, do it with intention, especially if you have goals you want to achieve. Good luck!

@Morgan Roddy — your quotes are right on with current pricing, the cost to build an ADU is at least $250K, throw a garage in and you're right there. If it were me, I'd likely go HELOC on my primary (if you aren't leveraging one already) but this renovation loan then refinance to perm that Jason mentioned sounds interesting! I would shop both options. I like Security Services Federal Credit Union for HELOCs, they tend to have the best terms from what I've found for myself and clients.

What Bruce says here is also on point -- your payback period would be soooo long, unless you plan to do a cash out refinance after the project is complete and your property value has increased. In my experience, adding an income unit to a property increases its value, but not by a whole lot, and I assume whatever rate you have locked in is better than the rates we have today. You might be better off buying another primary with costs as high as they are right now, just my two cents. I'm interested to hear what you do -- good luck!

 Sure, your logic and sentiment are right, however it's completely dependent on individual market conditions. I could not get away with jacking up the rent last year because rents remained flat and/or declined. In a few years when the changes from these laws start to normalize, I think we will see a lot more differentiation between units that allow pets vs. those that don't (and their respective rents) but for now (in this climate) I think we're going to see profits take a hit.