All Forum Posts by: Jeff T.

@Jay I just heard John Burns (he wrote “Big Shifts Ahead” which is about demographics effect on real estate) talk about this on the Bruce Norris radio show/ podcast.

Check out part 2 of the interview.

He mentioned mills shutting down for covid and demand increasing and the mills haven’t gotten back online fully yet. He expected that to help prevent further increases but didn’t expect prices to come down.

Not sure if that explains much, but he explained it better.

@Cj Powderhorn

Look at what The Norris Group (Bruce and Aaron Norris) is doing in that area. They are doing new build flips and new build rentals. They are a solid business.

I’ve invested in notes with them.

@Kyle J.

I follow Bruce Norris also, so I understand what you are saying. It seems like at least in the short term there will be issues, although I feel hopeful about the coastal areas long term due to high tech jobs.

I see google, Amazon, Apple and others building offices in the SoCal area, so high paying jobs will tend to drive housing.

Although rent control will affect multi family.

So there are competing factors, for sure.

@Brian Ploszay Pipes in slabs are a problem. I have had to repipe, but they have put the new pipe through the attic and left the old pipe without breaking the concrete

I switched property managers recently and my turnover costs are much lower now. So I have found I’m much less worried about increasing rents to market.

So while I used to keep very low rents for the good tenants I am raising rents closer to market and my cash flow is much better. In fact I was losing money before due to inefficient property management and low rents.

I do think it is market dependent, it’s very easy to fill units in my market so that helps. If that wasn’t the case it might change the way I do things.

It’s been quite a shift for me lately.

@Shane Craig

Water leaks! Had water leaks in a kitchen and a bathroom in different rental houses around the same time. Each ended up costing close to 5 figures. Oh, also a tenant unplugged the sewer lift station after being evicted and flooded a different place. That was fun.

Hard to say about prevention for the one leak, but I should have gotten more information about the issue and more bids. I think it could have been more cheaply.

The bathroom was simply a way rotted subfloor that ended up with me replacing half the bathroom. That could have been prevented with better sealed flooring.

Be careful hiring restoration companies that deal with insurance if you are not using insurance. They want to replace everything new.

I’ve sold these properties and have had fewer issues since then.

I’ve also changed property managers since then and I think I would have saved a lot of money because my new property manager is big enough to have the resources and contacts to deal with these issues. There’s a whole other post I’d like to rant about ;)

@Boots Bonner what model Toto do you use? I’ve looked into Toto, but they tend to be pricy ( not compared to a service call though I guess)

@Dan Cardone I have worked with one of those on your list. PM me if you are interested in details.

Well, I think the deal is that the tenant thought the tub needed resurfacing. So we agreed to resurface tub, since we want to maintain the tub.  Resurfacing contractor gets there and the first step to resurfacing it to clean the tub.  After getting through the cleaning step, he realizes it doesn't need to be resurfaced, so instead of just continuing and resurfacing then  charging about $300, he stops and charges for the trip and the work done.

It's a long term tenant, but they are well below market rent. In the end I went with the standard practice of the PM, which would be to charge the tenant, which I think makes sense, since they are responsible for keeping it clean and didn't.  

One key point is that they requested the resurface. If the tub was deteriorated, I would have paid for it, but it was just dirty. If the request had come from PM or workers, then I would pay for it.

We are also doing other work on the unit that they requested. 

Anyhow, we ended up going with the PM standard practice for issues like this and charged it back to the tenant.