All Forum Posts by: Kevin C.

My lease specifically states, under Method of Payment, "Unless the parties agree otherwise, Tenant may not pay rent in cash and will pay all rent by check, cashier's check, money order or other means acceptable to landlord".

Tenant agrees to those terms when they sign the lease.

I'm in the middle of an eviction now.
I hired an attorney to handle it for me due to concerns regarding the 3 day pay or quit notice. My understanding was after the 3 day pay or quit notice, the next step was filing for the eviction, but upon further investigation, I found that a 'Notice to Vacate' had to be delivered to tenant first.

I had done the 3 day pay or quit, but not a Notice to Vacate.
To be safe, since this is my first eviction, I hired an attorney to handle the process for me.

Here's the process for Collin County in TX.
http://www.co.collin.tx.us/justices_peace/jp3_2/eviction_filing_steps_3_2.pdf

Notice it specifically states a 'pay rent or quit' or 'quit notice' is NOT a valid 'Notice to Vacate'

This is for TX and you're in CA, but if you're unsure of the process, like I was, hiring an attorney may be the best solution.

This nonsense rewards those that used their homes as an ATM, tapping out the equity every year or two as prices went up, buying cars, trucks, boats, who knows what with the equity and now that values have dropped, and they're underwater, they get a bailout.

Never mind the fact all those shiny toys are still in their garage, toys that are now effectively being paid for by taxpayers.

Govt rewarding bad behavior, with OUR money, it's ridiculous.

Agree with you 100% Jon Holdman

2012? Those would be for next year ;>).

I'm 55 now.
Retire - would like to be able to retire from day job in 5 to 7 years.
Net Worth - 2 to 5M
NOI - 5K to 10K or so monthly in today's dollars.

My FT job pays very well, and I'm able to bank 30%+ of my gross. Building cash reserves now, once at a certain level, will either pick up another rental or pay one off.

Have 3 rentals now, another 2 or 3 in the next few years is all I think we'll really need. We're not high maintenance, we rarely drink and fancy food is not our style, good times with friends is really not that expensive.

Just now getting into competitive ballroom dancing, meeting lots of fun people and having a great time with it. Once retired from the day job, activities such as this will keep boredom away ;>).

Long term, it's health care that has the potential to really bite you, everything else is manageable.

We bought a memory foam topper from CostCo a few years ago. Liked it so much we bought toppers for all the beds in our house.

The topper is only a few inches thick but really makes a difference.

Might want to try out a topper before going all in, they were inexpensive compared to a new mattress, well under $200 for a King if I recall correctly.

Joshua Dorkin - thanks, got it!

@Joshua (how do you get the @ link) I've only been doing this for a few years, so I don't have too much paper yet. I've never had to refer back to paper, even though I do still have it. I have backups in multiple locations - in the cloud, in a fire safe, on my laptop, all secured of course.

At some point the paper will go away, it has not become an issue yet, but when it does, it'll be gone.

I use a flatbed scanner and scan all receipts associated with a specific property to a pdf. Each properties receipts are scanned to a new pdf. All receipts are scanned in date order.
Receipts are scanned at the end of each year.

I scan any papers associated with my personal return as well.

Once scanned, the paper receipts go away.

I only have a couple rentals at the moment, so it really doesn't take too long to do.

All pdfs and associated tax records are stored in a folder for that year.

Makes it real easy to find a receipt or something associated with a property or tax return if needed.

Ahhh... Reading between the lines, are you saying you'd like to be a full time REI but with that only requiring 5-10% of your time?

I like that!