All Forum Posts by: Chris London

Results! Every other quality adds up to this one denominator.

@Bin Chen I never have a shortage of qualified rental applications for properties 20 min or closer to Duke University/Hospital (Durham). This is the largest employer in the Triangle with UNC down the road ranking #5. I also never have a shortage of qualified applications for properties in S. Durham (near the mall). I find $1500/mo rent to be the sweet spot so you can always reverse engineer what you need to buy to make that $ work.

@Stephen Lynch I just had the below work done 2 weeks ago in Cary NC. They only had to dig up a piece and not 50 feet but it still involved a backhoe rental to dig up part of my yard. Cost me $1665. 

You should ask for the video, even seeing one of these video's for the 1st time it can be somewhat obvious what's going on with your pipes and help w. your sense of urgency.

You should also always get multiple quotes.

• excavated city clean-out tee by machine.
• we found cracked fitting going into wye. we confirmed that wye was in good shape with no cracks.
• socket saved wye and installed new stand pipe.
• shored under existing pipe with good dirt
• backfilled area. tamped with machine and hand tamp
• spread seed and straw after grading.
• scoped sewer main to confirm everything was good.
• found major problems on city side in the terracotta piping. see videos for details. I would get town of Cary out asap to remedy
• we installed sewer popper clean-out at house clean-out to prevent in home back-ups after we saw the condition of city side of sewer.

@Dean Fiacco, Don't get involved in the drama. Do listen to the lease violations. Sounds like a single lease (not by the room/person). I would suggest an inspection. Document any lease violations in an e-mail to the tenants and time to remediate and consequences if they don't remediate.

@Mike Martin yes, the type of laptops that you can also hold as a clipboard/tablet is commonly called a 2-in-1. In the Lenovo brand look at the Yoga or Flex. There is typically a small premium for this functionality. 

@April Dagonese your original post stated that the tenants told you that they wanted to use the jetted tub so while I agree w/ everyone else I will add this advice.

I sometimes have tenants submit maintenance requests and when I talk to them, find out they don't care so much about the repair as much as making sure I know about the issue and they don't get charged for it when they move out. In these cases, I have options like waiting until I send a handyman for a different repair to address or just fix when I 'turn-over' the property.

@Mike Martin What type of phone do you have (Apple or Android)? You might consider getting a laptop to match so you can share apps a little easier.

Specs: 8GB of memory, 256 GB of storage, i5 (8th gen processor or later) and a 14"+ screen size is a good place to start if you are going to download property software and store a lot of property photos on your system.

Chromebooks don't have an operating system (meaning you don't have Microsoft Windows, so no excel, word, PowerPoint, etc). I personally use excel a lot for spreadsheets. Basically, Chromebooks are popular b/c they are inexpensive but it's not much different than a tablet that gives you basic internet.

I personally think there is no better computer that exists than the 'Lenovo ThinkPad' brand of computers. They are the only computers that are military spec'd which in short means you can spill your cup of coffee on the keyboard then drop it on the floor then just pick it up and finish sending the e-mail you were just working on, literally. 

The Lenovo website is showing a ThinkPad T490 on sale for $849 right now with all of these specs, I'd recommend this one. It's basically what I have.

@Allen L. Your plan may work, but...make sure to have a plan for when it is 0-degrees in Chicago in January and the heat goes out and it takes 30+ days for your unit to get fixed. That plan should entail renting portable heaters, possibly putting the tenant up in a hotel or being prepared to not receive rent from the tenant based on the property not being habitable.

I just closed on an SFH rental here in NC that also had a 20-year-old HVAC system. The seller included a home warranty from Cinch w/ a $200 deductible. I toyed with the idea of doing what you mention but I want to take good care of my tenant so they stay longer and pay rent, so I just bought a new HVAC instead (I had an HVAC in my budget when I bought the place anyway).

@Josh Hinkle is it 2 people on a single 12 mo lease? Did they pay Sept rent?

Did he remove all of his belongings? Maybe not or she wouldn't be worried about him coming back when she isn't there. It's hard to call it abandonment if his belongings are still at the property. Good time to do an inspection.

I would proceed cautiously. If she signs an amendment to end the lease early and he does not b/c he is uncommunicative and he shows back up at the end of the month you will be in a bind.

I would recommend providing her an amendment to terminate the lease early that requires both of their signatures. Let her be responsible for getting his signature. I imagine she knows where he works.

Let her know until she gets his signature you will expect rent on its due date each month.

If you don't get the rent, start the eviction process, unfortunately.

Let her either hunt him down for his signature or find a roommate or go to her parents for money.

@Diane Savoian in your post you say that you are working with a property manager. I would suggest letting them tell you what the applicant criteria should be. They will have a process in place that is right for the class of property and protects you and them from any fair housing claims.