All Forum Posts by: Damon Duperre

I have gotten a really good deal on a short sale before but it was a pain in the butt and it took 3 months before the bank finally gave the final approval. That's just the way they are. Banks don't really want to do them. That was over a year ago and I bet it's even worse now since there are fewer houses for sale.

Find out if a house sits on top of an old landfill before you buy it.

White Settlement is a good area.  They are kind of a pain in the butt compared to Fort Worth. They inspect everything ($75 inspection fee). They make you prove you own a house before they will turn on the water etc... 

Have you considered Benbrook?  You won't find as many good ones there but the ones you might find are pretty good. Stay away from Timber Creek though. It's on top of an old landfill.  

What you are looking for is a home equity line of credit. It probably won't be too much with only one rent house. You can probably find one if you don't get discouraged when they say no because most of them will say no. A smaller more local type of bank is the most likely to say yes.

True but you can make the weakest link a different house if yours is harder to get into than the other ones.

I agree with what everybody said except that I would not call the police and ask them to monitor the property. Nothing good ever comes from doing that. If ANY of your tenants get arrested for any reason they won't be able to pay the rent and if those tenants really are selling drugs the cops might destroy the apartment trying to find them and then they won't pay you a dime for it. 

When you go to sell it the potential buyer(s) will almost for sure have a home inspection done and then they will probably want you to replace the roof so you might as well do it now. 15 years is along time for a roof (assuming that it is asphalt composition). 

Call Craig at USA Roofing (817) 773-8067 and tell him that I told you about them. They do top notch work for about as cheap as you will find anywhere.

For the long term maybe you should consider selling that house and buying one near where you live and managing the property yourself.

It's not what you know but what you can prove. Proving that might be very difficult or impossible. 

One thing I would try is sending a letter to that address with the actual tenants name. On the front of the envelope (which can contain blank paper or whatever) write "address correction requested". Be sure to either put your address for the return address or some other address where you can get it if it comes back.   IF he has filed a change of address with the post office you will get it mailed back to you from the post office with his new address on a yellow sticker on the outside of the envelope. Usually takes a week or so. Take the envelope to court as proof.  Check out your bills sometime. Most if not all of them say that or something similar on the outside of the envelope. A lot of them say "address service requested". It's the same thing.

Assuming your lease says they agree to accept the property "as is" which nearly all leases do you only have to repair things that were good when they moved in. Not anything that wasn't there when they moved in.

Personally I would carefully try to find a way to get rid of them. CAREFULLY. The first thing I would do (before trying to evict them) is "offer" to let them out of the lease without penalty since neither one of you is happy with the situation.

I know a landlord who put the question on his rental application "What is the name of your lawyer?" and if they answer it he doesn't rent to them. One threat of legal action (even subtle ones) and I start carefully trying to figure out a legal way to get rid of the tenants and that letter has a bunch of them. But be very careful because loosing an eviction case is really bad. I did it once and do not plan on ever doing it again.

If your state requires a single keyed deadbolt by law then I have nothing to say so don't even read the rest of this. But if, like Texas it doesn't   :

I always put double keyed deadbolts on doors that have windows. That is what I do on the house I live in so that is what I do on the ones I rent out also. I had one tenant request a single keyed lock on her back door that has a window instead of a double keyed one and I got my lawyer to write a lease addendum for her to sign so she can't hold me liable if somebody breaks in and steals all her stuff. 

My normal lease states that if the house has any doors with windows (which I try to avoid and sometimes replace doors to avoid) the door(s) have double keyed locks and the tenants have been given an extra key to hide near the door in case of fire. It also says the tenants acknowledge that they are aware of this. It is in bold print and underlined and I make the tenants initial the lease right under that.

It's really not a fire hazard at all unless there are no windows in the room with the door. If it makes you feel better hang a small club on the wall that can be used to break the window in case of fire.

Putting a single keyed deadbolt on a door with a window is about as good as not putting a deadbolt on the door at all. Even leaving the key in a double keyed deadbolt all the time is better than putting a single keyed deadbolt because a potential burglar might not notice the key is in it.