All Forum Posts by: Dan Graney

Good morning.

I purchased my first rental property, a duplex, and I am living in the smaller upper unit. The house will be rent ready on the first of April so I put my first add on Zillow and Craigslist yesterday. I got three responses in less than 24 hours, kind of making me think I have it priced too low.

Now I am wondering what to do. Part of me wants to pull back and reevaluate the rental fee but then I think that, well I did a pretty decent comparison before I decided on my fee, don't get greedy. But I don't want to be stupid either.

Was wondering if this was a normal response for placing an add like I did. Disclaimer, 2 of the 3 have dogs and I put no pets in my add.

Thank you in advance for any replies.  

Thanks everyone for your responses. Have had a couple of quotes come back in. Much higher than the first company. One would not do a replacement type of policy but would only do a repair cost type.

The original company responded to my email and apologized for the mistake and has re-instated the policy.

I am still concerned that "they did not know what they were doing" and I may have future troubles should the need to file a claim ever come up. Perhaps I should still shop around.

Just bought my first Duplex right around Christmas. Used the Insurance company the Mortgage guy (my brother-in-law) recommended. They turned out to be rather incompetent, making mistakes, correcting them, un-correcting them, correcting them again and finally cancelling my policy due to the house not meeting their criteria which has never changed.

So for the last couple days I have been shopping around. The first to call back with numbers tells me that there is a huge surcharge added for my house being a multi-family dwelling, like 25%.

The first company did not have this surcharge so I figure other might not also.

Any suggestions?

Thanks guys.

How does she find expired listings? She may already know but I am curious.

Update, I starter a new topic about this same problem because I was trying to learn about water jetting specifically. Here is the text from that other post and hopefully the final solution.

"I recently had clogged drains in my first investment house, a duplex. I had the drains snakes out and that fix only lasted a week and a half and it is clogged again. Have heard that water jetting is a much more thorough way of cleaning drains but I do not know anyone who has ever had it done.

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has had first hand experience with this, thank you in advance for your help.

Dan"

Greetings,

My daughter just got her license to sell real estate in Michigan. She still has a few classes to take but she now has a desk at one of the most well know brokers and is ready to get going. Problem is that she is now floundering a bit not really knowing what to do next. She used to sell cars and had a list of about 150 customers that he broker suggested she contact. She did that but now is feeling pretty much on her own. She has never worked a job where she does not have a boss who clearly spells out what her daily duties are. She is far from lazy but could use some direction. I got her a copy of the Millionaire Real Estate Investor audio book but it seemed to be a bit overwhelming to her.

Would really appreciate any advice that  could point her to on how to get started. 

Update

Before I had the plumber come out to do the jetting I called to talk to the most experienced guy at the company to ask for advice because I was not sure what to do. I had thought about the camera inspection but really just wanted everything as clean as possible so I was leaning towards the jetting.

The plumber suggested the camera inspection first so I went that route. I had done a bit of research on the camera systems and was surprised when he showed up with his system because the head of the camera seemed pretty large. As I suspected he was only able to go about 10 feet before his camera could not make a bend. He still charged me $190 so I felt a bit ripped off but he did find something.

In that 10 feet my drain went from PVC to cast to PVC back to cast and had a 90 degree horizontal turn before the vertical drop. Each of those joints had a bit of a lip to them for stuff to hang up on plus there was still a bit of water laying in the pipe indicating that there was not a good slope to the line. That plus the horizontal bend made several obstacles for the waste to pass by. Good new was that even the cast pipes were still very wide open, not a lot of build up. So Jetting would not have done much.

His solution was get a newer toilet. The one I have is quite old and flushes slowly without much force. The newer once have a lot more power which will allow the waste to be pushed past the obstacles. That or I could rip out the old plumbing and only get a slightly better situation because the horizontal 90 will not go away without a major demo. So after research I am going with a American Standard Champion 4 toilet. We shall see how this plays out.

Thank you all who offered advice, it really helps.

Update. Still have not attempted to pull the dishwasher yet, have more pressing plumbing issues I am trying to get squared away. However I did have a friend come over who used to do countertops and we looked at it closer. Turns out my countertop is not even bolted down. So we might be able to lift it high enough, with enough guys, to do the remove and replace.

There is some risk involved because one end is tucked under a backsplash but it might just flex enough to make it work.

The jetting would probably be done thru the toilets and I was told they would use a mini-jetter to do the smaller lines. The clog is most likely somewhere inside the house before the upper main drain connects to the lower main. I assume that because the lower drains, even though they are a bit slow, are not clogged. I am going to have them jet clean everything that they can, upstairs and down.

The original cleanout was with a cable auger with no blades, just a bent section of cable at the end.

I recently had clogged drains in my first investment house, a duplex. I had the drains snakes out and that fix only lasted a week and a half and it is clogged again. Have heard that water jetting is a much more thorough way of cleaning drains but I do not know anyone who has ever had it done.

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has had first hand experience with this, thank you in advance for your help.

Dan