All Forum Posts by: Danny Maller

I have a 3 unit in the city in a low C or D area. Each unit has its own garbage bin and what my tenants and the surrounding neighbors/home owners do is keep them in the backyard gate until garbage day and then place them in the alley for a day. This is because the local drifter crowd will steal the bins for who knows what purposes. Chicago has pretty much dropped the ball entirely with replacing these bins so now everybody just steals each others bins.

So the problem is, the tenants sort of take turns taking out the garbage but it's getting a little messy. I would say just keep them in the alley but they'll get stolen. Has anyone hired someone to manage garbage takeout, or have any ideas?

I bought a 2 flat with legal garden unit back in April 2018. I've lived in and fixed up the basement for the last year while renting the top two units. I am a few days from moving to the top floor where I intend to rehab a few things like the kitchen, bathroom, possibly new furnace, water tank (might go tankless even). I have a renter lined up for the garden, the 1st floor says she never wants to move again (she is also an excellent tenant) and I think I'll bump up the rent on the top floor once I move out. Another thing to note is that I've just refi'd out of my 3.5% down FHA into a conventional loan and the building appraised much higher than my initial purchase to give me 20% equity and I am in the process of closing a HELOC on that equity to make a lot of repairs to the building exterior including the garage.

I would like to move out once my rehab work is done around April/May 2020 and when the better renters are in the market. I don't want to live on the top floor because I don't need to live in a 3bd apt. I feel like my options are to find another house hack, or rent. Finding a deal to house hack would be ideal for the sake of progression but I am all but fully leveraged with this HELOC. My current plan is to aggressively pay off the HELOC before the 5 year draw period is up and take a 2nd draw before the 10 year payback period kicks in. I'll pay interest only for the first year while I live here, and once fully rented contribute heavily to principal.

So I could rent a place around here for ~$900 that I would be fine with, but I don't want to overlook opportunity. I hope providing some numbers here will help anyone give a different idea.

Rental Income: $3,500/mo
Mortgage: $1,553/mo
Utilities: $100/mo
HELOC: $49,800 - (Year 1: interest only, $270/mo)(Year 2: $1400/mo)
Cashflow: (Year 1: $1,595/mo)(Year 2-: $465)(Year of HELOC debt free: $1,865)

My paycheck take home is just under $2k and I have about $25k cash reserves.

Bottom line is I think I might have to rent for a year or more while I pay down the HELOC debt and free up equity. Any ideas or opinions? Also this is West Humboldt Park, Chicago, thinking of renting closer to Logan Square.

@John Hickey Hey! Yes, I've had some luck and some results from effort.

The best luck came when the main dealer who operated out of a wheelchair had a pretty severe medical issue and was taken away by ambulance and hasn't been back or any of his other cronies. It took traffic down 90%, it's been amazing. This decline was also happening while about 30 of us local homeowners formed a weekly block club. We gather to discuss the ongoings of the neighborhood and march the neighborhood. We've managed to get all three of our local ward's alderman to come to our meetings on a reoccurring basis and last month we had mayor rahm emanuel come and present the importance of a strong community to bring change.

We all continue to call the cops for any activity we see outside. I personally like to small talk anyone immediately near my front yard. Some guy was sitting on a milk crate having a beer a few months ago and I just asked him about the day and weather until he got mad and left.

Tough to say whether these good changes are short or long term but they're in the right direction.

@John Park https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34m92h/update_ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/

@John Park not sure if related but I read a thread on Reddit one time about a person worried about themselves going crazy, experiencing paranoia I think and some very strange symptoms, turns out there was a carbon monoxide problem in their house and it was co2 poisoning. I'll see if I can find it.

Everyone says that Chicago has laws that greatly favor the tenant over the landlord. I'm not getting good comparative search results so maybe someone with more Google-fu could provide some better search queries. I'm curious what makes Chicago better for tenants and out of curiosity what other cities have in place to extremes in favor of tenants, and cities to extremes in favor of landlords to get a gauge of how Chicago sits on the scale.

@Ray Harrell I'm not going to continue addressing your constant false assumptions and lack of reading comprehension, it's unproductive. Good day.

@Ray Harrell These people don't live in this neighborhood. They are from around but several blocks away as they've told me. My neighbors, long time residents of this neighborhood which I've become well acquainted with, have all brought up to me their dislike of these people around. I don't see how not wanting people selling drugs next door is considered a negative. You're literally arguing that people should be able to do crack.

@Ray Harrell You are assuming that I am assuming. I've witnessed about 10 drug deals in the alley from my kitchen window on several occasions. I've witnessed about 5 men smoking crack on several occasions and standing there in the alley drifting off into space while the cops are en route. I once walked out my back door to see a few crackheads huddled looking at something on the ground outside my fence. They had given a crack rock to an ant and were cheering it on. I took a video of that one right next to them which they didn't seem to care at all about. I found a heroin syringe/needle on the concrete slab for my garbage pickup a week from when I moved into the building. There are drug baggies that litter the neighborhood. These people that hang around don't live in this neighborhood as I found by talking to them. I keep a respectful dialogue with them and ask politely for them to move down the block when I have prospective tenants coming over.

"Either learn to live with it or move!" - worst thread contribution ever, Ray.

@Account Closed Thanks for the input! We have Alderman which are neighborhood elected officials. These people are definitely doing illegal things, doing/dealing drugs mainly.