All Forum Posts by: Gwen Fyfe

It's really the landlord's preference, but the water bill is the one thing that the landlord can be chased for if the tenant doesn't pay it, so most landlords prefer to handle it themselves.

Most of my rentals are in Bedford, which has an astronomical city-imposed $52 minimum water charge per unit per month. I pay it, and I bill the tenants for anything that's over the minimum. It really takes a lot of water usage to go over the minimum. Best of all worlds for me - I know it's being paid, I've got a consistent charge to budget for, and the tenants still have motivation to let me know that the toilet's running.

Paying only $150 to $200 for your housing is pretty great.

However, I solved that problem by also having a roommate in my side for $400. In my second house hack now. Been making a profit on my own housing for a few years.

Okay, that's not too terrible. I was picturing at least a grand. Let's see what my guy quotes me. 

Oh my god. Lovely.

Was it an expensive repair? I'm dreading the quote from my HVAC guy. If this tenant wants it done she can pay for it herself, but I know she won't be able to afford it, and eventually I'll have to pay for it myself.
 

I hear you. Last week I had a plumber out at a rental doing some minor upgrades to get things up to code. He mentioned that there was water all over the basement floor and he thought it was related to the AC. This rental is actually my old house and right near my day job, so I checked it out. The AC was working great when I lived there last summer...

I guess there was some kind of issue and it wasn't working well. The tenant cranked it down to 44. Seriously?! 44 degrees! and the temperature in the house was 81. She never bothered mentioning the issue to me, just set the HVAC system to rip itself apart. There's a baseball sized ball of ice on one of the pipes in the basement. I told her that and she said "Oh no... that might be my fault..."

Uggggghhhh.

Hey @Darius Burgan, that's fantastic, welcome! So funny - I started with a house hack in Bedford and my partner's name is Darius. Funny little world.

I just moved out of my house hack up to Cleveland proper, but I love Bedford and ended up buying a bunch of duplexes there. I know the folks in the building department and a lot of local tradesmen. Just let me know if you need any help.

Probably not on all of them, but on some of them, for sure. When I first started buying he came out and took a look at properties and made a note of any areas of concern. I remember discussing the knob and tube with them when I was first shopping around for insurance. They even insured a duplex with Fed Pacific boxes for me at a pretty decent price. (I've since replaced the boxes, of course.)

I think that at this point his staff just drive by and take photos of my new purchases.

I don't have any houses that are entirely knob and tube, but I do have a few that still have some left over. State Farm has been good about it. My agent is Chad Fields.

I would recommend contacting the building department for Shaker Heights and asking them that. They'll be able to tell you what it is about the unit that violates code.

Often, for third floor units the issue is that there is only one way in and out. Most cities want to see that residents living on upper floors have multiple ways to exit the building in the event of a fire. If that's the problem here, it's worth asking the building department whether they would allow the separate third floor unit if you installed a fire escape ladder outside one of the windows.

I use Tom Staab for all my property inspections. He's a good guy, reasonably priced, great attention to detail and is good about being able to schedule things quickly. Tell him I sent you!

For property management, I mostly manage my own properties right now (and I'm still my own GC!) But I've been trying out IIP Management on one of my duplexes. They're pretty good and I'll probably be giving them more properties. I appreciate their professionalism and knowledge. I still wish I had time to self-manage everything, though.

@Tom Ott does management through Smartland here too and I know people are happy with them. Not sure whether Smartland takes on management of other properties or only manages the turnkey properties they sell? Tom can you clarify? I actually met a tenant of Smartland's socially recently and she was pretty happy with them. I always think it's high praise if the tenants are happy!