All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Mark S.

They certainly are pulling a fast one, Mark. They're just not calling it a fast one, because their business model doesn't figure that you'll know that the interiors of carports are finished in weatherproof siding and not drywall, as Brian indicated above. This is part of their standard model of ripping off turnkey buyers. Because that's what turnkey sellers do to make a living.

What turnkey providers sell is, essentially, a luxury. Luxury service providers always run an institutional risk, however large they are, of internalizing a culture of quiet yet deep contempt for their customers. It takes a lot of work from upper management to keep that in check.

Watch for a significantly larger bump than actual installation costs.

This is the second time they've pulled exactly the same game. The first was last year for a gas range. I think it has to do with anything that has to be hooked up to gas. Figured it would be wise to tell the Pittsburgh BP community about it.

We bought a gas dryer for a new property acquisition on the 10th. Lowes at the Waterfront totally screwed up both the service address (they gave the installer our home address) and the phone number (they gave the installer our landline). I finally get the call on the right number for installation on the 13th, and the first delivery date they have available is the 28th. 18 days from purchase to installation, and that's if nothing goes wrong.

@Samantha N.

I have no recommendation, but I hope you keep working on it. This is an ongoing problem here in this area that I've also had to deal with in the past.

That IS the way, if you can get it. Good deal!

I go for the old Windows 3.1 hot dog stand color scheme, red walls, yellow trim...

White is my go-to. It's cheap. Especially semigloss white on trim. The main consideration for white trim is that when you replace windows in cheaper older homes for rentals or flips, which is what we do, you're mostly limited to white vinyl for budgetary reasons.

All right, Michael! Monday's YOUR day.

@MIchael G.

You may have noticed that they never, ever talk about this during seminars where they tell you that investing in rental property is a wonderful stress-free passive strategy that you can handle in your spare time. But they're always careful to tell you to get a property manager, and gloss over the cost of that. The gurus usually stress that it's to avoid getting early-morning calls about clogged toilets or some baloney like that. It's not. The gurus say that so they don't EVER have to explain evictions.

Yes, you are being robbed by grifters. In a fair and just world, you would be able to walk into your house with a shotgun and tell them to get out in thirty seconds or take a blast in the belly. In a fair world, when you call the police they would show up, grab these excuses for people, and throw them bodily out the door. It's not a fair and just world. The parasites are milking the system and leeching off you, and the law allows them certain ridiculous and unfair liberties it allows no other blatant lawbreakers.

Right now, you are in a world of rage and anger. Part of it is because you haven't been here before and you don't know what to do. You need to learn the ins and outs of eviction procedure in your area quickly. You need to follow that eviction procedure to the letter. In order to do this quickly and thoroughly in your hour of need, you need to talk to a lawyer and pay an unfair price that you, as the wronged party here, definitely shouldn't have to pay. You will need to wait and bide your time and in the end, you will almost never get any satisfaction out of this bitter pill.

Again, this whole bit was pretty much hidden away from you or at least heavily minimized if you went the traditional path of learning about real estate investing. This is the nasty part. You need to get through it one step at a time. It's as much of a learning experience, albeit an emotionally charged one, as learning how to put up ads or calculate a property comp.

You're going to take a hit now. One that really stings. It breaks quite a few people in this business. It may not go half as badly as the worst-case scenario. But you should prepare for a struggle that will last months with types who have more in common with vermin than they do with decent human beings. They will not be doing legal things. You will have to.

You've taken a very good first step, asking for help to find a good eviction lawyer. You WILL find one in your area if you go about it methodically and do your best to divorce the problem from your emotions and how obviously unfair this all is to anyone who has ever been in your shoes. This is why you're going to win out in the end, despite the hit you'll take and the overbearing stress of this whole procedure. Your grifters are going to try to manipulate the system and succeed in small steps here and there. You are going to proceed carefully and inexorably. And when it's done, you'll be better prepared for next time. You'll have paid the unfair price of doing business, and won't have to pay it as thoroughly ever again.

Good luck, Michael.

@Robert Courtney

You're right you shouldn't have to. No one could possibly dispute that right.
Would I be offended if I were in your shoes, or your wife's? I certainly would be. Would it grate in my gut to pick up that margin trowel and fix what the girl did? You bet it would.

If I were the parent of that girl, would she receive an ultimatum from me that it's either pick up that trowel and ask you to choose to give you the chance to begin to rectify her screw-up or get out of my house? Would I be beating my head against the wall at my own stupidity for raising such a low, ridiculous child incapable of gratitude and practically devoid of respect for other people's property, not to mention self-respect? I would.

Imagine how grateful I would be to a landlord who forgave this injury and set things right quietly and without a fuss because he understood I had enough problems getting my overgrown woman-child to understand the facts of an adult life, not because he didn't want to cause a fuss or wasn't capable of doing it, but because he chose not to. I would owe that man a favor or three.

This is also an opportunistic chance to expand a good home maintenance and improvement skill set in a basic area.  I have thankfully taken a number of these in the past, and almost all of them have paid off.

Look, Robert, i understand that I've joked a great deal about what you and your wife have gone through over this in this thread, and it hasn't been funny at all for you. Not one bit.

You paid thousands of dollars of money you both earned honestly to improve the driveway and the sidewalk, partly due to the prompting of this woman-child. Then she turned around and stabbed you in the back, hiding about it as you tried to document the problem, only admitting fault when she was sure you caught her out. And yeah, her parents were RIGHT IN ON IT. That shows a serious lack of integrity. The fact that you have this integrity is the main reason, I'll bet, that you own the duplex and your tenants do not.

The deed is a straightforward, tangible sign of the value of character. Don't you pity these people for not having it? Don't you pity them in their weakness and vulnerability in situations like these because they don't have it?

On a very personal (and perhaps sexist) level, don't you pity the father for obviously never having had the chance to learn how to play a man's part in a world that crushes those like him? My own father was a figure of unimpeachable integrity. I don't have to think far to get to an understanding of what the decent thing to do in any given situation might be. I suspect we're not far different. This woman-child doesn't have an example like that. Never will. Instead, she has the memory now of her craven father right in there ducking and covering with her when it came time to stand up and show his daughter how to behave. That's a memory she gets to go back to every time the hard choices come around in her life again.

@Mark S.

If you can use this to drive the price down at the last moment, do it. If you can squeeze even $500 out of them, you've probably covered more than half the cost of materials and installation for the doors. I would shoot for a 3-grand last minute squeeze, then take it down to a 2-grand squeeze. Get mid-line materials rates from HD and Lowes on paper, estimate cost of installation at 30-per hour for a 2-day job, 16 hours.

Don't give an "Install them or I walk." ultimatum. I don't think it's worth it, whatever you're paying for the property.

If your sellers give you a "Close as-is or we walk!" I think you should walk away from the table and state, "I don't do ultimatums." Give then two days to stew, call them again. Explain your cost issues again. Push your paper full of solid figures at them. Let them caterwaul. If they manage to sell the property to someone else in 2 days with no garage doors or if they emotionally refuse to sell to you because you have an issue with their lunacy in trying to sell this property without garage doors...I think that's a reasonably low risk that I would take. In that case, they would be talking nonsense, and nonsense never has the advantage over substance and knowledge at the negotiating table.

That's my advice. Good luck and happy squeezing, Mark.