All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

We offer longer leases on better properties if it's winter time when they move in, such as a 14, 16 or 18 month and most never question why it's more than 12. If they do we tell them it's to get the advertised rental rate.

My low end units are month to month so if they don't meet my expectations I can give them 30 days notice and find a better fit.

I screen tenants myself, in the Central Valley CA middle income 3-2 homes take me about 2-4 weeks to get the perfect tenant. (I'm picky and I haven't had any disasters in four years)

In my low income houses it takes up to two months! It's a hassle to find someone that will treat the home like I would and I am phasing those few homes out. I would rather a home sit empty than have it destroyed by a bad tenant.

A good realtor or property manager has more resources than I do such as waiting lists etc. that would make the process much faster and efficient.

They just announced on the news this morning that another 1.5 million square foot distribution center was going to be built in our little town. Last year when Amazon built a 1 million square foot center here home prices went up a lot.

I am hoping this corrects the recent downturn, this means there will be quite a few management people from that center looking for nice homes in the area to buy.

There has also been talks of another 1.5 million square foot facility being built soon but they always keep the identity of the place secret until they are ready to break ground. I guess this is to keep other towns from stealing them away.

The way things are going I see this town doubling in size in the next ten years. They just annexed almost twice the industrial park land that was there already next to Interstate 5.

Do you mean in the city of Houston itself or the surrounding area too? We are moving just 30 minutes or so outside of Houston soon.

The actual sales prices of about half the homes have dropped as well as the listed homes. There is a home listed right now that is comparable to our home inside that dropped a lot, we do have probably the nicest tropical backyard in the area though. I hope that house is gone before we sell but either way it is going to affect my sales price with the comps.

We have to wait to sell because my wife is going to transfer to Houston and we want to buy a rental home there first to temporarily move into until we can find a permanent property for our residence. I am finding it too hard to buy a home for ourselves from so far away and have missed a couple of them because I can't look at them right away.

I can find a lot more rental properties because for my own place I am extremely picky as this will be our last property we live at most of the time so it has to be perfect.

I have done these, the problem is ushually the piers have sunk a little. I get one of my skinny workers to crawl under the home to work on it. I have several 10 ton air operated bottle jacks that I use to raise the home back up.

I use a laser set at the highest point that has a clear shot of the low points to check the floor hight and make sure the higher areas do not raise up as well. If you have areas in a different room we go old school with a water level. Several companies make adjustable pier jacks that get left in place, we put them on 2' square by 4" thick concrete blocks we make out of 5000 PSI concrete.

If you can't bring all of the low spots back up without raising the high spots you either have to wait a few months and raise it some more. Or put in additional piers and level the floor with self leveling concrete.

If I choose this option I often times cover the entire floor with concrete and dye and seal the concrete for a beautiful low maintenance floor that makes the repair cost not much more than new tile. If this is a rental I would spend the money to diamond polish the concrete and then it just needs waxed once every six months to a year.

I ask this because I have a home I am going to sell later this summer in the Central Valley California. I have been watching the prices in the area this house is located and nearly half the homes are reduced in price 5,000-10,000 dollars and one house dropped by 18,500!

I also have two other homes in two other towns but comps for those two are a little harder to judge since there are none near by that are close to the same.

The 24" masking paper works pretty good for keeping the paint off the ceiling. But if you wanted to spend the time masking the whole ceiling you could use the cheapest thin plastic drop cloth and tape that to the paper then rip small holes every 4' and use 2" blue tape over the holes to hold the plastic to the ceiling.

I have never had a problem with overspray on a ceiling with the 24" paper though.

This is how I do it, I mask all windows, cabinets and anything I don't want paint on, if the floors are out I don't mask the floor unless tile or concrete is going down. I take all of the doors out and mark each one on the bottom with masking tape so I know where it goes back. I take off all door hardware, switch plates etc. it makes the job look much more professional this way.

I paint the ceiling first, I take out all lights and replace them with a cheap plastic round closet light with bulb that hangs by the wires so you can paint under it, then mask the ceiling back 2' then take a paint brush and paint the ceiling color over the edge of the the taped off area. This will allow the ceiling paint to run under the tape and fill the voids making a super crisp tape line when you paint the walls.

Next I do walls and try to avoid spraying too much on the jambs but I don't mask them, it takes way too much time. If you have different wall colors see my masking tip above.

To paint the trim I do a fast masking job on places where the paint might drip but I cut the paint in with a brush so I don't need to mask. (anyone can learn to cut paint in with practice and it is twice as fast as masking) If a room has carpet I have a lot of left over 2" blind slats I shove under the base boards to allow me to paint them real nice without getting paint on the carpet. I use a 12" masking paper over them and many large canvas tarps for perfect results.

This is just a general overview but I hope it helps.

The problem I find with HD is they don't have a true flat paint in their "paint and primer in one", so it will not match even if the color is right. With my own home I had some of the original paint for each color left in the laundry room. Even being 9 years old once it was machine mixed it matched perfectly on some trim I touched up outside as well as walls inside.