All Forum Posts by: Jeremy Brown

We have a vacancy, an upcoming open house, and a whole bunch of dog smell. I'm looking for input on a couple fronts.

I need to start with background. We closed on this duplex a week ago. We agreed to let one tenant out of her lease early because she's way under market rent, so this gives us a chance to boost it by like $300-$400/month. This side is in good shape, so we listed it and want to do an open house on Saturday with only a few minor fixes.

On her way out, she got a $50 deal for some carpet cleaning. They did that yesterday. The carpet looked pretty good when he was done. The rest of the place was really clean (it was super clean even when we did our first walk through before making an offer), so she gave me the keys and a forwarding address and I told her, verbally, that everything looked good and I didn't see any need for deductions from her deposit.

Today, I put on my handyman pants and went by to knock out a couple of the fixes. I walked through the door and was hit by a wall of dog smell. Like, I stole the sheet off her dog bed to dress up as a ghost for halloween. It's really strange. It was far stronger than at any other visit.

So, now I have two problems:

1) Should I and can I charge her for a proper carpet cleaning to get out this smell, even though I already told her everything seemed ok?

2) How do I get this smell out TOMORROW? Is a thorough carpet cleaning my best bet? Is it possible that the cheap-o cleaning got some dormant dog smell wet and all it really needs is to finish drying out again? We have this open house Saturday. I can try to cover it up with another smell, but I don't know if that'll work, and I certainly don't want an overpowering dog smell during our open house.

Thoughts?

I agree with the others. Let him think about it. Come back in a couple weeks or a month. If someone comes in at the price he wants, too bad, but if you are pleasant and easy to work with, yet persistent, you'll be ready to go when he decides he has to cut the price. There might be other things you can offer, but you'd have to get him to tell you. Maybe some free rent-back, short or long time to close, fresh baked cookies. Who knows. But, see if there's anything he values besides the offer amount.

Was the laminate cheap? I've had a flooring guy tell me modern, quality laminate is made with more water-resistant components than the bargain-level stuff. There are some other options, like wood-style tile. It doesn't usually have grout lines that get nasty like other tile. Or, go ultra-modern with some dyed concrete. Though, that's hard to pull off anywhere but a hip, urban area or custom home. I have a friend who incorporated it into her new house, and it's nice.

Looks great. The after is better photograph, in every way, except composition (part of the garage is cut off). With the sun behind the tree, you get all indirect/ambient lighting on the front of the house. The light coming through the trees causing a little lens flare is something a lot of photographers will do on purpose!

There's docusign.com. Or, pick up a $100 all-in-one printer. There are some that are small enough to be reasonably portable.

Photoshop is only $10/month. Get the trial, Google "photoshop color replacement", and try it a couple times. It's easy and is always one of those "intro to photoshop" things. When you're ready to move beyond that, you can start to learn more about retouching photos in Lightroom (part of the $10 Adobe photo bundle) and photoshop. There's a ton of stuff you can do pretty easily that will make your marketing photos better but won't misrepresent the property. Photoshop, Lightroom, and sketchup all have a TON of tutorials on YouTube. It's a good resource for all 3.

Raise rent $50 and pay it yourself, but don't renew the lease at all until the bills are paid. I'd aim to have the raise in rent be slightly more than the average bill, to make it worth your hassle. If the tenant is a good one aside from this, the extra hassle of writing one more check each month doesn't seem too bad.

A lot of people are assuming your only option is more rentals. If you can pull out equity and invest it ANYWHERE for a greater return than the interest you pay on the mortgage, you'll be better off. If you can pull out $100k equity at 3.5% and invest in something that pays 7%, you just improved your annual return by $3,500. The other investment doesn't have to be a rental, with all the work it entails. You could even diversify and find something outside real estate.

Hi, new to the site, but have a little experience so far. My wife and I have a house we've been renting out for 2 years and are about to close on a duplex. For now, we're looking to get the best return on the properties we have. We paid cash for what we have now, but in another year or two, I hope to talk my wife into using leverage to improve our return. Long term, I might like to move on to apartments and/or flipping. We fixed up and almost re-sold the house, but held on to it for now. I'm good with the financials (engineering major, econ minor), handy, and enjoy researching properties and working on the stuff that doesn't require a license, so flipping is a good personality fit. But, I don't have the time now, with young kids and my day job. I signed up to learn ways to better manage what we have and hopefully make good decisions on future investments.