All Forum Posts by: Karen S.

i like the pictures, especially the gruesome basement image. Looking forward to seeing the progress. I think you got a good price for this neighborhood.

Our appraisers here in PA have always insisted on a closet or else they will not add the room to the bedroom count. That is in addition to the door and the two means of egress. Without the appraiser's agreement, we are stuck here. Well, unless we want to go at it from the legal end, which wouldn't be worth it in our case...

If the wardrobe (think cheapo ikea) is fixed to the wall, the appraisers we have used consider that "Builtin" YMMV

I have experienced this pattern in the past. The steady, but late pay, with late fee irritated me but my partner was ok with it. When the payments started to exceed the grace period in our lease and almost made it to the next month before we got paid, it was time to say "you can't afford this house at this time". It's not personal-- I mean there are houses that I myself cannot afford to live in. 

If you always send pay or quit letters and always send on the same schedule (whether on the 2nd or later) you are protecting your business from charges of unfair treatment later on. When the letters stop working and there's a worrisome trend though it is time to follow through with the tough discussion. 

@Joshua H. In my experience, it is a very rare 100 year old house in Pittsburgh that has a subfloor rigid enough for installing tile, without a decoupling layer, or massive amounts of 3/4 inch plywood first. YMMV. Good luck!

I like the website "Apartment Therapy" because even if it's not an apartment you are working on, the suggestions that appear there work for smaller spaces. Pinterest and houzz are too much of time wasters for me. And I should really stay away from BP more, come to think of it. Good luck!

I like to note what is growing along the highway medians as I drive through the area. If it's surviving there, it can survive at my rental. I don't like trimming anything with thorns, so hawthorn and privet are ruled out right away, though.

Just beautiful, and a couple of people beat me to it, but the shampoo shelf is fantastic! we are putting in something like that in every shower going forward...but we have never done a horizontal shaped one. Great idea!

That's my real picture...yep, I am a wasp. However, i know that discrimination is real in the trades, although my husband is still learning. He doesn't get why he has to talk to the masonry guy, even though I am the one that wants the job done a specific way. It's just faster to have the men talk and then i make the decision later. Some of them are harmless, they find out that I know what I am doing and have said things like "I never knew a girl who was interested in roofing." 

I think that people want a connection, even an unsophisticated one such as being the same color, or from the same economic background. It's great that @Derrick Thomas has a wife of another race-- perhaps success can be increased by having her deal with the less friendly white-preferring lenders and having him develop a niche among people that would prefer to deal with an African American? But what do I know, I am a northerner through and through with not even a childhood story to tell...

What are your required notifications in California? I know there is a federal lead paint brochure that we give out, warning of the possibility of lead. We have not had any of our places tested. As far as asbestos, we have not been asked., nor have we tested. Given the age of the homes, it is probably there, but we have not disturbed it. 

I think your best bet is to find a way to end the lease with this person. If she can't stop thinking about the ceiling, then she will not be happy there. I would never allow a tenant to do work on an apartment, including testing of any kind. It says this (the work part) in my lease. This might be one of those situations where both sides lose a little bit, but you give her back her deposit and last month's rent and she moves out immediately. 

You can't convince someone like this...we had a similar situation with someone that brought in bedbugs on a piece of furniture, then insisted on fumigation, then said they couldn't bear to live in an apartment that had been fumigated. Grumbling to ourselves, we let her out of the lease and lost a month's rent. she agreed to use security deposit to pay for the pest control. So happy to have ended it there...well there was the parting gift of a sewer clog on the way out, but yeah...the relationship ended.

My answer is "no". We also will not rent to anyone that has an indication of damaging property in the past. Learned our lesson the hard way. If the eviction was due to misfortune, it's sad and it also means that they are even more vulnerable to future financial misfortune because it's tough to clear the problems they already had and stay ahead of rent. @Thomas S. we did buy that refrigerator you described, at the outlet, and guess what they had to come and take it away. Never will buy another refurb appliance..