All Forum Posts by: Kevin Phu

I currently only have one SFR rented out as 4 separate units (room by room). I am using Cozy and Excel. So far so good!

Thanks for all the advice. Does anyone who local cleaning service recommendations in the Ventura County (Oxnard), California area? I made a few calls for quotes to first first cleaning services that showed up with high reviews on google. Best price I received so far was $140/month for cleaning of common areas every 2 weeks. Does that sound reasonable? It's a 4br 1,200 sq ft home so the common areas aren't that large. 

I have a tenant that submitted his 30 day notice to end his lease which put his termination date at March 31. His employer (US Gov) started enforcing a mandatory telework policy and travel restriction. The travel restriction states that the employee has to undergo a mandatory 14 quarantine if they travel further than 100 miles from primary residence or work place. Simple right? Well, tenant never updated his personnel records to reflect his current address which is 2 miles from base and still has his parents' address as his primary address which is >100 miles away.

So the employer put him on a mandatory 14 day quarantine because of his address on record and informed him that he is not allowed to his actual residence because it would violate the travel restriction and result in termination. he's showed them his lease but they don't care because he never updated his official personnel record. I used to work at his same agency and know a lot of people still there. They confirmed that this is actually going on so I know he isn't lying. 

So now he is at his parents' house and can't vacate his unit by the 31st or until the employer lifts the restriction.

I granted him an termination extension until the end of April and am not requiring rent from him for April but will start charging rent if it extends past April. I did not have a new tenant lined up to move in after him as I am out of country and haven't been able to take care of some issues at the property before it is rent ready again. 

Did I do the right thing and what other contingency plans should I start thinking about?

Thanks for that advice. Will definitely be looking into hiring a cleaner. Would I have to be giving the cleaner a copy of the house key? How do deal with that security issue aside from hiring a reputable cleaning company? Not looking forward to adding the additional expense to my bottom line but I guess it'll be better in the long term. 

Thanks for all the input. It's written in my lease that the tenant is responsible for the cleanliness of the common areas. It is, however, very general in a sense.

I think it's written in my lease that cleaning costs could be taken from their security deposit. I'll have to double check. If that is the case, would I be able to hire a cleaner to deep clean the bathroom and then since the tenant is 1 of 4, pass off 25% of the cost to them?

The tub and shower tiles/grout is just so bad. I might just take this opportunity to get the shower fitted with a new acrylic shower and bite it as a maintenance cost.

Need some landlord advice.

I have a 4 bedroom SFR about 3 hours away that is rented out room by room. One tenant I feel like is going to move out soon. The last time I was up at the house (about a month ago), the common bathroom was absolutely filthy. The shower looks like it has never been cleaned and it's just disgusting. If it's left in this condition, a prospective tenant surely won't want to move in in my opinion. How do I go about handling this? Do I make the tenant moving out responsible for the common area? All? Take cleaning fee out of everyone's security deposit! Take care of it myself?

As much as I like the cash flow from the 4 individual leases, I'm looking forward to when it's just one lease and passed off to a PM.

I've been considering this as well but the one thing stopping me is that I don't have 20% equity yet so if I were to refi into a conventional, I would be paying PMI for a while. The math doesn't quite shake out in situation. How much equity do you have in your current property and what would you new mortgage be?

Wouldn't refinancing a 50k purchase price property for $100k significantly increase your mortgage payment? When you're running numbers on a BRRR, are you doing the math at what the 100k mortgage would cost?

Does a HELOC include equity from an appraisal or is the HELOC only on the principal that you've paid down?

I would say well over 5% because if it's lower or equal to that, you're better off just putting money into an S&P 500 index fund.