All Forum Posts by: Laura George

@Andrew S.

Yes. I try to keep all water sources as low or close to the dirt as possible. I’ve replaced several floors because of water leaks and I wouldn’t want to replace walls and ceilings because the water heater leaked.

@Quentin Collins

Ask any plumber or electrician. Plumbers are constantly replacing the electric ones with gas. And electricians hate them because of the demand. I’m an electrician and I’ve looked at some of the electric instant heaters and almost everyone needs to upgrade their service to be able to use them.

I understand that occasionally a smaller one under a sink for hand washing could be a good option but in general the gas ones are the best option. The heat pump water heaters are a good option for energy consumption. Although I still use the old fashioned electric water heaters. They are easily maintained and anyone can work on them. And they’re inexpensive.

@Bryan Lyde

Yes if if if if if if. Yea right. What about the fees for getting the heloc. What about annual fees for renewal? Never play another mans game. I mean you could always just spend 100$ a week on lottery tickets and when you win you could pay off the debt.

@NIcholas Hamel

They are probably the same people that don’t invest in real estate because they are making huge returns in the stock market.

They are full of bs. Math is math.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. That’s simple simple economics.

Oh yea. And I might as well add this..... there is profit in all labor.

@Jay Hinrichs

We will do what is right and fair. We have to be careful and make sure that we give all tenants the same treatment. So if we give concessions to one tenant we must do it for all tenants. Unfortunately in this day and age we cannot look at individuals or individual circumstances. We have to be fair and consistent. It really wouldn’t be fair to give someone a break for the virus affects and not give someone else a break for whatever reason they could come up with. It’s really tough but unfortunately we have to treat everyone the same and we cannot take into consideration the tenants past performance. Unfortunately we have to give a month old tenant the same benefits that we give tenants that have stayed and paid for years.

I really don’t like this because not all tenants are created equally. But we have to treat them as if they are equals. We have to exercise extreme caution and care when dealing with individual circumstances. We have to be consistent as well. Hopefully none of our tenants call us and say that they cannot pay their rent because of the virus. If that does happen we will consult our lawyers and see what they recommend. We will do our best to help our tenants because they are our customers and they are number one. Because they pay our bills. But we will have to do it legally and ethically.

Need help with naming a mobile home park. It is located in the Limestone capital of the world. We would like to incorporate either limestone, stone or rock into the name. Any suggestions? We were just notified today that we only have until tomorrow to come up with the name.

@John Kutrzeba

I’d never sell a property that’s making money unless I had to sell it for cash flow to buy a better income producing property.

I’m curious as to why you have a management company. It’s hard to make money on one property with a third party involved.

I think you should manage it yourself and when the tenant complains about something ask them what they want you to do. Usually if they are dealing with the owner a real person and not a big management company then they will not want to take advantage of you they will just want things fixed promptly. Most tenants understand and really will tell you exactly what their needs are if you ask. We try to make our properties tenant proof before we rent them out. That way we have fewer calls. But we don’t like to spend money on maintenance if we don’t have to.

For example if the bedroom door knob keeps knocking a hole in the drywall and you fix it every time a tenant moves out. Then stop fixing it and if they don’t complain then you saved 50$.

Also I want to add this. The management company usually gets some kind of financial gain by having vendors repair your property. And that do not care how much it costs they just want to get it fixed as easily as possible. If they have an expensive plumber they don’t care as long as the plumber makes their job easy.

One thing that may work for you would be to enter into a lease option with the tenant. They can become the owner and they can do the maintenance. Then not only will they make repairs and improve the property they will also take better care of it. Hope this helps. Gabe

@Amelia McGee

I am an electrician so that really helps. But I use YouTube. We fired our carpet guy because he couldn’t show up and I started watching YouTube videos on installing carpet. I first rented the tools but then I eventually bought them on Craigslist used. Now we do all of our own carpet and I even trained my guys how to do it. There are lots of tips and tricks on YouTube. You can also volunteer for habitat for humanity and learn some valuable skills and also get turned on to your local network that way. If people think you are willing to learn they will teach you. Because it’s hard to find someone that wants to learn something these days. Hope this helps. Gabe

@Michael Lowe

Your friends are ignorant. They probably have their retirements locked up in the stock market. I know these types of people. They all have the same story about the same friend of a friend stockbroker that is taking extra special care of them and they’re making all kinds of money. But in reality they are just paying for some wall street fox to play in the Caribbean. You retire yourself young they’ll still never understand. You can’t argue with these people. They’ll just frustrate you and make you dumber.

@Patricia Steiner

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Well put!