All Forum Posts by: Laura Johnson

Checkout vineyard. I have been told they are much more flexible. 

have you considered purchasing and living in the basement apartment while renting out the top to a family? You could practically live for free that way.

in Utah county, I think a $300k house will be about $1650 ish per month. But I'm not a re or lender. But...interest rates are crazy low at the moment. 

good luck.

Also, I would house hacking Utah because you can get into a house for only 3% down. So long as you're renting out the main portion for your entire mortgage, whatever you're currently paying to live, you can be saving and putting towards an out-of-state rental in a year or two. Plus if your house in Utah appreciates, you have that going for you also. 

are you a single guy? Or maybe married without kids? If so, I would house hack in Utah in a heartbeat!

We bought a home in North Utah county last March to house hack. We are in a very nice area, right next to Alpine. 8 minutes away from Silicon Slopes. We searched for almost 1 year to find our home. We had some very detailed criteria because we have 4 kids. We wanted to house hack a 1 bedroom basement rental, but still have at least 4 beds, 2 baths, and 2 Family rooms for us. We also wouldn't take a house with the walkout in the backyard (kid safety). And we wanted all this for under 400k. And we wanted to stay in Alpine school district. Talk about demanding! Ha!

We actually found several good deals for house hacking (if we didn't have 4 kids), all on the MLS. They are out there, but it takes lots of sorting.

Our house: 6 bd/3bath/3family spaces. 3100 sq ft. original listing $420, after 2 months on market we offered $380. paid $390k, they paid closing of $6k. Spent 10k rehabbing basement (electrical, drywall, sound dampening insulation, adding laundry, new shower, etc). We rent half our basement as a 1 bd/1bath apartment for $1000/month.  If we were a no kid couple and could live in the apartment, we could be living for free by renting the main house area for $2300 ish. Mortgage is $2250. BTW, a neighbor house sold in August for $460, some SQ feet, but some nicer fineshes, but no apt. We could turn around and sell this house for at least that price because of desirable area and by adding the apt. So yeah...good deals are out there.

if I could start over as a young person, I would live in my own basement apt while renting out the main house in a heartbeat. This is what I will encourage my kids to do.

*Everytime I hear noise from downstairs (which is not often, we have a young couple who work and go to school) all I hear is "half my mortgage, half my mortgage..." 😂

PSA: I recently found out that my credit union offers personalization of your debit and credit cards. It's a free service for the accounts you have at the bank/credit union. I have made each of my rental properties a photo card so I can quickly and easily remember what card goes to what property. 

we have a home warranty on our basement apartment in our home. The fridge stopped working last week. The tennis notified us on Monday, we looked at it Monday evening, I called on Tuesday to set up a repair with the Home Warranty company. They couldn't come out until the next week on Thursday, which is a total of 8 days. We supplied our tenants with a mini fridge. they were only in the apartment for two days with the mini fridge before they left on their honeymoon for one week. the repairman came today, which is the eighth day, and told me it's outside of his scope and he will have to send another repairman over, but they have been unusually busy lately. The office will call me to reschedule this. I'm now anticipating another week's wait for someone else to come out, and possibly more time if they need to order parts.

as the landlord, what is our responsibility and providing our tenants with a refrigerator? is supplying the mini-fridge enough for the two young people that are gone most of the day? Should we buy a secondary used fridge to put in our shared garage? Yes we're doing everything we can by contacting the home warranty and waiting for them, but two weeks is quite ridiculous to be without a refrigerator.

*I can't believe this company is taking 2 weeks to repair a fridge. If this was for my family of six, we would have an incredibly hard time making it without a refrigerator!

I use cozy. I have two units. I like that I can upload documents. I upload copies of the signed lease, the walkthrough inventory sheet when they first move in, etc.

I also like that my ad is saved. When the tenants move out I can repost it with the same pictures and description again.

What would be a ballpark figure in your mind to have a tub installed? I live in Lehi, Utah. I have already purchased the tub, already dug out the concrete around the drain, already demo all the walls, etc. 

The tub we purchased come pre-leveled and doesn't take a mortar bed. 

We have quotes for $950 and $1200. No valve install, we will do that. 

We we are trying to soundproof a basement apartment ceiling. We have torn down the previous drywall so that we have a clean slate. Our plans include searching for and filling small holes and cavities with acoustical caulk, adding a layer of roxul safe and sound between joist, attaching resilient channeling, and finishing with a 5/8 in drywall layer. 

I am also trying to find a product to slip inside the ductwork to the ceiling registers. I'm not sure how else to help prevent sound transfer because the basement and upstairs share the main ducting. 

I have been reading about isolation clips, I can't decide if they are worth the price or not. I'm finding them at about 5 bucks per clip. The apartment is approximately 700 square feet of ceiling oh, that's not including closets or the laundry room. 

I also read that are drywall should not touch the wall and have a 1/8 inch Gap around the whole ceiling permit vibration sound. Does anyone have any other tips or tricks that I have not listed?

Upstairs we have four children, who are quite rambunctious, so we will alert the new tenants to this fact, but are trying to lessen the impact of noise as much as we can. We plan on living in this basement apartment once the kids are gone and want it to be done right!

And for your laugh of the day, when tearing down the drywall ceiling, we found that there are at least four sheets of 5/8 chipwood / MDF screwed to the ceiling. It has been textured and we had no idea it was not sheetrock. Quite the surprise!

Thanks for your ideas, tips, and suggestions.

How how did your son proofing go? Are you satisfied with your results?

We have torn down the ceiling in our basement apartment, and are prepared to fill the cavities with roxul safe and sound insulation, install metal resilient channels, topped with 5/8 drywall. I will also be looking for holes in the ceiling to add acoustical caulk. I'm hoping this is enough, but I've been reading about isolation clips, also referred to as whisper clips or channel clips to hang the resilient channeling from. They are pricey, at five bucks a piece. does anyone know if they are worthwhile or not? Also, if we do one layer of drywall currently and find out later we want to add more, is it okay to have another layer added with green glue to the previously finished and textured layer? We are okay with spending some money on this project, but would like to keep it under control.

And for your humor, you should know that we found four if not five sheets of chip wood/mdf screwed to the ceiling in our basement! They then proceeded to finish the rest of the basement ceiling with drywall. You can imagine our shock finding out half of this room is covered with wood! Still scratching our heads trying to think of a decent way to get it down. Best solution we've come up with is to set the skill saw to the wood depth and start cutting between the joists. 

when using the resilient channel, should you also use the Channel clips? Do they make that much of a big difference? We are looking at soundproofing or basement, and have recently toured on the ceiling. We are going to use roxul safe and sound insulation, resilient channeling and 5/8 inch drywall. I've been debating on if we should buy the clips as they are almost $5 per clip.