All Forum Posts by: Laura Williams

@Ryan Fox they might but guessing this would probably be under or at the deductible 🙄

I had a rental house in Kansas City come vacant in January and hired a handyman ..in process of trying to become a contractor (he had recently formed an LLC company)... to replace some tiles and paint...simple job and nothing complicated. He came highly recommended as he had done good work for a couple people I respect & I had used him on smaller fixes and no problems. He also used to work at a large respected property mngt company that manages 1000 properties.

My job was suppose to be done end of February and we kept giving him extensions until finally we got super fed up & gave him a hard deadline of last week. We told him we'd pay him for whatever he could finish by then but he was off the job...fired basically. The work he did was extremely poor quality and mostly having to be redone. I suspect he might have fallen into hard drug use based on the work quality of what I saw & what the neighbors told me they saw of him when he did show up in the middle of the night. I did pay him partial payment and withheld funds to fix what wasn't done or done poorly...more than fair.  Although he let it be known that he thought he had done a perfect job & was completely delusional about it. 

I noticed the basement drain backing up on his final day after he had just left (and before he knew what he was going to get paid) but just thought it was the drain clogged and yesterday when my plumber came out he found there were rocks and cement that had been flushed down the sewage pipes which was causing the sewage to back up in the basement. There is even cement that was poured down the tub drain and cement over the drain in the basement..every plumbing hole he could find he poured cement in. My plumber said whoever did this spent a lot of time flushing rocks and he estimated about 80 pounds of cement down the sewer. He said it had to have been flushed down the toilet to get that far in the pipes & it was a crap ton of cement and whoever did it took A LOT of time to get that much rocks and cement down the pipes. I called the police and they told me that because I don't have him on video and no one saw him do it and because he had legal permission to be in the house working on it when this was done there was nothing they could do. They wouldn't even do a report. 

 No one else but him had keys/access to the house so clearly it was him or someone he brought in to work with but can't imagine why anyone but him would have a motive to do this & go to this much trouble. I feel he did it to get back at me for firing him. 

I am also afraid of what he is capable of doing if I publicly go after him too hard seeing how crazy he is but at the same time he's going to be out there possibly working for other investors or property management companies or homeowners etc and is a dangerous & super vindictive psychotic person. 

I am interested to hear what advice you guys have for me as I'm not sure what my next step to be. Feel free to PM me as well. 

@Pradeep A.

You may want to pass this article onto him. It appears they are loosening the regulations for unemployment and allowing temporarily laid off people and 1099/freelancers to collect unemployment and also giving an extra $600/week onto the u employment checks. If he is able to apply it would help him pay his rent.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/03/25/what-you-need-to-know-about-expanded-unemployment-benefits-for-covid-19/

@Lucas Carl

What does your lease say? Does it say they need to give you notice before moving out? All my leases state they have to give 30 day written notice. If your leases don’t say that then you need to start adding it so this doesn’t happen again.

@John Calafato

I use Tenant Cloud website (free). It has a feature on the website where you can list a property for rent & it will blast it out on all the major sites like Zillow, Trulia, hotpads etc etc ...I think it’s like 7 rental sites? and you can even accept applications and do background checks through Tenant Cloud as well.

That’s how I list my places for rent. It makes it simple cause you just put in the information one time and then the property goes on all the major rental sites. Tenant cloud also has really nice accounting features that I use it to track my income/expenses for taxes that you might want to check out as well.

@Ryan Schuler They seem to have held up OK. My mom is living in that apartment and she doesn't have pets so not sure how they would have held up with a really rough bad tenant but last time I was in her apartment they looked fine. 

I used these other groutable tiles in a rental unit that a tenant just moved out last month of after living there a year and half. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Tr...

I mainly used them cause the floor was a uneven so I couldn't use regular tile. They've held up well also and that previous tenant had 2 dogs and I didn't have to do anything to the kitchen floor when they moved out...it was totally fine. You just peel and stick and the guy who did mine did use spacers....I had him use the large spacers so the grout line was thick and I used dark grey grout so it wouldn't show dirt as easy. If I was a little more handy I could have probably installed them myself ...it didn't look that hard

@Rik Shaw I've owned investment co-ops and while I did make money on them they are a pain. I'm not a big fan of boards of co-ops or condos. I can pretty much guarantee you basically are going to wind up with the stupidest people in the building who were picked last in high school for everything and on a power trip who will be on these co-op or condo boards.  The smart competent people usually don't have time or desire to be on boards. 

On my investment co-ops I ran into issues such as the building changing the rules and deciding that you could only rent 5/10 years or that you had to live there for 3 years before you could sublet (whereas when I bought it had been unlimited), making investors in the building pay a larger share of maintenance than owner occupants, charging sublet fees or some buildings that have started out investor friendly suddenly changed and you can't rent at all. 

Currently one condo that my friend owns the board decided the windows aren't good enough and doing a 25K assessment per apartment...knowing that a chunk of people are going to loose their homes but they don't care. These boards can basically change whatever rules they feel like or come up with assessments for whatever they feel like. My friend who is a real estate agent found a buyer for a co-op that was well qualified and the board turned him down cause he was under 50 years old and they felt he was going to be too loud and partying. So you can get into all these kinds of idiotic issues. 

If all else is the same I would highly recommend buying a single family home or apartment building/multifamily that you own 100% and can control everything. If the deal for an investment co-op is smoking hot it still might be worth the aggravation but you are basically going to be at the mercy of the board and if you don't like what they are doing you won't be able to change or do anything about it. And from my experience the residents in these apartment buildings generally don't like investors and are jealous and hostile towards us. 

@Tom Carmody

Just curious how the condo hotels work in Florida. Does the 60% the condo-hotel takes include the HOA fees or utilities or replacement of furniture/repairs to the unit like plumbing or stuff like towels and sheets etc? Or do you still have to pay that on top of the 60% to the hotel?

@Andrew Lawrence

He found out cause a worker for the PM found out about it and told the property owner but otherwise he never would have known. And as far as repairs you never know. Some things like a new fridge you can know from photos but other repairs can be faked ...most commonly plumbing.

There’s also the grey areas which i have found more common that’s not exactly ‘stealing’ but as bad in my opinion. For example My old PM (I fired) his plumber quoted me once 3k to put a sump pump and French drain in a house that had water getting in the basement and when I flew out to check on it in person I discovered one of the downspouts wasn’t attached and that’s how water was getting in the basement. Another issue I had that’s happened to me and investor friends is PMs paying super high crazy water or utility bills without questions. Like a $700 water bill that should have been $200 ...obviously a leak or issue but they don’t bother to check they just pay it out of your money.....or an electricity bill of 1k on a vacant unit ...happened to my friend who had squatters in there and was baffled they didn’t question the bill or go to the property and check out what was going on.

Once my ex-PM didn't pay the water bill at all on a multifamily so those tenants didn't have any water for a few days . Another time they forgot to pay the gas bill so they didn't have any hot water for a few days. Met another investor whose Pm wasn't paying her HOA dues or mortgage and she was about to loose her property. It had been vacant for several months without a tenant and they didn't tell her.

Another big issue is the PM actually doing a background check on tenants they place. Putting a bad tenant in a place can be thousands of lost money. Some are just too lazy and sorry to verify the tenant and try to cover it up after the fact. Like happened to my friend whose PM tried to lie out of It once we discovered the tenants felon mug shot and arrest record and 3 evictions the first second he was googled. Or there’s then the PMs who are rude and don’t answer the phone when interested tenants want to rent ....especially if they get a minimum fee to manage the property whether or not it’s rented. My friend used one of those and his fully tenanted 34 plex went to only 19 units occupied cause the PM couldn’t be bothered to do her job and fill the vacancies. FYI don’t ever agree to such a contract where the PM gets paid even if the place is vacant.

I could go on and on and on with stories but you get the idea. I know I sound jaded lol. But one thing I’ve learned is to never blindly trust these PMs. You will always need to be on them like a fly on poop. Even a good one could hire someone who is bad and could mess something up and cost you thousands.

@Andrew Lawrence

I think you’d know from the utilities. You are paying them if the place is vacant so you could see real quick if someone is living there from the energy spike.

Now I did have a friend who had a tenant who was evicted but she came back later and made good on what she owed him and his PM pocketed the money thinking he would never find out & assume she skipped town. I’ve also heard and very common for PMs to make up fake repairs when they need to generate revenue or over bill for simple jobs or charge you for work that you discover was never done. Especially out of town owners cause they are easy prey since they usually don’t fly into town to double check them.