All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Take a look at how the existing water heater is connected to the pipes.  In super perfect happy world, the plumber installed unions on both pipes right above the heater, so you can just unscrew the unions, pull the heater out a few inches, unscrew the pipes off of the top of the heater, and you're done.  You can use the same pipes on the new heater, as long as the distance between the two pipes on top of the new heater is the same as the old one, and the new heater is the same height as the old one.  If the distance or height is different, you'll have to do more work - shorten the pipes between the union and the water heater if the new heater is taller, lengthen them if the new heater is shorter, or remove the other half of the union and install a flexible pipe (see below).

Sometimes, instead of unions, there are flexible pipes from the rigid pipe to the water heater - either copper tubing (thinner than normal copper pipe, so you can bend it a little), or flexible hoses, sort of like what you hook up a toilet or sink with.  Copper tubing can be re-used if it lines up with the pipes on the new heater.  Flexible hoses should be replaced when you put in a new heater.  The flexible hoses only come in certain lengths.  They can be curved or even looped, but they can't be bent too sharply or they will kink.  Sometimes it takes a little experimentation to find the right length.  On my heater at home, the pipes from the house come straight down vertically from the ceiling.  What turned out to be right was for one flexible hose to run straight up from the heater to the vertical pipe, and for the other flexible hose to run up from the heater, turn 90 degrees, and connect to a 90 degree elbow that is on the vertical pipe.

Check with the local building code to see if you need an expansion tank on the new water heaters.  When the heater is on, the water expands a little.  Some of that raises the pressure in the hot-water pipes in your house, and some of that raises the pressure in the cold-water pipes and back out to the city water main.  Previously, letting it expand into the cold water pipes was considered OK, but now it's not considered OK in some places.  The expansion tank is a small metal tank, about 8" around and 8" high, that you plumb into the cold water line going to the water heater.  A lot of times you can put it on the wall above the heater.  Home Depot will have them in stock.

On the electric, if the cable is long enough, I would cut off the stripped (bare) ends of the wire, and strip the wire again, to get a "fresh" wire to connect to the new heater.  Usually the cable comes into the top of the heater at about the same place on all of them, but sometimes the cable turns out to be way too short for the new heater.  You can put in a junction box on the wall, run the old cable into the junction box, and then run new cable of the same gauge from the junction box to the water heater.  Use wire nuts inside the junction box to join the new and old cables.

You should also buy a new temperature and pressure relief valve (safety valve) for each new heater, if it doesn't come with one in the box.  On the old heater, you will see that this valve has a pipe that runs from the valve, down the side of the heater, and just ends a few inches above the floor.  You can usually re-use that pipe on the new heater.  If not, Home Depot sells pipes for this already made up, or you can get the fittings and make one.

If you have enough room, and a place for the water to go, you might consider installing a drain pan under the new heater.  This is just a round metal pan, about 2" or 3" deep and bigger around than the heater, with a hole in one side for a drain pipe.  It goes on the floor, and then the heater sits in the pan.  You then run a PVC pipe from the pan to a nearby floor drain, or to outside the house.  This pan only does something if the heater ever leaks; it will catch most of the water and direct it away from your carpet/flooring into the drain or the yard.

Before you scrap the old ones, check the parts list on the new heaters, or look at both the new and old heaters, to see if any of the parts are the same - on an electric, they often are.  If so, you might take the thermostats, heating elements, and drain valve off of one of the old heaters, and put them in your stash.  These parts are readily available new at the hardware store, and normally, you would want to replace a failed part with a new part.  But if you ever have a tenant with no hot water on Christmas Eve or something, the old parts might save your butt.  :)

Do the one in your unit or the one in the vacant unit first.  It will take you a while and probably some extra trips to the store.  Once you've done that, swapping the ones in the occupied units will go faster.

If you have a truck, you can haul the old heaters to the scrap yard and make a buck or two on them.  If not, maybe stash them in the vacant unit until you have all 4 replaced.  Then, put all 4 old ones out at the end of your driveway some morning.  If they don't disappear by lunch, put an "old water heaters for scrap" ad in the "free" section of your local Craigslist, and they will probably disappear by the next day.

I use Cozy for credit and background checks and collecting rent. I don't use the other features they offer (application, maintenance requests, document sharing, listing syndication). I wrote a detailed post about it here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Disclaimer: I only have one property so far. I am not affiliated with any sites mentioned.

@Jill F. I am not a lawyer, but I have been told that the requirement for LLCs to use a lawyer in evictions is nationwide, now - it was apparently a consequence of the Citizens United decision at the Supreme Court.  I'm not 100% sure on this, though.

I put the 2009 version of this faucet (American Standard Cadet 6425) in my kitchen here at home and it's been OK since then: https://www.americanstandard-u...

Around the same time, I had a local plumber replace the valve and shower head in my main bathroom, as it was more than I felt comfortable doing myself.  He asked me if I wanted the cheapest thing at the supply house, or a "name brand", or what. So I asked him which one he fixed the least of.  :)  He said that in his opinion, both Delta and Moen were of about equal quality, but that Deltas were "easier to get parts for", so I had him install a Delta, and it's been working OK since then.

What I figured out later is that Moen has a lifetime warranty on many of their faucets/valves, BUT, you have to call them or contact them online, and then they mail out the parts.  Delta's warranty is not as long, but most big-box and hardware stores carry replacement parts for them - sometimes you even have the choice of a genuine Delta part or a cheaper knockoff.

If the faucet itself is OK, and just the handles are messed up, you should be able to find some "generic" replacement handles at the big-box store or hardware store.  The problem is that the valve stems are not all the same shape, so it's hard to tell which handles you need without looking at the faucet or taking the old handles with you.  Some of the generic handles come with bushings/inserts so they will fit more than one shape of valve stem.  Home Depot has various generic handles by Danco - some of them get poor reviews, though.  When I localize to the South Loop HD, it looks like they stock a dozen or so kinds that might work. https://www.homedepot.com/b/Pl...

If you know the exact brand and model of your faucet, you might be able to order new handles from the manufacturer.

I am not associated with any companies mentioned.

My house is in a somewhat better neighborhood, but I put a couple of interior lights on timers while I was rehabbing it.  The living room had a swag light left by the previous owner, so I just plugged that in to a timer.  In one of the bedrooms, I plugged a timer into the wall, a triple-tap into the timer, and one of these things into the triple-tap for an economical lamp.  Or, hit the ReStore or thrift store for a bright orange 70s table lamp.  :)  If you're doing any electrical work, sometimes you might need to move the timers to another room, or run an extension cord, if part of the house is without power overnight.

If you buy a digital timer (anything fancier than the kind with the round dial with pegs around the edge), play with it at home a little bit to see what it does when the lights go out.  Some of them will reset to 12:00 and no program when the lights go out; some will handle short outages but not long ones; some of them have a battery and will keep time even with long outages.  The analog kind (round dial and pegs) will always start back up right where they left off, which is the right thing to do for shorter outages.

If you put in any cameras as part of your security system, check the video from them, if you can, after the first couple of days and nights.  Sometimes what looks like a good spot for the camera turns out to be looking straight into the sun early in the morning or late in the evening, or the video gets washed out when an interior light comes on, or whatever.  Moving the camera, or temporarily installing blinds or curtains, can help.

Disclaimer: I've never completely rehabbed a trailer, but I have done repairs to them before.  Most of my experience is with trailers made before approximately the early 1990s, so newer ones may be different.

From what I've seen, the stuff that was installed at the factory is usually done right, but the things that were installed when the trailer was put on the lot vary a lot more in quality.  This includes:

- The blocks the trailer is sitting on.  Sometimes they are steel stands or nice solid blocks; sometimes they are chunks of plain pine 2x4s that are busy turning into dust.

- Tie-downs or straps that hold the trailer to the slab.  These vary more depending on the wind ratings, but they should be at least as good as what your local code calls for, and not rusted, beat up, disconnected, etc.

- Main electrical connection.  Should probably be UF cable and not plain old NM (Romex).  Should be long enough and not go past any sharp edges somebody drilled in the skirting or whatever.

- Main water line.  Should be supported correctly, and at least have insulation on it.  It may have heat tape.  If it has heat tape, the tape should 1) work and 2) not have a scary electrical connection.  Many trailers now have a GFCI outlet under the trailer, near the main water line connection, to make it easy to plug in the heat tape.  On older trailers, people would run extension cords all over the place under the trailer or along the sides to make the heat tape work.

- Main sewer line.  Should be supported correctly and long enough.

- Main gas line (if equipped).  Should be supported correctly and long enough.  I don't know the exact code on this, but I would be suspicious if there is a really long flexible pipe (like what you use behind a stove, but much longer) in this connection; having a rigid pipe come up from the slab and then a short flexible pipe to the house is probably OK.

- Outside A/C unit (if equipped).  Should have watertight conduit, not bare Romex.  Electrical and Freon lines should be supported correctly and long enough.

- Any holes in the exterior for things like cable or satellite TV lines, phone lines, or fiber Internet should be caulked.  The cables should have a drip loop on the outside before they go through the wall.

Inside the trailer, don't assume that any of the mechanical stuff is the same as what goes on a stick-built house.  What that means is - don't just go to Home Depot or equal and buy the first bathroom faucet you like, and expect it to fit on the trailer.  Don't assume that the kitchen drain is 1.5" or that the bathroom drain is 1.25".  Instead, take the old faucet off and take it to the store with you, or measure the drain pipes before you buy anything.  This may be getting better over time, but in my experience, older trailers had a lot of weird "trailer only" parts.

It is semi-common for trailers to have electric furnaces, instead of gas.  If yours does, turn off the power, and check the main wire connections from the trailer to the furnace, and as many of the connections inside the furnace that you can.  These have to pass a lot of current in an electric furnace, and if there is a loose screw or loose connector, that screw/connector heats up fast and melts the insulation nearby.  Sometimes all you need is less than a quarter turn with a screwdriver to tighten things back up.

@Nick Rutkowski has good info on the HUD data plate. That will be a metal plate on the outside of the trailer. There is usually also a paper sheet inside the trailer somewhere - often it's pasted inside one of the kitchen cabinet doors, but it can also be pasted to the wall near the breaker box. That paper sheet has more information about the year the trailer was built, what level of wind it is rated for, etc. (You'll know it when you see it, because it usually has at least one map of the USA on it.) Make sure this information meets or exceeds what local code requires.

@Jim K. I had that happen to me, but it was before I even used the TSP. :) I knew the kitchen had several layers of paint, but I thought they were all reasonably OK. My plan was to fix the popped drywall nails, spackle over the new screws, and then repaint. The first few drywall screws I put in tended to raise a little curly sliver of the paint, around the edge of the screw. No problem - just pull or cut off the sliver, right? When I pulled on the sliver, the first couple of layers of paint came up, similar to the photos at the top of the thread you linked. I was hoping the peeling would stop pretty soon and I could chalk it up to a small dirty spot on the wall before it was painted in the past. 15 minutes later, with a few square feet of the old kitchen paint laying on the floor, I had to abandon that idea.

As far as I can tell, the first couple of layers of paint (house built in mid-50s) were oil.  At some point, somebody painted latex over the oil, and didn't clean or sand the walls first, which made the new latex paint not stick very well to the old oil paint.  On most of the walls, I could peel up the two layers of latex paint by just making a little divot with my fingernail and then tugging on the edges; in some places I had to use a putty knife.

Once I got it all scraped and sanded, I did the saturated-TSP-solution wash on the walls, and it didn't seem to cause a problem - but then again, I had already removed most of the latex paint at that point.

I am not a lawyer or accountant and this is not legal or tax advice.

What I did: there is a vacant lot a few blocks away from my SFR. I did some digging and it used to have a house on it, but it burned down several years ago. I also found a recent-ish "for sale" ad for that lot, and I looked up the valuation at the county, which was in line with the sale price. So I took the value of that lot, scaled it down a bit according to the square footage (my lot is slightly smaller), and called that the land value of my lot.

I was comfortable doing it this way because I felt like the vacant lot was of similar quality to mine - same neighborhood, not on the big through street, close to the same size, and so on.

I'm not sure if "$41,500 house" and "$1,450/month rent on an SFR" go together, but it depends on the location. Around me (Kansas City), I'd have to spend something north of $150K on a SFR and repairs to get those kinds of rents.

I'm also not sure that $4,000 in repairs on a $37,500 house would be enough, but you have better knowledge of the property's condition.

To add a bit to what @Jim K. said: Use real TSP, if it's sold in your area, and not "TSP substitute". Also, ignore the directions on the box about how much TSP to mix with water - use warm water and keep dumping TSP in until no more of it dissolves. This will make a strong alkaline solution, so wear long rubber gloves (Playtex "dishwashing" gloves are fine), and safety goggles too.

If I'm doing it from scratch, I buy Sherwin-Williams paint.  They will give you a 10% discount every day if you sign up for their "Paint Perks" program (which means you will get ads via email and snail-mail).  Every few months, they have a 30% or 40% off sale, which makes them more competitive with the big-box store prices.  If you're signed up for Paint Perks, they'll send you a postcard a week or so before the sale happens.  I think Benjamin Moore and other "pro" paint stores probably have similar programs.

The previous owners of my rental had done a recent repainting job, so the house came with several cans of Home Depot Glidden paint that matched the bedroom colors.  I used that paint for places that just needed touch-ups, and it worked OK, but it wasn't as nice to work with as the Sherwin-Williams paint.

For the dining room, you can install "chair rail", which is a piece of flat wood running horizontally along the wall at the average height of the back of a chair.  In a nicer property, you can buy real official molding and either paint it or stain it; in a more value-priced property, you can buy 1x4s, round off the sharp outside corners with sandpaper, and paint or stain those.  The chair rail will get slightly beat up by the chairs - that is its job.

I am not associated with any companies mentioned.