All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Disclaimer: I am new to this and don't own any "student housing" rentals.  I worked at a university for a few years, and my other half went to university and rented in a smallish town with *lots* of student housing rentals.

If a rental property you're thinking about buying is immediately adjacent to land the university owns, even if it's just a vacant lot, it might be worthwhile to ask the university about their expansion plans.  Often, they have a low-key program to acquire properties around the university, so they have room for expansion.  What you hope this means is that you rent it for a while and then they offer you 20% over market value for it  What it can mean is that they do shenanigans with the city to get your property condemned and then buy it for 20% of market value.

Check with the city to see what their regulations are for rental housing.  Sometimes small "college towns" will have more regulations than you would think, precisely because of all the student housing rentals.

Some small towns with universities will have a fairly expansive bus system, to serve the students.  Having a bus stop near a property can be a plus.  However, if a seller tells you that the bus route will change to be closer to the property... don't believe it without talking to someone at the bus service.  Many of them are at least partly publically funded, so they don't mind answering questions like this.

Sometimes a periscope vent will help with these kinds of problems.  Basically, it transitions from the round outlet on the dryer to a rectangular duct, which is shallower but wider than the round duct.  However, if there's lots of twists and turns in the duct that's already in the wall, adding a periscope vent may be too restrictive.

I had one on the (full size) dryer in my previous house and it seemed to work OK.  The dryer was against an outside wall; the whole path was dryer, periscope vent, a piece of 4" round duct about 6" long, vent hood outside.  I probably could have used regular round vent pipe, but using the periscope vent let me sit the dryer back a little further, so it fit in the laundry area better.

I have used brake parts cleaner for smaller oil spills on concrete, both driveways (broom finish) and garages (smooth).  Spray it on the stain, let it work for a minute or so, and then wipe up with paper towels or a rag you don't care about.  It will have a strong solvent smell when you apply it, but that will mostly go away when you wipe it up.

It comes in a spray can, every car parts store has it, and Wal-Mart usually does too.  If you have a choice, get the chlorinated version; the non-chlorinated version doesn't work as well.  Either kind will straighten out your DNA if you drink it or smell too much of it, so don't spray it on your face. It costs about $3 or $4 a can, so it's not really practical to do a whole garage floor with it, but it's good for fixing the tough spots. Often the car-parts stores will run a special on two or three cans for a cheaper rate.

On the epoxy floor: I used to live in a house that had that in the garage.  It looks nice, but if you do spill something, you sort of have to chase it all over the floor with a rag to clean it up - it tends to spread out.  With bare concrete, you just have to get most of it with the rag, and then let the rest soak into the concrete.

Take a look at the stamp or the corner where the stamp should be.  If it says "Presort Standard" or "PRSRT STD", then you can't do anything about it through the post office.  This is the really cheap junk-mail postage, and the post office doesn't provide return service for it.  You might be able to stop some of it at https://www.dmachoice.org/index.php , but that site will also try to sign you up for more mail, so pay attention to what you click.

If it's anything else, you can usually have it returned to the sender by writing on it and remailing it.  There is a specific wording you have to use and you might check with your local post office for what they want.  What usually works for me is to write "Return to Sender.  No longer at this address" and the date, and then drop it in the outgoing mail box at the post office.

If you read the fine print on store flyers and catalogs, sometimes they will give you an address you can write or a phone number to call to get off of their mailing list.  I've never used one of these, because as far as I can tell, all it does is confirm that there's a live human at that address, so then they can resell the address for more money.

There are some things that just never stop.  At home, I get two or three pieces of mail a year that are addressed to the original owner of the house, who hasn't owned it since approximately the mid-1990s.  These are all Presort Standard, so I just chuck them in the recycle bin.

Disclaimer: I've never sent out mailings like this.

Advice: If you do this, use an all numeric format for the code. That way, you only have to distinguish ten different sounds, rather than 36.  (It's hard to figure out if somebody said "D" or "T", or "P" or "B", over the phone.)

If you decide you need more than about three or four digits, try separating it into a couple of pieces with a dash, like 12-345 or 123-456.  It's easier for people to accurately read it off the postcard that way.

If whatever source you use for the addresses gives you ZIP+4 codes, and you print them on your mailings, maybe ask people to give you that.  For the post office, that narrows it down to a block or less, and for you, it probably will identify just one property on your list.  On the other hand, you may not get those from your source, and I think people will tend to just give you the 5-digit part of the ZIP code, rather than the ZIP+4.

Congratulations!

In your earlier posts, you said the purchase was $112.5k. Then you spent $4k on getting the tenants out, and then... you spent just a little bit of money at the lumber yard, plumbing supply, the steel yard, and on contractor food. :) If you don't want to say, it's cool, but how good did your initial $125k rehab budget turn out to be? It also looks like you got a rather better final price than your initial ARV estimate.

You have a picture of the washer hookup in the laundry room.  On the ceiling, there's a panel with some trim around it... is that for access to the tub plumbing on the 3rd floor, or something else?

I can see the outside half of the two mini-splits, and the inside half on the 1st and 2nd floor.  On the 3rd floor, I can see what looks like forced-air vents on a couple of the walls.  Is there another system up there, or does it have ducts from the 2nd-floor system, or something else?

Thanks!

I don't think you can argue the levy rate / tax rate - I believe those are set by law.  All you can do is argue about the market value, which then would raise or lower everything else.  You would need to talk to the Jackson County Assessor about the market value.

I suspect some of the variation you are seeing is due to the school district.  64137 should probably be Hickman Mills schools.  64134 might be Hickman Mills or Lee's Summit, depending on where exactly the house is.  64130 is going to be KCMO schools.

There should be a breakdown on your tax bill of where it's all going.  For my residence in Blue Springs, about 60% of the total tax bill goes to the school district.  The fire department gets 13%, the city gets 8%, the county gets 5.6%, and then there are several other smaller pieces of the pie.  That 60% going to the schools is why I think the school district can affect your bill a lot.

If you don't have the paper tax bill, you can look up your property at http://www.jacksongov.org/ascend .  Punch in the account number (if you know it) or look it up by address; you should then be able to pull up an online copy of the current tax bill.  This will have the breakdown for schools, city, county, etc on it.  When I do that for my house, the website gives me an identical set of numbers to the paper tax bill that I got in the mail.

You should also get a statement from Jackson County in about the middle of the year that tells you what your property tax bill is *probably* going to be.  It is not a bill; it is just for your information.  It has the same breakdown for schools, city, county, etc that the actual bill does.  I believe the idea of this is to incorporate any market value changes and tax rate changes that have happened since the first of the year, to give you a "heads-up" about what's coming at the end of the year.

Disclaimer: I haven't had to deal with ceiling fans in a rental property yet - only in my own residence, and friends' houses.

Make sure some real short person didn't install the ceiling fan.  :)  I'm over six feet tall, and I've been in some rooms where I hit my head on the light kit.  In the master bedroom this doesn't matter as much, because the fan usually ends up right over the bed.  But if there's a bedroom being used as an office, or a former kid's bedroom now being used by an adult, it can come into play.  Some fans are just thicker than others, but sometimes the fan is installed with a longer downrod than it really needs.

Before the 1980s sometime, ceiling fans were not common in new builds around here (Kansas City) - the outlet box for the bedroom light might not have enough support for a fan.  I think it's relatively common for people who don't know this to take down the old light fixture and put up a fan.  You either have to go up in the attic (if possible) and look, or take the fan down and look, to know if you have the right kind of box.  If you don't, it's possible to get one with a brace and install it through the existing hole in the drywall; you don't *have* to go into the attic or tear up the ceiling.

Whenever I am in the local Habitat ReStore, I notice that they have a few fans, but they always have several sets of glass shades for the lights.  If you end up with a broken shade, you might be able to find a match there, or just buy a whole used set for cheap.

As a summer job during college, I used to sell appliance parts by answering a 1-800 number.  From that, I developed a theory that no healthy young person ever experienced a failure of their refrigerator or window A/C during the summer.  Only little old nuns on Social Security, that were also taking care of 4 orphaned children, had such problems, which is why the caller really needed me to give them free next-day air shipping on a 25-pound compressor.

Whatever you get, make sure you or the installer puts in the anti-tip bracket.  This is just a piece of steel with a slot in it that screws to the wall or the floor at the back of the stove.  When you put the stove in place, you set it down about 6" from the back wall, and then slide it straight back.  (Use cardboard or similar under the front legs, if needed to avoid scratching the floor.)  One of the leveling legs slides into the slot on the bracket.  Then, if the stove ever tries to tip forward, the bracket "catches" the foot on that side and keeps it from going over.

You might also turn off the breaker for the stove, open up the electric receptacle for the stove, and make sure the screws for the wires are tight.  These carry a lot of current and can loosen up over time.  If you're really feeling adventurous, check the screws at the circuit breaker end too.  (This involves taking the front off the breaker panel and exposing wires that *cannot* be turned off, so make sure you're comfortable with doing that.)

Use a new cord on the stove and make sure you do what it says in the stove manual for a 3-wire vs a 4-wire cord.  If, when you go to plug it in, the plug slides really easily into the socket, strongly consider replacing the receptacle.  If the receptacle is more than 30 years old, just replace it anyway.  If you don't know what it *should* feel like, go to Home Depot or similar and plug a new cord into a new receptacle.  All of this prevents overheating of the receptacle and cord.