All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

When I had to do my landlord taxes for the first time, I bought "Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide", by Stephen Fishman, from Nolo Press, and it was very helpful to me.

You might consider reading up on how the taxes work even before you start.  I knew I needed to keep invoices and receipts, but I didn't know what categories I needed to sort them into.  The book helped me with that, so then I got to go through many months of receipts and sort them.  Now that I know, I can organize the receipts as they happen, which is a lot easier.  This is useful even if you are having someone else do your taxes; if you can give them the receipts already sorted out, it'll go faster.

On a rental house worth somewhere around $105k, +/-, in the Kansas City area, I pay about $75 a month through State Farm.  That is with ACV at least on the roof.  (As far as I can tell, pretty much all of the insurance companies around here switched to ACV for roofs by default between about 3 and 5 years ago; my residence switched around that time.  They'll still write replacement-value policies, but it costs more.)

I don't know how much it helps on a rental, but on your own residence, once the house is over about 40 years old, the insurance starts getting interested in things like replacing the circuit breaker panel and replumbing.  When I bought my rental, it already had the meter and circuit breaker panel replaced; the insurance asked for photos of those items.  I think I may have also told them about the new furnace and A/C I put in it.  It might pay to ask the insurance agent if anything like that would affect the rate.

I use Cozy.co.  I wrote a big post about it here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

As others have said, probably window units will be the most effective.  

From what I've seen, a single window unit works pretty well on smaller units, like studio or 1-bedroom apartments. Once the units get bigger, you may need something like one window unit per bedroom; people don't always want to leave all the inside doors open so one unit can cool the whole place.

If there is more than one window unit per unit, and one of them craps out, you usually have the option of shuffling a working one into the bedroom(s) and then getting a new window unit tomorrow. In the summer, Wal-Mart (24 hours a day) usually has some in stock; I'm not sure if they stock them all year, though.  (This assumes you provide the window units.)

You do have to clean the filters on them. Often this isn't a paper throwaway filter like a central A/C has, but a section of wire or plastic mesh in the front grille that you can pull out and wash. You might consider buying spare filters, so when you go for a maintenance visit, you can just swap in a clean one and take the old one back with you to wash later.

They should tilt towards the outside of the house a little bit, so the condensation drips out the back. Normally this happens "automatically" when they are mounted in the window, but it's a good thing to check every couple of years, so they don't start dripping inside the house.

If the unit ends up dripping somewhere you don't want it to, some units have a place you can connect a drain pipe/hose and move the drip over a few feet. You don't usually plumb this into a drain; you just use a few feet of pipe or hose to get the drip away from the doorway or whatever.

If the unit has more than one bedroom, it's kind of common for the outlets in two of the bedrooms to be on the same circuit. Two window units on one circuit will usually be OK, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for the tenants' stuff. You can usually run a few lamps, alarm clocks, phone chargers, etc no problem, but if the tenant wants to (say) use a hair dryer in the bedroom, they might end up popping a breaker.

If you have to run a new circuit just for the window unit(s), consider putting a single outlet next to each unit, instead of the common duplex outlet.  If you think you need a really big window unit for some reason, running a new circuit usually lets you use a 240 V window unit if you want.

One disadvantage to a window unit, especially if it's on the first floor in a less-than-great neighborhood, is that it's relatively easy for the bad guys to push it into the house from the outside, and then climb in through the resulting hole. Most bad guys aren't bold enough to try this when someone is home, but I've heard of it happening when the tenants were away, or when the unit was vacant between tenants.

If you have a bedroom with only one window, and that window serves as an egress window (second exit in case of fire), check with the local building-code people to see if you're allowed to put a window unit in that bedroom.  Sometimes you can and sometimes you can't.

On a rental house worth somewhere around $105k, +/-, in the Kansas City area, I pay about $75 a month through State Farm. Just scaling that up to $140k gives me about $100 a month.

As others have said, there are a lot of variables, but $135 sounds a little high to me.  It might be closer to right if the house is really old (75+ years) or has some other problems.

I don't know how much it helps on a rental, but on your own residence, once the house is over about 40 years old, the insurance starts getting interested in things like replacing the circuit breaker panel and replumbing.  If you did anything like that after you bought the house, or the seller had work like that done to the house shortly before it was sold (and you have the invoices to prove it),  it might help to make sure your insurance company knows about it.

I agree with this - especially the "raised loop" part.  The dishwasher drain hose is supposed to come out of the dishwasher, go all the way up to the bottom of the countertop, and then back down to connect to the sink drain or Disposall.  Some locations call for an "air gap" in the high part of the hose - a little vent that pokes through the countertop or the wall right behind the countertop.

In my experience, it's relatively common for DIY dishwasher installs or reinstalls to not have this; the dishwasher drain hose just snakes around on the cabinet floor, and then goes up to the sink drain.  In that condition, if the sink drain backs up a little - either because there's a clog in the pipes, or because there's a Disposall, you're busy scraping dishes, and you haven't turned on the Disposall yet - water from the sink will run down into the bottom of the dishwasher.  If there are particles of food in the sink water, they'll show up in the dishwasher too, and may cause a smell, especially after they sit for a while.

If this is happening, the fix can be as simple as making sure the drain hose has that raised loop in it.  That can be a long drywall screw, something to go over the screw threads (a 1 or 2 inch piece of old garden hose, or several wraps of duct tape, or similar), and a zip tie.  Run the drywall screw into the cabinet, put whatever you have over the exposed threads, put the drain hose over the screw, and use the zip tie to keep the hose in place.  Or, get one of those zip ties that has the screw loop in the head, put the zip tie around the drain hose (gently), and run a screw through the loop into the cabinet.  Or, get a real official pipe strap - the ready-made kind, or that perforated steel tape you can unroll and cut to length.

My understanding is that you only have to send that letter if you reject them based on information in their credit report.  If you reject them for some other reason, you may not be required to send a letter saying why.

On the other hand, with the rising popularity of laws that say that you can't screen your tenants for certain things, always sending a letter that says you rejected them for a legal reason might be a good idea; I don't know.  Your lawyer would know for sure.

I used the background and credit checks offered through Cozy.  I can't really speak to how good they are at criminal records; as far as I recall it either didn't find anything, or just something minor like a speeding ticket, for both sets of applicants I ran it on.  It did find some serious credit issues with the first applicants I had, and some minor ones with the second applicants.

Normally, once it goes month to month, either you or the tenant can end the lease by giving notice to the other party.  It sounds like your lease has that, with the 30 day notice of termination.  As I understand it, you don't have to give a reason - you might refer to "section [whatever] of the lease" in the notice, but that's it.

The thing about it being paid by an outside company is a little weird.  The only two situations like that I've heard of are 1) the tenant is getting assistance under Section 8, also known as a "housing choice voucher" or 2) the tenant is quite ill, and getting assistance from either Medicaid (low-income people) or Medicare (old people).

Section 8 is probably more common, but I think you would already know about that; the property would have to be registered with the local housing authority, and an inspector would have looked at the property before they allowed a Section 8 tenant to live there.  It's possible those things happened before you bought the property, though.  If the payments come from a place with "Housing Authority" in the name, they may be Section 8 payments.  If you think the tenant really has moved out for good, you need to get in touch with the entity that is making the payments; the assistance is for that specific person, so if that person isn't there anymore, they shouldn't send the payments and you shouldn't take them.

I only know about the Medicare/Medicaid thing in the context of someone who was terminally ill and an owner-occupant, so I'm not quite sure how that would work with a rental.  Again, if you think the tenant has moved out, it's probably a good idea to contact whatever entity that is making the rent payments.

As far as the two people that want to stay, you should screen them, and if they meet your criteria, sign a lease with them.  If they don't meet your criteria, or if you decide you'd like them to move out, you have to do some more work.  Since they're already living there, they probably have some rights as tenants, even though you don't have a signed lease.  If you can't come up with a mutual agreement for them to move out, you may have to file for an eviction.

I'm not sure what you mean about "the old tenants positions".  If any of your existing tenants paid a security deposit, you should have gotten those deposits when you bought the property.  If a tenant moves out, you're supposed to set a time, usually shortly after they move out, where both you and the moved-out tenant can inspect the property for damages.  If there's no damages, great; you give them all of their deposit back.  If there are damages, you make an itemized statement of the damages, with dollar amounts for each one.  You keep that much of their security deposit, and return the rest (if any) to the moved-out tenant.  In most states, this whole process is supposed to happen relatively soon after they move out, like within 30 days.

I put knobs and deadbolts from Landlord Locks on my rental while I was rehabbing it, and no problems in 2+ years of it being rented.  The deadbolts are Dorma and the knobs are Arrow.

With these, they do the master and tenant keying at their shop; when I want to change the locks, I will order new cylinders from them, which will fit my existing master key but have a new tenant key.  The keys have "duplication prohibited" stamped into the head, which most human locksmiths will honor.  I don't know if the automated key machines that some hardware stores have, or the services that will make you a key from a photo, will care about that restriction.

While I was still working on the house, the key didn't want to go into one of the knobs all the time.  I asked a local locksmith and he recommended "Tri-Flow" spray, so I bought a can from him, used it on the cylinder, and it worked fine after that.

The lever knobs have the usual two long screws that clamp the inside and outside half of the knob to the door.  They also came with a couple of other smaller screws that just hold the inside half of the knob into the door skin, and the directions recommended installing these screws on "frequently-used doors".  I did a trial install of these extra screws on the side door before installing them on the front door.  I think they help, but it was tricky to get the holes in the right places so that everything would line up.

When I first closed on the house, I found a set of two knobs and a deadbolt, keyed alike, with a key, at the local Habitat ReStore for $20.  I put those on the house on the first day, just to change the locks.  All of the existing locks on the house were keyed alike, so that set went in my stash as the "first day" locks for a future house.

New locks sometimes come with parts you don't end up using - strike plates with rounded and square corners, shims, etc.  Throw all that stuff in a box, along with the parts from the old locks you're taking off of the door.  In the future, one of those parts will turn a "trip to the hardware store and spend $20" job into a "5 minutes and $0" job.  :)

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