All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

This previous thread, where somebody who was 15 was asking about starting out, might be interesting.  (Disclosure: I posted in this thread.  :) )

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

Cozy didn't stop me from downloading the reports to my PC.  Whether or not you're legally allowed to keep them long-term varies from place to place.

If you did want to keep them, doing something like putting them on a USB flash drive that stays locked in your office, or printing them out and keeping them in a locked filing cabinet, probably helps protect you against claims of exposing someone's personal information.  If you keep them on your PC and you get hacked, or if you keep them on your phone and your phone is hacked, lost, or stolen, that's not so great.  I don't think the credit or background reports had the full SSN on them, but they did have the person's full name, previous addresses, and other personal information.
 

Nothing really amazing, but here goes:

An empty pint bottle of Jim Beam whiskey.  It was sitting on top of an air duct in the basement; I only saw it because I was up on a stepladder, trying to figure out where some wires went.  After I found it I put it back and walked around the basement looking up and decided it was a really good spot; you couldn't see it unless you were on a ladder.

A couple of old series-string Christmas light sets, with cloth wire insulation, from Montgomery Wards.  No lamps, just the wires in a box.

An old "curtain stretcher", over the garage.  At first I thought it was an artist's easel - long wood moldings with a bunch of tiny nails poking out of them.  It turns out that when you had old lace curtains, they'd get out of shape after hanging for a while; you'd take them down, maybe wash them, and then string them out over the curtain stretcher to dry and reshape.

Also over the garage, I found some home-made signs for an old camping club.  I Googled it and found some references to it in a local paper from the early 1960s or so.

When I repainted the kitchen, I found two men's names written in pencil on the drywall.  I don't think they were previous owners of the house, so I assume they were construction workers.

At home, I created an Easter egg for somebody in the future.  I had some work done that included replacing part of the subfloor in the living room.  Before the workers closed it back up, I bought a copy of the local paper and stuffed it down in between the joists.

I've never had this come up, myself.

One thing I can think of: make sure there's language in there about other people who aren't on the lease moving in. Most leases have this already. The situation I'm thinking of: this guy moves in, lives there for 6 months, and then buys a house or gets transferred overseas again and moves out.  The company may think that since they're paying the rent, they now have a "free" house to move another employee into, without going through your screening process.  The lease should either let you screen the new resident, or allow for you to break the lease and sign a new one with the company after you screen the new tenant.

If the post office told you to talk to the city... talk to the city.  :)  The right part of the city to talk to is sometimes called Zoning, Community Development, Neighborhoods, or Planning.  Check the city's Web site, make your best guess, and then pick up the phone or go down to City Hall in person.

Depending on how integrated the various city departments are, and how broke the city is, they may ask you if you pulled building permits to do the renovations for the second unit.  If you did, tell them the permit numbers.  If you didn't... you might be in trouble.  You may want to see if there is a local landlord association or real estate investment association that you could join and/or ask for advice, in that case.

In rural areas that still have "Route 2, Box 43" addresses, I think the post office is still in charge of assigning addresses.  In town, or in rural areas that have "12300 County Road 456" addresses, the city or county assigns the address, and then tells the post office about it.

It's important to go through the right procedure, because the post office has a master file of the addresses it thinks are good.  If you don't have the new address on file with the post office, and somebody in New York tries to mail a letter to "123-B Oak Street, Knoxville, TN", the automated sorting equipment in New York will decide that 123-B is a bad address and mark that letter to be returned to the sender.  Basically, they're trying to minimize the handling of mail to a "bad" address.

I use Cozy.co for 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.

I would write them a letter and meet them in person.  If you can't meet them in person soon, write and send the letter as soon as you can; if you can meet them in person (say) this week, write the letter and then give it to them in person.

The letter doesn't have to say a lot, other than the new way they should pay rent, and that they should get in touch with you if there is a problem.  Maybe something like this:

"I am taking over the management of the property at 123 Main Street.  The method of making your rent payments will change, starting with the payment due on January 1, 2020.  You should now make checks payable to Morgan Gruelle, and mail them to PO Box 567, St. Louis.  Alternatively, you can pay electronically, through the website Cozy.co (or Zelle or whatever).  I will contact you in the next few days to discuss the electronic payment option.

The rent amount and rent due date have not changed.  The lease terms have not changed; your current lease is still valid, and expires on (April 30th, 2020 or whatever date).

Starting January 1, 2020, if you have a maintenance request or another concern, please call or text Morgan at (phone number), or email (email address). Before January 1, you should contact XYZ Property Management, as you do now."

When you talk to them in person, they may ask if you're selling the building, or getting ready to kick them out, and things like that.  Have an answer ready if they ask.

If you've got copies of the leases they have now, see if there is any language in there about changes to the payment methods, etc.  Sometimes there is a requirement for an advance notice of changes.  If that notice period is more than about 20 days (as of today), you technically can't yet change something that will happen on the 1st.

I don't personally do this, but then again, I just have one property.  :)

I do know another local landlord who changed his lease to collect the rent on payday from one of his tenants.  The tenant was having trouble with paying on time on the 1st, so they both talked about it and came to that arrangement.  I think he kept it due once a month, but it might be every 2 weeks.  He says that once he moved the due date a few years ago, the tenant hasn't been late.

I do use Cozy and they seem to be willing to listen to ideas and suggestions.  If you send their support an email explaining why you'd like to do bi-weekly payments, I feel like that helps move it up their list of possible features to provide.

Outside of landlording, I have observed that some people have trouble wrapping their head around getting paid 26 times a year.  Rather than break their expenses down into 2-week or 4-week chunks, they break them down into 1-month chunks, and then sometimes get in trouble when the pay dates move around in the month.  The one or two months where they get paid three times are like an unexpected bonus, rather than a normal part of their cash flow.  In my experience, people that get paid either 12 times a year or 52 times a year seem to have less trouble with this.

@Alexander Linville Thanks for posting back with the results!  It's nice to hear how it worked out, and it helps everybody calibrate their advice to the next person.  :)

Many 401(k)s allow you to do that; sometimes it's called a "hardship withdrawal", and sometimes there are other terms for it.  There is a limited set of things you can use it for and housing is usually one of them.

I'm over here on the west coast (Kansas City), but on a $30K house, I'd figure on spending a very large fraction, if not all, of that $15K rehab budget.  Furnace/AC and a roof will take maybe half of it, plus or minus, and then you get to fix the exterior and the interior.  Similar to what @Henry LiChi said, I'd guess this house is around 100 years old, and maybe have some deferred maintenance issues (old galvanized plumbing?  knob-and-tube or otherwise inadequate electrical wiring?  cast-iron drain plumbing that is end-of-life and leaking?) that will fall to you to fix.