All Forum Posts by: Mike F.

Just a single example of the absurdity of these new regulations is the new regulations on late fees. 5% or $50, only applicable on the 8th day of not paying the rent. Our legislature has essentially changed every tenant's due date for rent to the 7th of the month. Nothing a landlord can do other than say please, please pay your rent on time, every tenant can now just wait every month to the 7th to pay their rent and not a thing a landlord can do about it. That is insanity. Denver will soon be requiring every landlord to educate their tenants on their rights, again essentially providing them with a document that teaches them how to game the system. Every tenant will soon have a document provided by their own landlord telling them they can wait a week each month to pay the rent with impunity.

Ethics bought for $3K.

Sad in society a person can be bought for so little. Pay the bill, post the review. Be a good role model if you have kids or family. Whoring out your ethics for cabinets really???

If you can't do the right thing without an incentive what does that say about you?

Think about your experience with this company. Would you have avoided the whole terrible experience if you had read a review you wrote similar to yours prior to hiring them? How many more people will have an experience similar to yours with this company because you can be bought off? How much pain and time wasted would you have saved if this company's reviews were legitimate? This is a very tough time for many businesses to perform as they have in the past or would like to with the issues of staffing. Many businesses are having a very hard time providing their services as promised, however, the lack of communication and follow-up and explaining the situation to you shows their lack of caring about maintaining good customer service. However, they have figured out the 'game' that they can buy off many problems rather cheaply, they tested you and you took the bait.

This is the same disgusting screw the next guy mentality like 'cash for keys' promoted by low snake in the grass 'investors'. 

I've seen how brazen people have become, a tenant long ago who we would not renew their lease due to chronic late payments, aggressive and passive-aggressive tendencies, outright continuous lying and more, actually put me down as a reference on the application of the new place she wanted to rent. My jaw hit the floor when the new potential landlord called me up. This is the mentality of people being created by rewarding these behaviors, she was convinced I would lie to the next landlord so as not to jeopardize her leaving my property peacefully, she was convinced enough to use me as a reference believing I would pass the buck down the road and screw the next person by giving her a good reference. Unbelievable.

Do the right thing Tiffany, you'll feel good about it later.

I took totally disagree with these new laws, and see them as the typical results we have been experiencing routinely with the current political administration in power in Colorado and more to come. We are actively avoiding purchasing any long-term rental units in Denver do to these laws and the perception that only more are to come. We only invest outside of Denver now.

This is just the beginning, more to come, more restrictions more rules, higher fees all in the name of protection of renter's rights, with rules and fees that affect a large majority of compliant investors to police a tiny percentage of violators. No different than the envirotest debacle of taxpayers paying millions of dollars a year who own automatically compliant automobiles that basically can't violate clean air rules to pay for the ability to police a tiny percentage of vehicles that could, might or do violate the clean air rules. 

Kimberly, I was a GC for 15 years, licensing for a GC is at the municipality level in Colorado, meaning the city, if outside the city, the county. Lakewood is in Jefferson county but has its own building department, the Jefferson County Building dept would be if the address is outside the city limits of Lakewood, if it is in the city limits you go to the Lakewood building dept. As a GC, I would call the building dept I suspected the property was in and you give the building dept the address to verify, sometimes they would tell you it's not in the municipality city limits and tell you which building dept to got to. This is the first step in your process so you are talking to the right building dept, because they all are different, have different requirements and have adopted different local rules in addition to the standard code.

"Taking out a wall" may or may not require a permit. Any load-bearing wall will certainly require one, will sometimes require an engineer report and sometimes require your GC to have a more difficult to obtain contractor's license as they are sometimes tiered. Sometimes a municipality will require a permit just for installing drywall, some do not. Inside the city of Lakewood the restrictions and requirements will be more restrictive, outside Lakewood but in Jefferson County the requirements will be more lax. Jeffco building dept is one of the easiest and least restrictive building departments to work with, Lakewood is fine but no where near as simple as Jeffco.

As you can see the keywords to all this is 'sometimes you don't know until you #1 find correct building dept, #2 after you know which one call the building dept and ask. Typically inspectors are available for 'consultations' in the morning before they leave for their inspections and sometimes in the late afternoon when they return. Typically they are very receptive and happy to answer your questions. 

-Find the right building dept
-Call them and find out when the framing inspector is available for a phone call
-Call at that time, if you don't get ahold of them, leave a message and be available, they return phone calls

For the rest of your questions - start with the right building depts website, they typically will have information online about what work does and does not require a permit. 

How long will all this take? It used to be just a matter of days, with Covid that's out the window, but probably now no more than a matter of weeks not months.

Whether you use a local or out of state GC it doesn't matter, once he is licensed here he is just as local as anyone else. 

One thing though if you think this out of state GC is so great, one of the proofs of that would be him/her being able to navigate all this I told you. If they are experienced with permits they should be able to figure out everything I told you and you should not be doing this leg work for them.

By-the-way - replacing a bathtub is not going to be considered 'cosmetic' anywhere with the exception of being way out and rural.

According to the new law passed for Colorado effective Jan 2021 pasted below...

HB20-1332

The act adds discrimination based on source of income as a type of unfair housing practice. "Source of income" is defined to include any source of money paid directly, indirectly, or on behalf of a person, including income from any lawful profession or from any government or private assistance, grant, or loan program.

A person is prohibited from refusing to rent, lease, show for rent or lease, or transmit an offer to rent or lease housing based on a person's source of income. In addition, a person cannot discriminate in the terms or conditions of a rental agreement against another person based on source of income, or based upon the person's participation in a 3rd-party contract required as a condition of receiving public housing assistance. A person cannot include in any advertisement for the rent or lease of housing any limitation or preference based on source of income, or to use representations related to a person's source of income to induce another person to rent or lease property. The restrictions do not apply to a landlord with 3 or fewer rental units. A landlord who owns 5 or fewer single family rental homes, and no more than 5 total rental units including any single family rental homes, is not required to accept federal housing choice vouchers for the single family homes.

A landlord is not prohibited from checking the credit of prospective tenant. Checking the credit of a prospective tenant is not an unfair housing practice if the landlord checks the credit of every prospective tenant.

I'm confused on how the wording is to be interpreted for "The restrictions do not apply to a landlord with 3 or fewer rental units. A landlord who owns 5 or fewer single family rental homes, and no more than 5 total rental units including any single family rental homes, is not required to accept federal housing choice vouchers for the single family homes."

In investment circles, we differentiate between "Single family homes" and condos and townhomes. Is this law differentiating between them?
Clearly, if you own 3 or fewer rental units of any sort you are exempt, but what if you own 4 townhomes or 4 condos?

Logic would dictate that getting "Kicked" out of section 8 is going to take a lot and getting back in is going to be relatively easy. This is 2021, government programs are bloated and the mentality is everybody needs the government to help them out, you show me somebody who has been kicked out permanently from section 8 and I'll reconsider, but I just don't see it. Some reprimands after 32 warnings, a temporary suspension, but kick out to the street making them homeless? Just not going to happen today. Everybody is a victim, nobody is held responsible for their own actions.

Don't forget, government programs are run by human beings in the positions, people in those positions are there for a reason, they have a huge lean toward helping out the unfortunate, and never forget in their eyes landlords are very rich taking advantage of people, they are going to side with the renters as much as they can get away with and there is lots of grey area and interpretation and leaway.

People run these scams because people like yourself enable them. What exactly were you so scared of? Why do you have insurance? You really were afraid some minor running a scam was going to take your house from you?

You have insurance, this is what it is for. Let the insurance company and the under-aged, lying girl and her father figure it out. What was she doing in your house in the first place if she isn't even able to rent it and lied about it?

I would not invest in anything for a 3% return. In fact I wouldn't even consider something with a 3% return an investment.

There is some mixing of the terms here. Doing business in Colorado as a business formed in another state is not the same thing as being licensed to pull permits in Colorado. He might be able to charge you money and you pay him but that doesn't mean he can legally do the work if permits are required.

There is no such thing as a Colorado GC license, licensing is done on the city / county level. IE Denver, City of Littleton, City of Aurora...Unicorporated Jefferson County...