All Forum Posts by: Natalya Murphy

We just bought a house that we will occupy for about a year and then rent out for 5-6 years while my husband is in the military.  The current bathrooms have a 70s decor and need to be updated.  

Since we need to do the update, I want to put in the most durable and easy-to-clean material on the shower walls and floor.  

What would you suggest?

Are you looking to flip or hold as a rental?   The criteria may be different.   Some things I look for:

• Is this a neighborhood I'd feel safe walking in during the day and at night?
• Would l be willing to live here?
• What kind of cars are in the driveways/front yards?
• Are there people out walking their dogs or kids out playing?   This is a good thing.

One buy-and-hold investor I know says he looks on the MLS to see what areas have a lot of rental properties available and specifically stays away from those areas -- he doesn't want the competition for prospective renters. Instead, he'll look for a rental property in a nice area that doesn't have a lot of open rentals available.

Sadly yes.   You will pay more for a property that you don't occupy.   We just refinanced a house last year that used to be our home (and may be our home again in a couple of years).   We're renting it out while we're away on military assignment and wanted it to cash flow better while we were away so we refinanced it for a longer term.   Had to pay a higher rate because it was now considered an investment property.

For vacant land, I'd want to know how far current power, water and sewer lines come to the property.   Also, if there's one entity that owns a lot of the land around there, show their holdings.

For occupied properties, a "heat map" of crime reports in the area might be interesting.   Registered sex offenders would be another good thing to show right on an overlay.   Scores for surrounding schools.    Floodplains.

Just a few off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.

...and you could use the free seminar to whet the whistle of those professionals that would rather pay you to do the GIS work for them than to do it themselves.

You could sell your services to realtors or investors, or you could make money putting together a workshop on how to do the GIS research.    Make good powerpoint slides for the workshop, videotape it, and you can have a video product that you could then sell to other folks.

To get them interested you could offer a free seminar with an overview of how GIS could help their business.   Use case studies if possible.   Give away enough free information in the seminar that they come away with something useful, but leave the more deep-down details for a paid follow-up class.

We own a mixed-use building with 2 commercial tenants on the bottom floor and 2 apartments on the top floor.   The building has a total of 4 separate addresses and has a small lawn behind it that's used by all the tenants.

I'm in the process of revising the commercial leases and would like the 2 commercial tenants to share responsibility for the maintenance of the lawn.    When I lived in town it was easy to handle this maintenance myself, but now that I live over 1,000 miles away, I'd rather hand over the responsibility to them.   It would also make it easier to ensure that the work actually gets done.  It's a tiny area (about 15' x 15') so finding a landscaper willing to do the work is difficult.

Ideally I would like the tenants to all be able to share the area and somehow share the maintenance of the lawn.   If I put just one tenant or the other in charge of the lawn, I see them wanting to become territorial about it.

Any suggestions on how this could be done?

This question and will tell you just how inexperienced I am as a commercial landlord.   As a quick background, we inherited one of the tenants when we purchased the property for our business use, then acquired the other tenants after we closed our retail business but kept the real estate as an investment property. 

We currently have 3 commercial tenants whose leases have long passed their initial terms and have gone month-month. None of the leases have provisions for annual operating expense (ie CAM or NNN) adjustments, and my insurance and tax expenditures are increasing. So I need to write new leases with base rent plus NNN charges.

I have drafts of the new leases prepared, but I don't know how to present them and what the process is in regard to getting a response from them or negotiating with them.   I assume there's some official wording I need to use in a cover letter to let them know I'm terminating the existing lease and replacing it with the new lease.   

Additional wrinkle:  they're in Nebraska and I'm in Arizona, so I can't do this face-to-face.

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.   If possible, I would like to do this myself without the aid of a lawyer.  My lawyer approved the actual lease wording, but if I get him involved in the negotiations it could get expensive.

Thanks Jeremiah! The commercial buildings are in an LLC, but since the house was previously our residence, it's still under our name. There's a chance we'll be moving back into it next year, so it's probably easier to keep it out of a corporation.

Thanks for the tip on Rincon Property Management.

We have about 1,000 square feet of carpeted floor that we'd like to convert to tile.   I'm wondering if it's worth the crazy labor cost to pay someone to do the work, or if it's a project I could do myself.   From what I've read, the trickiest part is getting each tile level when you set it in place.   It looks like there are spacers available to ensure the tiles are placed correctly in relation to each other, and I'm not afraid of using a tile cutter for the edge pieces.   My question is really about how difficult it is to get each tile level.   Also, are there any other gotchas I should be aware of before I try to take this on as a DIY?