All Forum Posts by: Pat L.

Originally posted by @Bob E.:

@Pat L.  How did your showings go?

Had quite a few show, 3 yesterday @ 12 noon & several more tonight. Several submitted applications so far. Even had that one that wanted to pay 4 months in advance to get it asap..yeah right. Surprised to see a few middle-aged empty nester couples/singles.

"The comedy of absurd hypocritical rationalizations is, sadly, completely lost on junkies. " Sadly we have had to evict several young kids that started out being great tenants. They were college educated had great jobs, but then they get hooked on drugs. Some had very young children so it's tough to see. However, according to some of my Lower Income rental LL friends it's becoming an epidemic.

Should be fun today we have 8 couples (maybe) & two different divorced middle aged ladies showing for an open house on a 2 bedroom upper apartment. One of the divorced ladies is the current tenants aunt as the current tenant is just moving to a larger apartment on-site. 

Demand is very high in the area so it will go fast.

@Brian G. The auditor literally took each property apart using the detail accounting we had on each ledger for each property. This saved a lot of time, clarified each expense with a direct paper trail to the expense & a receipt. 

Since that audit, I now actually detail on the Business CC statements which expense/receipt goes to which property & then make a CC payment separately from that account. 

@Colleen F. I must be luckier. Bosch/Samsung have been a real problem. We did have an LG ice maker failure but that was my fault. While away for a month I shut down the ice maker & it froze the ice cube eject components causing a failure. $100 Repair clinic part & it was fixed. 

I do have a large double door, bottom drawer LG Fridge & an LG DW at our Lakehouse & they have survived 8 winters & it gets to 20 below so I'm impressed. The fridge stays on, but the DW is shutdown, & I do run food grade anti-freeze through the lines.

I use the rapid lead paint testers on older homes.

I also check the electrical panel for those that no longer meet code & check for a heavily corroded bus bar. The latter is typical for high humidity/moisture basements. 

If central a/c I check the HVAC evaporation coils. Heavy contamination usually requires replacement or a lot of cleaning.

Agree with the TV/monitor hoarding headache. We got one home at a tax lien auction with a basement literally filled with old monitors & old tube TV's that weighed a ton. We then flipped it 'as is' & the buyer took care of it. 

Now we have tenants that try to leave their old flat screens behind.

We have a great appliance repair guy on speed dial but most of the time it's Repair clinic & the respective video. I agree with avoiding Samsung & Bosch has become a maintenance issue. The clutch in a 3 yr old Samsung washing machine failed & was too time consuming & expensive to repair so swapped it out for a Whirlpool scratch & dent (S&D). Then a Samsung electric dryer was a nightmare but finally thanks to repair clinic & $162 it's now all new parts & has been OK for 2 yrs. That was cheaper than another S&D. 

BUT LG appliances have been great over the last 7 years we probably have 12 of them. I much prefer the dish washers vs Bosch. A couple of the high end Bosch DW pumps started to leak after several years.

We do have a couple of older LG fridges with water/ice that must be 12-15 years old that are still running in rentals.

Our daughter uses a social media platform & this Saturday we have an open house on a small 2bedroom upper @ $900/month with 5 couples (apparently) confirmed. In fact over the last 12 months our daughter rented 4 apartments immediately after being notified of their impending vacancy. In each case we probably had 3-4 couples tour the property. Admittedly they were all young millennials that replied via social media.

We have a number of dairy farms near us that use tires to hold down the massive silage covers. So we can usually drop them off at their rural curb.

However, we recently sold an old 1830's home that had about 30 tires stored in the basement. The new owners then discovered that the town will take them all if you are the new owner. So he trucked them to their dump site no fees.