All Forum Posts by: Rose Stuart

I really appreciate all your kind words. I didn't think of myself as a newbie, but it was the first property we purchased strictly as an investment (and not to live in too) so I really was. You are buoying me up. We know how to drastically lower our costs of living (yay for living in our smallest unit), have good jobs in addition to the 3 rental units, all the money we have borrowed for this is on a HELOC on our first property and not on high-interest credit cards. All good things. I think by the end of the month we will cool our repair jets for a bit and blast out the debt/up the savings. We can do this...just need to stop making long-term investments in the property for a while. :)

Here's my other major question: Despite everything listed above, I have the bug. We have been successful landlords for the last 7 years. Our first house was a duplex and it was what made it possible to only work part-time and be home with my babies the rest of the time. I am good at being a landlord, walking the line between fairness and firmness, handling the legal/screening/advertising stuff with aplomb. My husband is an absolute wizard at fixing things. He is an electrician by trade and can figure out anything else (done right!!!) by watching YouTube and talking to the old guys at Home Depot. So I want to do this again....just more profitably. How do you calculate repairs? If the driveway will need replaced in 5 years, do you add it all in to the initial investment or break it up? What about a project that will cost $15k in 10 years? Do you add it all up into the initial investment? I've been telling myself that good schools and low taxes are not going to ever be cheap, but it's clear from further research on the MLIS that folks have done well on flips in this neighborhood. So I probably just need to look for a much better deal next time? Perhaps go through a wholesaler, since at this stage of life I have two young children, a part-time job, three rental units, and two other side businesses and cannot imagine adding knocking doors and sending flyers to the mix.

downpayment, I think we have about $50k equity. So, not under water. Also, that's not the right measure for financial success. I think we've put around $26,500 in to repairs so far. I estimated the initial repairs (for one unit) to be around $2,000. I was SO FAR OFF. It kind of makes me sick to realize how far off I was. The upstairs, initial repairs were around $3,000. So that was not so far off. But the second unit cost about $10,000. Repairs we have done this spring (new roof, repointing chimney, graveling the driveway, fixing the fence, painting and caulking the outside of the windows) is about $10k. This isn't 100% on, but it gives an idea of what has happened. We are still expecting another $10-25k in major repairs later down the road. I think from the numbers it's pretty clear we over-paid for this property. I estimated ongoing repairs to be $1,400 a year. With that number (and with taking out property management fees, which we end up paying ourselves), we on-paper net $457 a month. Am I just having buyer's (and renovator's) remorse? Is this still a worthwhile deal? Am I falling for the sunk-cost fallacy? Would you sell at this point or hang in there? I keep telling myself that we have further diversified our income. That in 30 years we will have this house totally paid for and be able to use that greatly increased income to fund many of our day to day living necessities, regardless of what the stock market is doing. But maybe I am just justifying it to myself because we have poured months of our lives into doing almost everything but the roof ourselves. We have painted, replaced windows and doors, renovated, installed cabinets, scrubbed, painted some more, refinished, wired, plumed, cleaned, mixed concrete, spread and tamped gravel, driven refuse to the dump. I would really hate to just hand it all over to someone else....or would I? Give me some perspective. What would you do?

Hi everyone. I screwed up. And it is really hurting my pride and bank account. We bought a solid property. A second duplex in our neighborhood. It's a solid B neighborhood near different kinds of employers. It's centrally located and backs up to a town park. We can walk there from our house which comes in really handy since we only have one car. We screen carefully and have solid renters. But I majority messed up the math. Specifically the initial repair investment. A couple of major things happened. One: turns out that no matter how carefully I observed and took notes, there was a world of difference between the initial, "this is a solid house! This could work" walk through and the "crap! I am NOT the kind of landlord that would show this place as grungy as it is. We will paint EVERYTHING, refinish the floors, revamp the kitchen, there goes a month and a half of our lives." The second, really major thing that happened it's that we were expecting to keep the tenants we inherited while we did the remaining home repairs and updates on our own time as we had income. Guess what comes next? They were not up to date on the rent when we closed and could not get up to date in the allotted time. We do not play games. They were gone. Which meant all of a sudden we were replacing another floor of windows. Rennovating another bathroom. Remodeling a horrendous kitchen. Major thing three: we were going to put off doing the roof and driveway for a couple more years. Nope. The universe had other plans. So here we are, nine months out. We are fully rented. Everyone has paid their rent. Zillow (I know) says the house is worth $21k more than we paid. $140. If you go with that and our (TBC below)