All Forum Posts by: Stan Hill

All the more reason to ALWAYS charge tenants for all utilities.

The demographics of the tenants may play a part. I have a duplex where one side used 12,000 gallons of water in a month. Tiny yards, 3 bed, 2 bath. I drove by and happened to notice many cars there. The situation resolved itself when the city tagged a car for being parked on the grass.

 Good catch. The Zestimate is pretty useless, too. 

I bought a place off Zillow with a main house and rear apartment in back- two electric meters, two gas meters, one water bill for the whole property. I got it for $89,000, put $10,000 into it and now get $2,100 gross per month from that property- tenants maintain yard and pay all utilities. Looked through hundreds of ads to find it, but I think it was worth it.

Title insurance is an overpriced scam, but a necessary evil. IMHO, it's not worth the risk to do a deal without it.

 Why?

 I looked into refinancing a investment duplex about two months ago. FICO about 780, rate quoted 4.75%. 

 Thanks for the info, Rocky. Yeah, I've seen quotes all over the map. For 19 piers, we had quotes anywhere from $5,000-$10,000. I may need more piers now.

I'm not so sure this is a question of what contractor to use, but it is definitely about whether there is a better time of year to get a foundation repaired.

Anyway, we have a rental in Fort Worth. We had some foundation work done in January 2015. The work failed. A big long crack in the entry room tile showed up. Some external trim bowed away from a corner of the house. The converted garage was visibly crooked. After some legal wrangling, I decided to abandon pursuing a claim against the contractor who did the work  (incidentally, he ended up denying we ever did business!). Now there are more cracks, basically "spider webbing" away from the long, straight crack that appeared initially.

So here's where we're at. A business associate of mine has recommended I wait until the soil is wetter to get the foundation work done. He says if I do it now, they may pound 1,2 or 3 piers to resistance. If I wait until the soil is wetter, we might get 5 or 6 piers and thus a job done better. He's been pretty knowledgeable about maintenance issues, so I take what he says quite seriously. Given the foundation work that failed was done in January when the ground was pretty dry, I'm even more inclined to perhaps heed his advice. But no one knows everything about everything, so here I am on BP for more

Regardless, I do plan on using a local, reputable company- something I didn't do last time. Does anyone know if there's anything to this theory on time of year/wetness of soil and foundation repair?

Any thoughts or information will be greatly appreciated.

@Shalante Davis Sounds good so far. It wouldn't hurt to ask about closing fees and loan servicing fees. Even if those are a bit high, 0 points and 10% sounds pretty good. It appears HML has gotten more competitive since I paid 4 points, 12% interest and obscene fees to boot. That was about 3 years ago.