All Forum Posts by: Tom R.

My friend and I live in a trailer park in a trailer which my friend owns. A couple of weeks ago my friend received notice that the park is raising the sewage fee claiming that the city raised their sewer taxes. I keep pretty up to date on local news and I have heard of no such tax increase. Today he received notice that the lot rent will be increased by more than 5% on top of the sewage increase.  My friend can barely afford the place as it is since he is on social security and has to take medication which is very expensive. Making matters worse is I am in escrow  on my own house and am planning to move out very soon.

This used to be a very nice trailer park with its own park, green grass, no weeds, a heated pool and a club house with a gaming room that had dart boards and a pool table.  The grass is now mostly dead the park is so poorly maintained that it is unusable there are weeds everywhere yet they still send out notices to clean the weeds up on our lots or pay a large fee. The heated pool is no longer heated and its closed more than its open and the club house has been closed for years.

Is there any chance that what they are doing is illegal?

Wow that's a new one. I'm close to closing on a house that I plan to do pretty much the same thing. I like to call my strategy the Cold. Its a mixture of a house hack and a BRRRR strategy. I purchase the house as a primary residence and begin fixing it up. Once I get a couple of bedrooms, and bathroom, and the kitchen usable I plan on renting out a room hoping to get enough to pay the mortgage payment while I finish the repairs. After I finish the repairs and Ive lived in the house the required amount of time to establish it as your residence which is I believe usually six months and one day and move out and rent the whole house. Then I will get a heloc to pull out my equity that way I keep my low interest rate and payment. I will of course make sure I do everything legally.

Well I went ahead and bought a few tickets. I didn't match a single number but I had a lot of fun dreaming about all the things I was going to do with the money. I think it was worth the money and I still have tonight's drawing for more than 600 million. I can't quite live as fat on that but it would still buy me several hundred acres, a very nice, house several expensive cars, and enough long term rentals and franchises so that I would never have to worry about running out of money while I travel the world. 

 Its a professional gambler thing. Never play a game unless the prize is bigger than the odds. In short if the odds are 1 in a million and it costs a dollar to play its not worth playing unless the prize is over $1M.  

I stopped playing the lottery a long time ago. Even then I only played the large jackpots.  I'm finding myself tempted again. There are two huge jackpots right now totaling 2.6 billion dollars combined.  

If I won either of those jackpots I would have instantly smashed my lifes financial goals.  I would have to quit my day job so I had time to invest the money properly. You cant just have billions of dollars sitting in a bank. 

If I won first thing I would do is pay off my moms house. Then I would buy a large lot of land over 200 acres somewhere with a pleasant climate and start building my house. Then its time to start investing the money.

So anyone can now just claim their pet is a service animal can force you to accept their pet by just downloading a letter from some shady Dr. on the internet who may or may not even have a license to practice in your state or country. What a bunch of expletive deleted! 

There seems to be some disagreement on deposits. The humane societies web page says you can charge a deposit for the animal other sites say you cannot. 

One site said SFR's rented without a realtor dont have to comply with the service animal as well as buildings with 4 or less units and the owner lives in one of the units.

Before accepting any tenant with a service animal ask them what kind of service the animal provides. Most people who claim to have a service animal are claiming emotional support animals which is not recognized as a service by the ADA and you do not have to accept them. 

I would put in the cabinets first. It's not that difficult to work around cabinets plus you save a little on materials. I'm willing to bet that your flooring contractor is charging per sq. foot which means he makes more money by doing it the easy way.

I'll be doing a flooring job soon and the only place I will be putting the flooring underneath anything is in the bathroom where it will go under the toilet and vanity only because it would be virtually impossible to install the vinyl planks in the small spaces between them and the walls and the tub. 

I realize this is over a year old but there are 2 methods I use to check for leaks and faulty meters.

First turn off the water to the house just after the meter. Make a note of what the water meter reads and come back after an hour or so. If the meter reading changed when you come back there is something wrong with the meter.

Second turn the water back on and make sure there is no water running on the property. Turn off all faucets, check toilets, washer, irrigation even turn the water off to the evap cooler. Make a note of what the water meter reads and come back after an hour or so. If it changed then you have a water leak.

Its very high for the purchase price. But the replacement value will almost always come in higher than the purchase price.