All Forum Posts by: Vaughan Moody

@Nathan Gesner. Thank you for your input. I appreciate it.

Our tenant accidentally broke a kitchen cupboard door. It snapped off vertically down the middle when he went to the kitchen in the dark in the middle of the night and when he turned to walk back, he walked into a little cupboard door which pushed it back against an edge of the wall, which caused the wood to snap. Anyway, the cause of the break doesn’t matter too much. The tenant admitted it was his fault.

When we were getting our own kitchen remodeled in our house a few months ago, we asked the contractor if he would be able to possibly fix that cupboard door at our rental property. Surprisingly, he said he would fix it for free for us. So we gave our tenant his phone number, and he arranged a day for it to get fixed. We told the tenant that luckily this guy was fixing it at no cost. (So therefore we wouldn’t have to pass on the cost of the repair to him ie. the tenant).

Now, several months later, I contacted the contractor to ask if he would be to provide a price estimate for a different job at our house. In his reply, he said that he never got paid for the repair of the kitchen cupboard door, so it will be $300 for that. My wife and I were both present when he said he would fix the door for no charge, so it’s not like there was a misunderstanding.

We feel bad that he did it for free, and he deserves to be paid for his time/effort, but if we pay him, now we have to go back to our tenant several months after the door was fixed and say “actually, we got charged after all, so now we need to pass that cost along to you”. They probably won’t like to hear that.

Would it be reasonable or unreasonable to tell our tenants they need to cover the cost of the repair, several months after we had told them this guy would repair it for free?

I’m pretty sure we could get a receipt, to show them the charge, when we pay him.

If this info helps with any advice given in anyone’s responses, they are good tenants.

Thanks in advance for any advice/thoughts.

Can anyone point me towards an online calculator that will show how much sooner we would pay off our mortgage if we divided our monthly repayment amount by two and paid that amount (half of a monthly amount) every two weeks, instead of paying the monthly amount once a month?

Thanks in advance!

@Tiffany Roberts

I know that feeling. We only have one rental, which is a condo. Every time we have frustrating issues with it, like plumbing issues that involve the neighbors or the HOA, we hate it and want to get rid of it. But it's in a good area, and has appreciated nicely. And when there are no problems, we forget it even exists.

Here are some things to consider.

*Do you only hate it when you have issues?

*What about the rest of the time?

*What percentage of the time in a day or month are you dealing with those issues?

Eg. Are you focusing on the 5% of the time when you have issues, and not the 95% of the time when you don’t?

*What does the average yearly appreciation equate to in dollar terms each month?

*What about if you factor in loan-paydown, and tax benefits from depreciation?

*How much is that worth in total?

*How does that compare to your job?

*Maybe change your perspective on things (not easy, but doable). Eg. Every time there’s a problem, be glad it’s not easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Handling hard things is what sets you apart from people who are either lazy, or who value comfort & convenience way more. When compared to the overall population, you are in the minority by holding multiple properties. That’s good! You will be way ahead in 15-20 years.

*Keep in mind the phrase “Everything is figureoutable”. There’s a good book by that title by Marie Forleo.

@Tess Reitz good answer Tess.

@Travis Timmons good point Travis.

@Dan Gaudet I wish I had started investing in property when I was you age. Property investments really compound over the long term, so you are lucky to be focused on property from such a young age. You will be so much better off by the time you’re in your forties.

Save, save, save!

When you have enough saved, you don’t necessarily need to buy in your own area.

Don’t get sucked into other ways of investing, like short term stock or options trading. Property is the way to go. You can benefit from leverage on something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eg. Put in 20% but benefit from the growth of the whole property value.

There are plenty of good books on Amazon and plenty of videos on the Bigger Pockets YouTube channel (and also another another one called ’Get Rich Education’) to devour. Good luck!

@Jay Hinrichs. Speaking as an Australian who spent the first 30 years of my life living there, most Australian’s don’t have to worry about people having guns. Unlike here, they don’t have a gun problem there, so the thought of someone being so cowardly as to deal with conflict with a gun probably wouldn’t have crossed his innocent mind.

@Nicholas L. Good points. Thanks for your response!

What are the best ways (websites etc) to find out figures like population growth, employment growth, and median wages (or wage growth) for a specific area?

I’m looking for somewhere to buy a new rental property and would like to know these kinds of key metrics for an area, to get an idea of if it’s growing & has potential, or if it’a stagnant.

If there are different places/websites for different states etc, the state in question is California. Thanks.