Month: August 2022

House 12 & 13

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Surprisingly, I didn’t cover all our houses in posts last year. I was going to say, “let’s finish this up,” but we’ve since purchased #14! This is a long post. I tried to separate the stories, but since they were part of the same purchase, it was too convoluted to decide which story went with which house.

We spent the summer of 2019 living in Lexington, KY. Mr. ODA took a temporary job for 3 months, and we spent our summer looking for more rental properties to try another market. The housing costs in central Kentucky were less than central Virginia, but the rental rates were also lower.

We drove around with our Realtor for quite some time. We were hoping to find a multi-door complex. However, 4-8 door units have just not been well taken care of. We take care of our houses, and I didn’t want to inherit all the deferred maintenance of a poor landlord. Many of the places had long-term tenants, so there wouldn’t be a vacancy to ease getting work done either. Additionally, there were several that we saw where the tenant was home, smoking and telling us all that was wrong with the property. It was abysmal.

So after searching through many other options, we settled on two houses at the same time.

FIRST OFFER

Mr. ODA actually made an offer on a house in Winchester that I hadn’t seen. It was a large house that had been converted into 2 units. Mr. ODA and our Realtor went after work one day, and it wasn’t worth me packing up the baby and driving a half hour to meet them for one house. However, I did get to see some of it because I took on the home inspection appointment. Since I had never walked through the house, it was easy for me to objectively see the information on the inspection and convince Mr. ODA to walk away. There was just too many big-ticket items (e.g., not enough head room for stairs, water damage not properly cleaned up in multiple rooms, several code violations) and deferred maintenance that it wasn’t worth us putting the money into it. The tenants were sitting on the porch smoking during the inspection, and I didn’t love the idea of inherited tenants that were allowed to smoke in the house.

SECOND OFFER

I can’t tell the history of these purchases without this gem of a story. Mr. ODA found a house that was in a decent shape in Winchester.

Aside: We focused on Winchester because while the rent income was low, the housing cost was also low. Whereas in Lexington, the rent was low, but the housing prices were higher.

We made an offer on the house. In the offer, it lists the seller’s name. It was a State Senator! When we sent over the offer, the seller’s agent agreed to our details, but asked for a pre-approval letter before he’d sign. The amount of weight the people in Kentucky put on a pre-approval letter is absurd, in my opinion. We went through the effort to get the letter and send it over. About that same time, the seller’s agent said someone else came in with a better offer, so we could either submit our highest and best offer, or lose the deal. The sketchiness of the action floored us.

The house had been on the market for a month. We had a verbal agreement (that had even been put in writing, but not yet signed). What are the odds that someone came in at the same time as us with an offer over asking for a house on the market a month? We called his bluff, and we were wrong.

THIRD AND FORTH OFFERS – UNDER CONTRACT

In August 2019, we went under contract on two houses in Winchester, KY.

Property12 had been owner occupied and flipped to sell. The owner had lived there long enough that she wouldn’t Docusign the contract, and we had to wait for her to initial, sign, and date all the pages by hand. The house had been listed for 36 days when we made the offer. It was listed at $115,000, and we went under contract at $112,000 with $2,000 in seller subsidy (closing costs) on 8/7. It’s a 3 bed, 2 bath ranch at 1120 sf.

We received the home inspection on 8/14. We asked for the items below to be addressed, or to take $1000 off the purchase price. They agreed to fix the issues.

Property13 had been listed for nearly 3 months before we made an offer. It had been most recently listed at $105,500. Our offer was for $102,000 with $2,000 seller subsidy. We also included the following requirement in the contract: Seller agrees to remediate the water and mold in the crawl space, fix the down spout next to the crawl space door so that it channels the water away from the home, replace the missing gutter on the front of the house, and repair the rotted facia and sheathing on the front of the house.

Additionally, we had a home inspection on the house and identified the following items for them to repair.

Getting the sellers to identify that these items were done before closing was not an easy task. We checked the day that closing was originally schedule for and noted that several things were not complete.

Then, at 7:30 pm the night before closing (which had already been delayed a week), we received one receipt identifying a couple of things were done. Eventually we received documentation that it was taken care of.

LOAN DETAILS

The options we typically ask for when considering the direction of our loan are as follows.

We chose the 25% down – 30 yr fixed option for both properties. Our goal is to not pay points, so that led us to the 25% down options. Since there was no incentive to take a shorter term (thereby increasing your monthly mortgage payments and decreasing your cash flow), we chose the 30 year option.

These loans were originated in September 2019. We processed multiple cash-out-refinances on some of our properties in December 2021; we used it to pay off about $66k on Property12 and about $74k on Property13.

LOAN PROCESSING & DELAYED CLOSING

We had a lender that we loved in Virginia. She couldn’t cover loans in Kentucky, but the company itself had a branch that could do it. She referred us to someone in Kentucky. It was the worst experience I’ve had in closings. Our closings are always annoyingly stressful in that last week, but this was bad throughout the month and then bad enough that our closing was delayed a week – completely due to the loan officer’s inability to manage the loan.

We had multiple issues over the course of the week we initiated our relationship just accessing the disclosures. They kept telling us to sign things we didn’t receive, or they’d tell us our access code and then when I say it doesn’t work, act like they never told us different information and give new information.

On August 16, I had to tell the loan officer that one of the addresses was wrong. THE ADDRESS. On August 26, we received conditional approval of our loan from underwriting. On August 27, we received our appraisal with no issues noted. But at that point, our August 30 closing was delayed a week already.

That’s where the problem was – our appraisal was ordered late, had to be rushed, and still didn’t make it in time for them to develop the Closing Disclosure (CD) and get us to a closing on August 30. The loan officer never once acknowledged that he ordered the appraisals late, causing this delay. It took asking for timelines from his supervisor, and piecing together emails we had on hand, to show that it was his fault.

On August 29, I finally made contact with the loan officer’s supervisor and was rerouted to someone else to get the job done. I had to repeat all of our issues and the errors that were found on the CDs.

On September 3, I was given disclosures that were still wrong. The new loan officer claimed that what she put in the system was correct, so she wasn’t sure what was wrong, causing me to once again outline all the errors.

On September 4, I was asked for more documentation that wasn’t caught during underwriting. I was furious.

On September 5, I gave up talking to our lender about issues on the CD and spoke directly to the Title Attorney’s office, who was much more knowledgable and responsive. Here’s an example of what I’m questioning when I look over a CD. Some of these seem small (e.g., $4 difference, $25 difference), but you can see how these add up, both on a single transaction and when we’re processing several homes in one year. Not to mention – why pay more for something than you were quoted or you’re supposed to?

Another surprise that came our way was a “Seller Agent Fee” for $149 per transaction. At no point in time was an additional fee disclosed to us by our Realtor. A typical transaction has 6% commission paid by the seller, which is traditionally split 3% and 3% for the buyer and seller representation. Being that these were Rentals #12 and 13, in addition to 2 personal residences we had purchased, imagine the surprise when we, as buyers, were being charged for representation. We questioned why this wasn’t disclosed to us up front as a Re/Max requirement, and it was taken off our CD.

CLOSING DAY

I had planned to leave town the Friday after the original closing date because that was the last date that we had our apartment. I didn’t want to move me and the baby into my in-laws house and continue the poor sleep we had been dealing with by not being at home. So even though closing was delayed, I left. Mr. ODA had to be my power of attorney. He had to sign his name, write a blurb, and then sign my name on ALL those papers that are part of a closing….. times two. Eek. I didn’t know that at the time (but baby went back to sleeping perfectly once we were home, so it was worth my sanity 🙂 ).

At 11:30 am on closing day, the lender claimed that the power of attorney documents (from the lawyer…) were not complete enough to be counted as filed on their end. I appreciated the snip from the attorney when questioned.

I always wondered why tv shows always showed both at the closing table with a ceremonious passing of the key. We’ve had our share of weird closings (in a closet, in a parking lot, at our dining room table), but we never sat at the table with the seller in Virginia. We were so confused about how specific the closing attorney was being about the closing time options, and then we found out that the seller and buyer are at the table together in Kentucky. The seller for Property12 was so rude to Mr. ODA through the transaction! She kept grilling him on whether he addressed the utilities. The seller shouldn’t be allowed to talk to the buyer! We’ve since been able to process 3 transactions in Kentucky and avoid the seller at the table, but I’d like to advocate that Kentucky move away from this buyer/seller meeting process!

RENTAL HISTORIES

Property12 was listed at $895 on 10/2. Based on my birds-eye-view of the area, I thought $1000 was going to be easy to rent it at. Based on the 1% Rule that we had followed in Virginia, we should have a goal of $1,100 per month. However, we were trying for a Fall lease, which is more difficult than a Spring lease, so I thought listing at $995 would get quick movement instead of letting it sit for too long. Our property manager disagreed. She also said we were limited our pool of candidates by not allowing smokers; but, the whole house is carpeted and I was not budging on that.

We found a tenant on October 16 and allowed her to move in right away, but not start paying rent until November 1 if she agreed to an 18 month lease (we really wanted to be on a Spring renewal going forward). That was an unfortunate blow to our expectations – nearly two whole months without rental income on a house we didn’t need to do any work to.

We increased rent to $950 as of 6/1/2022 after no previous increases.

Property13 was listed for rent at $995 with no movement. We dropped to $875 and offered free October rent for however long was remaining in the month. A lease was established on 10/18/2019. Our property manager was supposed to establish an 18 month lease and didn’t. Luckily, the tenant agreed to a 6 month extension.

Property13 renewal came in April 2022. She had balked about the state of our economy in 2021, and we backed off the proposed increase at that time. Well, all the jurisdictions finally jumped on the increased assessments, and we saw a drastic increase in our costs. We told her that the new offer for a year lease is $950, which is higher than we’d typically increase in one year ($75 instead of $50). But we told her that we were willing to let her walk if she didn’t agree to it since she originally negotiated a lower cost and argued an increase at the 18 month mark, which we let go. She tried to fight it, but our property manager told her to check the rental options in the area to see that she’s still getting a deal. She agreed to the increase.

MAINTENANCE HISTORIES

Property12 requires a new heat pump in June 2021. We paid $3900 for a whole new system, which is a funnily low number just a year later.

The tenant there complained of high water bills. I asked to see a history of the water bills to know how much was considered higher than their average usage. The property manager agreed that the toilet was running and causing higher bills, but also admitted that they attempted to fix the toilet twice over a 3 week period, with multiple days between receiving a maintenance request and taking action. While I agreed that we could compensate her for the issue, I couldn’t quite pinpoint why this was my financial burden and neither the tenant’s nor the property manager’s. I followed up with more information from the property manager with questions like: Why did it take the tenant from 9/20 until 10/11 to identify the issue still remained and that there was a waste of water? They indicated that they believe they made a good faith effort to address the issues as reported. I eventually settled on a $25 concession on one month’s rent.

Property13 had several issues with the hot water installation that were eventually resolved, which was frustrating after we tried to manage issues with the hot water heater through the home inspection process and received documentation as if it was complete. The tenant requested pest control in July 2020 claiming that a vacant house next door caused an increase in pests. I was frustrated because that’s not how it works. I approved treatment at that time, and then she came back with another request in October. Luckily, I haven’t heard about pests since then. In my Virginia leases, we’ll handle some pest control requests, but if there are roach issues once a tenant has been there for some time, we don’t typically pay for that type of treatment.

SUMMARY

All in all, these tenants have been pretty quiet. They ask for random maintenance things here and there, but they’re not usually big-ticket items (except that HVAC replacement!). Our property manager has been more difficult than the tenants.

Being that we were used to the 1% Rule when we purchased these houses, it’s unfortunate that even at 3 years in, we’re not renting it at 1% of our purchase prices. Our cash-on-cash isn’t completely accurate right now because I won’t see our taxes for this year for another month or two. Being that jurisdictions kept the tax amount steady through the pandemic, I’m expecting to see an increase in assessments for this year. I’ve also seen big increases in our home insurance policies, so that will probably eat into our cash flow as well. Our cash-on-cash analysis on Property12 is about 6.5%, and it’s about 7.5% on Property13. These numbers are only slightly lower than our expectation/desire, with our average being about 8%.

In the upcoming year, we’re going to look to get rid of our property manager, so these houses may begin needing more attention from us. It’s been hard to take on more when paying a property manager has been a sunk cost at this point. However, the frustration of managing their management (e.g., making sure charges are correct, not getting a full picture of what work is being done, and then paying them a significant amount of management money and leasing money only for them to claim that checking on the property requires additional fees) has led to us wanting to take it on since we’re in town now. The current lease terms are up in April and May, so if we’re going to take on management, it should be before the possibility of paying them half a month’s rent for leasing it (not to mention they’re notoriously 4-6 weeks out in every leasing attempt they’ve done for us, whereas I’ve never had an issue getting a property leased within a week).

Making an Offer

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While the housing market has cooled some since I started this post in the Spring, there are still some areas that are moving quickly and aggressively, and this information is still helpful regardless of you being in a multiple offer scenario. Over the course of 6 years and 18 properties purchased (and countless offers made), we’ve caught on to some helpful parts of contracts. Again, keep in mind that I’ve seen real estate contracts in New York, Virginia, and Kentucky; this is not all encompassing or what may work perfectly in your market. This also doesn’t include all parts of a contract since most of them are standard and/or can’t be anything but matter-of-fact (e.g., will the property be owner occupied; is the property subject to a homeowner’s association).

BASICS

Your contract is going to encompass the basics of the purchase each time. This would be the buyer and seller names, address of the property, offer price, and closing date.

Typically, the buyer’s agent draws up the contract with the information being offered. If the offer is accepted by the seller, the seller signs the contract. If there are negotiations, the buyer’s agent will adjust, have the buyer re-sign, and then submit to the seller for signature. When the buyer makes the offer (which is just filling out the contract and sending it to the seller), the buyer will typically include an expiration date of the offer. This isn’t always enacted, but it’s there as a protection so the buyer isn’t sitting idle for extended periods of time waiting for a seller to make a decision. For example, we had an expiration clause in a contract recently where our offer expired at 8 pm that night, but we knew they weren’t going to review offers until the end of the weekend; we had put it in there as a way to hopefully push the seller to make a decision with just our offer instead of waiting for more offers to roll in. We ended up getting the contract on the house, even though our expiration date had technically expired.

In Virginia, the closing date language says “on or before X date, or a reasonable time thereafter.” In Kentucky, it says “on or before X date,” and if you can’t close by that date, you and the buyer have to process an addendum to the contract with a new closing date. We had a contract, as the seller in Virginia, close 2 months after the date in the contract. We were furious about that. We could have walked away and kept the buyer’s earnest money deposit, but then we’d have to formally list (it was an off market deal) and manage that process along with the home inspection issues that may arise. We also had a contract in Kentucky where our lender messed up and delayed our closing, so we had to sign an addendum to the contract to allow us to close a week late.

EARNEST MONEY DEPOSIT (EMD)

Earnest money, or good faith deposit, is a sum of money you put down to demonstrate your seriousness about buying a home. In most cases, earnest money acts as a deposit on the property you’re looking to buy. You deliver the amount when signing the purchase agreement or the sales contract, and it’s applied to your balance owed at closing.

This is not a requirement, but it’s showing your “good faith” to purchase the property because there’s a penalty to you if you try to walk away from the purchase.

In most cases, you pay the EMD to your realtor’s office and they hold it until closing. In Kentucky, they’re on it right away, asking you to send the check as soon as the contract is signed. In Virginia, I didn’t always send the EMD. The amount is listed in the contract, so if I were to default on the contract as a buyer, I would still owe that amount even though I hadn’t paid it to my realtor’s office.

Typically, you’re looking to put 1% down. On a $90k purchase, we gave an EMD of $900. On a purchase of $438k, we gave an EMD of $5,000 (but there were other factors at play as to why we went higher than 1% on that, which I’ll cover later).

CONTINGENCIES

Some items we’ve seen in our contracts are options for the buyer to back out of the contract, or a contingency.

Financing

A sale can be subject to financing. If it’s not an all-cash offer, and there will be a loan secured to purchase the property, data can be entered to protect the buyer’s interests. Typically, it’s going to list the years of the loan to be secured (e.g., 30 year conventional), a downpayment amount, and a maximum interest rate. The interest rates hadn’t been fluctuating much, but this would play into things in the past few months. If you tried to purchase a home when the prevailing interest rate was about 4%, and then interest rates rose to 5.5%, it may affect your ability to qualify for the loan or put you outside a comfort zone for your monthly payment amount. For example, on a $250,000 loan at 4%, your monthly payment is about $1200 per month (principal and interest); if the rate raises to 5.5%, your monthly payment becomes $1420 per month.

This information does not lock you into that break down. If the contract says 80%, and you decide to put 25% down based on the rate sheet, the contract isn’t changed nor is it voided.

Appraisal

If the sale is subject to financing, then it has to be subject to the appraisal. This is a lender requirement to protect their interests. There are some caveats to this, but I will cover them later since they’re more advanced. An appraisal will cost the buyer in the realm of $450-600.

If you’re attempting to qualify based on rental property income, the lender may require you to pay for a rental appraisal as well. We’ve seen this cost at an additional $150, but we’ve typically been able to negotiate our way out of that by providing leases and income history.

Home Inspection

This is one that I almost always recommend including in your offer. This is your “out” in almost every situation. If you get a home inspection, and it finds anything, you can walk away from the contract and not lose your EMD. If a house is important enough to you (a personal residence that you want regardless of what you find on an inspection report), you may eliminate this contingency, but you’ll typically include it. You can even include that you’ll do a home inspection and decide to not do it.

If the house is being sold as-is, it doesn’t mean you can’t get a home inspection. You can still get the inspection to know whether you want to move forward with the purchase. Being sold as-is just tells the buyer that the seller is not willing to negotiate price or fixing items if the home inspection finds something.

The buyer is responsible for the cost of the home inspection. We’ve paid between $300 and $650 for it. The inspector will take about 2 hours to look through the house, including the roof and mechanical parts behind the scenes. Sometimes the inspector will say “this doesn’t look right, but you need to consult a professional in that trade,” which is usually what happens when it comes to roofing. We have done a home inspection, found too many issues to manage (e.g., stairs built out of code) and walked away from the contract. In that scenario, we don’t lose our EMD, but we did pay about $500 for “nothing” (unless you count all the savings of not throwing money into the house to make it safe and livable).

If you find items on the home inspection that you don’t or can’t fix yourself, and the house isn’t being sold as-is, you can request the seller address them. An addendum to the contract will be filed to identify what the seller agrees to fix, and professional receipts have to be supplied before closing to satisfy the requirement. A seller may say they don’t want to be bothered with coordinating the trades to fix the items and offer financial compensation (e.g., we project the cost of these fixes to be $1000, so we’ll take $1000 off the purchase price).

In the realm of “the contract can say almost anything you want,” here’s an example of an additional term that was in one of our contracts. On this particular house, we should have walked away. The closing process was a nightmare because the seller hadn’t paid the electric bill, so we should have known that them wanting a free pass on inspection items was a red flag.

Virginia has a clause to protect the seller’s ability to walk away from the contract in the event of drastic home inspection repair costs.

Wood Destroying Insects (WDI)

A WDI is basically your termite inspection (may include carpenter bees, ants, etc.). We learned with our very first home purchase that this inspection is pretty useless. You can teach yourself what outward signs to look for regarding termite damage. It’s a visual inspection of what the technician can see. But the damage caused by WDIs is behind the drywall. If there’s signs of WDIs outside the studs of the walls, you’ll see it, and that means you have a big problem. Pay the $35 for a professional to say there are signs of active termites.

Another way we found that the WDI is useless is that we had a major termite problem in our house. We were paying for treatment when we sold the house. The treatments weren’t working and the next step was pulling up all the flooring in the basement and treating under the foundation ($$$). The termite company wrote their report: There is an active infestation of termites that are actively being treated. Technically, true. Productively, not the whole picture.

‘ADVANCED’ CONTRACT OPTIONS

I don’t know that these are necessarily advanced, but they’re less common options when making an offer. Some of them come in handy at opportune times, so it’s helpful to know the options at your disposal.

Seller Subsidy

The seller subsidy is the seller’s contribution to closing costs. It reduces the seller’s bottom line based on the offer amount, and it reduces the amount of money the buyer needs to bring to the settlement table. If a contract offer is $102,000 purchase price with $2,000 seller subsidy, then the seller’s bottom line is $100,000.

There is a limit of how much seller subsidy can be in a contract, which is based on the lender’s requirements and is typically 2% of the purchase price. We have had to adjust the contract to account for this limit before we were aware of it; we kept the seller’s bottom line the same, but adjusted the numbers so that we could maximize the seller subsidy.

In Virginia contracts, there’s a boiler plate section identifying the possibility of seller subsidy. In Kentucky, it has to be written into the additional terms section.

Escalation Clause

If you’re in a multiple offer scenario, it may be helpful to offer with an escalation clause. This is an option that a prospective buyer may include to raise their offer on a home should the seller receive a higher competing offer. The buyer will include a cap for how high the offer may go. It’s essentially a way for the buyer to compete with other offers, but not necessarily pay top dollar for the house.

Most recently, our offer was $420,000 and we were told there were at least 4 other offers. We added an escalation clause to our offer. We decided to make it a strange number (e.g., increase by $1770 at a time), and we capped it around $450,000. We were basically saying that we were willing to pay up to $450,000 for the house, but we didn’t have to commit to that number by making our offer at $450,000. The highest offer outside of our offer was about $436k, so our escalation of $1770 over highest offer got us the house for about $438k.

Appraisal Gap Clause

As mentioned, a home purchase with financing is going to be subject to an appraisal. With the housing market exploding purchase prices in the last couple of years, houses have been selling for well over list price. This is nice in theory, but that doesn’t mean that a bank is going to agree that your purchase price is “fair market value.” If your contract is for $500,000, but the home values in the area only support $420,000, the bank is not going to give you a loan based on $500,000. Either the seller has to agree to accept the lower purchase price, end the contract and start over with the listing, or the buyer has to agree to pay the difference in value in cash. A gap clause is preemptive attempt to address this difference between the contract price and the potentially lower appraisal price.

If the buyer believes that the area’s home prices will support a purchase price of about $450,000, but they want to make an offer of $500,000, the buyer may include a gap clause of $50,000. This means that the buyer is more attractive to the seller because the seller’s risk of the contract falling through after the appraisal comes back is minimized. This also means that a buyer would have to be able to show the lender that they have the cash to cover the gap clause needed (if needed), the down payment, and the closing costs.

We used a gap clause on our most recent purchase. The list price was $415,000. I was confident that an appraisal would cover up to $425k, but I didn’t see many comparable sales higher than that without venturing into different neighborhoods. We offered, with an escalation clause, up to about $450,000. Since we weren’t sure that the appraisal would go that high, we offered a gap clause of $25,000. Our final purchase price was $438k, and the lender waived an appraisal need, so our gap clause wasn’t enacted.

RANDOM CLAUSES

I mentioned that a contract can almost say whatever you want. Here are a couple of examples of protections we put in an offer that had to be satisfied within the term given or we could walk away from the deal with no penalty.

SELLER THOUGHT PROCESS

The seller’s comfort comes into play when you’re in a multiple offer scenario. A buyer can make an offer saying almost anything they want (within reason of a residential real estate transaction). You can manipulate your offer to show the seller how vested you are in the purchase. Sometimes a seller just cares about the bottom line numbers, but sometimes (like if you’re competing with a similar offer), a few tweaks to your offer may make you more desirable.

I mentioned that we went higher than 1% on our EMD for our personal residence purchase. We wanted to show that we were very interested in the property, so one way to do that is to show that we have a lot of “skin in the game.” If we default on this contract, we’re out $5,000 and getting nothing. Whereas, when we’re purchasing a rental property without emotion, if it doesn’t go through, it doesn’t go. Sticking to about 1% is showing that we’re “checking the box,” but not that we’ll do anything and everything to make sure this deal goes through. We would still be out some money and get nothing if we walked from a contract without enacting a contingency, so the higher EMD you include, the more serious you appear.

A seller may not understand the big picture of providing the subsidy, so that could be risky. If a seller sees that they’re contributing to $2,000 of your closing costs, they may balk at it. Hopefully, they have a realtor on their end that can explain “think of your offer as $100,000 instead of $102,000.”

Eliminating a home inspection may make a seller feel more comfortable too. They may know of some issues in the house and are waiting for the “shoe to drop” through the inspection process, so it could eliminate a stressor for them. I wouldn’t recommend eliminating a home inspection unless you’re confident there aren’t any fatal flaws in the house (e.g., quarter width cracks in the foundation, wet marks on the ceiling, warped/sunken flooring).

The housing market has slowed down, so some of the out-of-the-norm clauses may no longer be worth the buyer’s risk just to compete for a house, but these are some options out there. The general concepts still apply, like when to pay for extra inspections or to expect financing and an appraisal to go together. Know that everything is a negotiation and don’t feel stuck in a contract if red flags are flying.

August Financial Update

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We took a week-long vacation the first week of August. I haven’t taken an entire week trip in a very long time. The kids are young, and the daily activities of swimming at the pool and the beach were exhausting for them, but we had a great time. I had projected about $500 worth of food expenses for the week, but we only spent $250 (including a grocery shopping trip). Our daily schedule was dictated by children sleeping, so it was a lot of little meals or snacks at the condo rather than looking to take the time to sit down at a restaurant. It also helped that we paid about $3.45 for gas (which is still terrible, but it’s not $4.30!), so our gas costs for the 11-12 hour trip each way was $190. Our lodging costs were significantly more than we’d typically spend, so the reduced costs in other areas was welcomed.

We’re still working on the new house and haven’t moved. That’s starting to weigh on me. We won’t see much progress this month based on our activity schedules, but hopefully we’ll knock nearly everything off the list next month. Our expenses were high in June and July for the house, but now it’s just a matter of finishing the projects that we already bought materials for, so hopefully expenses will be low the rest of this month. Our HELOC balance increased because we used it to pay for our concrete replacement at the new house (tear out driveway, garbage pad, walkway and stoop to the house, and 3 sidewalk squares; then replace everything in kind except widen the driveway).

RENTAL PROPERTIES

We offered our tenant that has paid rent late 71% of the months we’ve owned the house a new option, and they accepted. They had been paying rent around the 15th and then the last Friday of every month. After several months of this, I spoke up that it was unacceptable. They started paying the first half by the 5th, but the second half was still coming the last week of the month. That means every month, they’re paying $1450 in rent and $145 in late fee. We offered them the ability to pay half at the beginning of the month and half by the 15th. Each payment has a 5 day grace period, and then the late fee is tied only to the payment not made. However, since this is an inconvenience to us, the rent increased to $1500. They could be saving $95 per month if they pay both payments on time. However, they could also be paying as much as $1650 per month now if they pay each payment late.

We got one house turned over and rented last month, and rent was paid timely this month. We also received credits from our KY property manager for costs they overcharged us on.

NET WORTH

We continue to hold high balances on credit cards because of 0% interest incentives. As I mentioned, you don’t typically see a personal mortgage line increase, but we drew almost $9k out of the HELOC to pay for concrete replacement at our new house. Our investments have increased in value over the last month, offsetting the additional draw on the HELOC and higher-than-average credit card balances, helping increase our net worth.

Property 2 Turnover

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BACKGROUND

Unlike the other property we turned over this year, we knew this one was coming. The tenant living at this house moved in back in 2017. A few years ago, there was a domestic violence incident that led to a restraining order against one tenant from the other. Legally, we had to let the one tenant out of the lease. At the time, we didn’t have an immediate reason to release the second tenant from the lease, so we offered her a new lease in just her name. That was our downfall.

Since January 1, 2020, she paid rent on time in only 3 instances. I can think of only one instance where she told us up front that rent would be late. Every single month, I was stuck chasing her down. She’d say she would pay on the 17th, and then on the 18th, I’m asking where rent is again with another lie coming my way. She had quite the array of excuses. They were always elaborate. After getting stuck in Costa Rica for half a month in September because of a positive c-19 test, she didn’t even bother letting us know when she was back in the states or when we’d see rent. She applied for rent assistance. They paid 3 months of her rent for her (which was of course was significantly late from the state), and yet the month she had to pay, she still couldn’t.

Her lease was expiring June 30th this year. We provided her notice that we would not be continuing the lease and she was to vacate by 5 pm on the 30th and no later. Since we live 500 miles away, and I don’t trust her one bit, I hired my property manager that we use on other properties to take this one over. I wanted her to be the one to check that the tenant turns over keys and has the house empty before I drove 8 hours out there to find out the tenant is squatting.

THE LAST DAY

Sure enough, the tenant had a few more games to play. At 3 pm on the last day, she texted my property manager that she needed a bit more time, and asked if they could meet at 5:30 instead of 5. At 5:15, my property manager texted her saying she hit unexpected traffic, so she wouldn’t be there until about 5:35. My property manager pulled up to no people at the house, but there was at least one dog (not on the lease). The tenant didn’t show up until 6:50 pm.

My property manager means well, but she always seems to be advocating for the tenant while I’m the one paying her for services. The tenant asked if she could stay for a little while longer and remove the rest of her stuff. Well, based on the pictures, this wasn’t a “one more load” type situation; there were hours and hours of removing clothes and crap. All her furniture was out, but there was still garbage, dog feces, clothes, and some decor items left behind. My property manager was trying to say that she should be allowed to stay to remove her things and then she’d lock up on her way out. Nope. She absolutely didn’t have a place to stay that night, and it wasn’t my responsibility to keep catering to her. There was nothing that showed me allowing her access any longer was going to leave me in a position that was any different than I was currently in (meaning, hiring a junk removal company and having to pay someone for extra cleaning services).

Burned counter top
All of the cabinets still had things in them.
Just one of the rooms
Carpet eaten and ripped through the pad and to the subfloor.
Just part of the post destruction.

Oh, let’s not forget that she didn’t pay a dime of June rent. She claimed it was to be able to secure another place to live. However, she left her mail as garbage laying in the living room where we found she had been rejected due to her record. Sometimes I wish I could say, “we were giving you a chance; perhaps you should have paid your rent and communicated issues timely so you still had a place to live.”

I stuck to my guns and said get the keys. My husband was more compassionate and said that she could come back over the weekend to get her stuff while someone was there working on the house and supervising her actions.

TURNOVER WEEKEND

Her last day was a Thursday. She couldn’t come back on Friday because she was working the whole day. She said she’d be there first thing Saturday morning. At 9:20 am, nothing. She said she couldn’t get her trailer until 10:30 or something like that. At lunch time, still nothing. When questioned on her whereabouts, she made a list of things that she wanted us to put outside for her so she could grab on her own time. HAHAHA. She showed up at 1:10 claiming her dad was right behind her. Mr. ODA let her in the house, she grabbed a handful of things, and then left. That’s the last we’ve communicated with her.

TURNOVER ACTIONS

Mr. ODA and his dad went to Virginia to handle the turnover. I was going to go by myself, but being pregnant and alone inched out over my desire to make sure things were handled correctly. They arrived Friday evening and left Sunday evening. I was quite impressed with how much they got done.

All the stuff left behind had to be moved out of the way to get to work. Mr. ODA and his dad put it all in the living room so they could start painting. We paid a junk removal company $625 to get rid of her stuff and the old carpet.

The front porch post had been torn off the brick porch. Our untrained assessment seemed like someone had backed into the post. Mr. ODA was able to raise the porch roof back up to get the post back in place. He replaced the post tops and it looked good as new, surprisingly. There are still broken bricks, but that’s not a structural concern like the post itself was.

The entire interior of the house got a new coat of paint.

Mr. ODA had to replace missing and broken nuts in the bathroom faucet (how does this happen?!).

Blinds had to be replaced, as usual.

All the carpet had to be replaced. We didn’t have time to lay luxury vinyl planks (LVP) like we’d have preferred, so we settled on new carpet. While we were telling our handyman this, he said he’d lay the LVP for us, so we jumped on that. It’s more expensive up front, but we won’t have to do a full floor replacement in 3-5 years like we’d have to do with carpet or have to replace everything for a section damaged beyond repair. Mr. ODA and his dad pulled up the carpet, pad, and most tack strips.

We paid a cleaning company to clean the kitchen and bathrooms. She was supposedly there for 5 hours. That was $250.

We had to pay our handyman $100 to “paint” our countertops because there was a huge burn mark in the counter. They paired nicely in the multiple burn holes in the kitchen floor vinyl, which got covered by LVP.

We also had to pay someone $45 to mow the lawn. That seemed like an astronomical price, but we don’t have a lawn mower there, and it was easier to just let this guy do it when he asked.

After the new tenant moved in, they let us know the washer and dryer weren’t working. A diagnostic test of the washer seemed to say it wasn’t a user error and just coincidental timing, but then finding out that the dryer didn’t work right after that was interesting. The new tenant had their own washer in storage. We offered them the ability to buy their own dryer for $20 per month off the rent, which they accepted.

After we subtract out her security deposit, we’ll go to court for just under $10k worth of expenses. About $2,250 of that is unpaid late fees, so I don’t expect that to actually go anywhere once it gets to court. The first step is to send her a letter outlining all these details. Since the balance owed is so high, I preemptively offered a payment plan over 6 months. While $1650 per month is high for someone who couldn’t pay me $1150 each month, I don’t want to drag this out for a whole year. She’s not reliable, and I don’t want to be tracking and fighting her for a year to come. I also expect no response or resolution via this letter, and that we’ll have to go to court eventually anyway. Once it goes to court, she becomes responsible for court filing fees, and the judge will award interest on the balance, which adds up quickly.

SILVER LININGS

We bought the house with renters at $1050. We had worked on raising it $50 every two years (approximately), but rent was only at $1150. We recently refinanced the house, and the rental appraisal on it came in at $1600! If we don’t count that the tenant never actually paid June rent, we only dealt with a vacant house for 21 days and got it rented at $1,450. We probably could have pushed higher, but we were happy to get movement on it as soon as it was listed. To only be vacant for 21 days with the extensive damage and work to get it turned over is impressive to me.

While it was $6,000, the whole house got new flooring. Instead of trying to patch the vinyl in the kitchen and get new carpet installed for it to only last a few years, we were able to get LVP throughout the house. LVP will last much longer, and if there are damaged boards, they can be replaced individually instead of having to replace rooms and rooms worth of carpet.

CONCLUSION

This could be a horror story. However, we have 13 houses that help float expenses on the one or two where someone doesn’t pay rent timely or we have higher expenses. While we had to manage her month-to-month to track down rent, she did eventually pay all but that last month. In the end, for it to be a few things to address and it to take less than 21 days is great. This doesn’t go down as a reason to not hold rentals!