Month: January 2026

House1 Turnover

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I wrote most of this post 5 months ago, but I’m going to finish it now for the longevity of what we’ve done with these rental houses. The house has been rented since September and was vacant for 43 days. She agreed to a shorter lease term, so it goes through June 30, 2026.

The tenants in this house moved in 3 years ago. They were good tenants. They hardly asked for things and were super understanding and gracious when we had the HVAC go out (granted it was their lack of filter changing). They brought a dog into the mix and tried to hide it (not well), and I eventually called them out on it to let them know they don’t need to keep finding a way to hide the dog every time I need to come over. They added a 3rd person on to their lease about a year ago. The only major issue I have is they smoked inside the house. I knew it constantly because (just like with the dog cover up) they weren’t great at hiding their evidence.

Earlier this year, I reached out that if they want to renew, I’d be raising their rent from $1200 to $1275. The girl who usually handled the bidding called me and explained they had intended to move to Georgia for a job, but they weren’t ready to move as fast as the end of the lease. I told them they could do month to month for a little, and we agreed to June 30th. I knew I had another lease ending July 31st, so I thought it would work out well that we could address the one house before the other became vacant. In theory. They ended up asking for another month, and we were busy with summer things at the end of June that I agreed, even though it meant two houses were vacating at the same time. I told them that I wouldn’t be able to extend any further though because it’ll be hard enough to rent end of August time frame, let alone into September or later.

On July 29th, they asked me what time they had to be out on the 31st. I said 5 pm. The next day, they asked me if they could have a couple more hours, but I let them know that I had already booked someone to meet them for their keys at 5 pm, and that’s all I could give without it costing them more. I was out of town for this vacancy and asked a friend to be my property manager to walk the property and gather the keys.

They ended up being out and basically cleaned up by 5 pm. I was impressed. The fridge was completely wiped down. The bathrooms were in rough shape, but overall, it was one of the cleanest vacancies we encountered.

THE TURNOVER

We had to have a friend go out to get their keys because we were out of town. I tried to get them to stay until the weekend to make it easier to move, and so that I could be the one to meet them (not that I said that), but they didn’t want to pay the per diem for that option. They ended up keeping their timeframe perfectly.

The turnover took longer than I had planned. I was working part time without a real ability to give up those hours because I had things that needed to get done, and it was summer, so we had 3 kids in the mix. Not to mention, we basically had back to back trips planned for the end of the summer. Overall, it was a learning experience.

We spent about $800 on supplies for the turnover, outside of the carpet, which was about $3,000. With the extra cleaning of the bathrooms and the time it took us to clean and paint the property, we kept their security deposit of $1,200. We could have gone after them for more because of the smoking (I have pictures from when I was doing work in the house of ashtrays with used cigarettes upstairs in the house), but it’s not worth the effort and cost.

FLOORING
Before they moved in, we had ripped out the carpet and installed luxury vinyl planks (LVP). Conceptually, the goal was to not need to work on the floor anymore. We had limped along with the carpet, especially in the living room, since we bought the house, and it just wasn’t worth it anymore. We did the install over two days back then. Now that they were out, there were several gouges in the floor and the floor was separating in some spots. Mr. ODA handled fixing the separation, and he replaced a few boards that were damaged and noticeable.

The kitchen floor was so dirty and it’s the first thing you notice when you walk in. I spent many hours on my hands and knees cleaning out the grout to make it look less dingy. I didn’t get it perfect, but it was fixed. It’s one of those things that no one will ever know just how much time I put in for it to not be perfect, but it would have been so much worse had I not done anything.

BATHROOMS
The bathrooms were a wreck. I’m so lost when I walk into homes and the bathrooms are dirty. Do you want to sit on that toilet or clean yourself in a shower that is dirty? It seems counter productive to me. Mr. ODA had to take over with Bar Keepers in one of the bathrooms to remove the staining and soap scum build up, but we did pretty dang good.

I wish I had a ‘before’ picture easily available to show, because this picture does not do justice to how much time went into this tub.

CARPET
We bought this house 9.5 years ago. The carpet was questionable when we bought it. We would have it professionally cleaned between tenants, and it would look amazing compared to what we saw at first, but the stains would always come back because they were deep in the pads. Before these tenants, we ripped out the carpet in the living room area and laid LVP because the living room was especially bad. Well that still left carpet in the 3rd floor bedrooms, hallway, 2 stairwells, and the whole basement. With the smoking by the tenants and knowing we had far surpassed the useful life, we went ahead and planned to replace the carpet.

There were delays in getting the appointment scheduled and making it all work. The lady who did the measure appointment said installations were 3-4 weeks out. That was disheartening because we had already lost over a week by having back to back trips at the beginning of August. We went into Home Depot to find something else. I ended up settling on something because it said 5 day install. Well, 5 days came and went. I was so frustrated that I had settled on this worse-off carpet just because I wanted to meet a timeline, and now the timeline meant nothing. Then suddenly, we got a call and they said “can we come install the carpet today? We’ll load it now and be there within the hour.” That they did. They installed it in 7 hours and that was behind us.

PAINTING
This took forever. Two big stairwells really take a lot out of your time. Every surface needed to be painted just to work on covering the smoke smell. While we didn’t spend a lot on the turnover (outside of carpet), this house just took so many hours from us. We painted every wall. I painted some of the trim that had not been previously painted, but it was in rough shape. We also had to repair several walls because they had sticky things to hold shelves up and they didn’t remove it.

  • MISCELLANEOUS THINGS DONE
    • Replaced the dryer door handle (that had actually broken off before they moved in, and I thought this was an insurmountable task to fix/replace… well, it was a $6 plastic piece off Amazon that popped right in. Welp.)
    • Replaced window screens that were worn away and in disrepair.
    • Cleaned out all the air filter areas for the HVAC.
    • Replaced all the rusted and broken floor vent covers.
    • Installed a doorbell because they installed a Ring, took it with them, and didn’t put the old one back in.
    • Replaced the cabinet knobs (it appeared someone had spray painted over the original 90s brass with something to mimic a stainless steal look, and they were all worn and chipped).
    • Wiped down the cabinets and walls to get them to be less sticky. Wiped down all the doors, light switches, and outlets because they were so gross.
    • Replaced the broken light in a stairwell that they broke on their move in (and reported).
    • Repaired some ceiling areas that were damaged due to a roof leak before the HOA replaced the roof.
    • Replaced a shower curtain rod that they took with them instead of leaving behind.
    • Painted the front door. It looked like someone had taken steel wool to it to clean it.

LISTING TIMELINE

We got the property to “good enough” stage so we could get it listed. There was still things to get done, but we didn’t want to wait until it was perfect and lose interest as we got further into the school year under way.

We listed the property at the end of August for $1,400. I thought we were golden. The location of this property is excellent, and it’s on a bus route that takes you downtown and to the outskirts of the city for shopping. There were two other listings for $1,500. It didn’t move. I didn’t even get productive bites.

I dropped the price to $1,350 two weeks later. I did show it a few times. I was happy that when I made appointments, people actually showed up, but they didn’t qualify. Mr. ODA hosted an open house and had one person come through. That one person was our person though. I removed the listing two days after the open house and we have it rented at $1,350.

I offered her $1,325 for an 18 month lease or $1,350 for a lease through June 30th so I could get back on a Spring schedule. She agreed to the shorter timeframe. She was looking for a quick move because her landlord was selling her place. Our house seems too big for her needs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she leaves at the end of June and we need to find a new tenant.

SUMMARY

We knew a September listing was going to be tough, but I didn’t expect it to be that tough. When we had a property managing on this place, they always took 5-6 weeks to get it rented and it drove me crazy. At least 3 weeks from start to finish isn’t terrible, but I’m definitely used to it moving faster. It’s also nice that had my tenants stayed, we’d be getting $1,275, and now we’re getting $1,350. Thus far, this lady hasn’t asked for much. We struggled with the utilities getting into her name. For some reason, the utility companies credited my accounts and billed it directly to her, so I didn’t even need to work on capturing that money from her, which was nice.

New Car Financial Decisions

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There was a time where we liked the idea of purchasing a new car, but we’ve since come around to buying a 2-3 year old car. We don’t eat that initial drop in value by driving it off the lot, and we can find a car that has mostly what we want for the right value. The point I want to make in this post is how we paid for the car and why, but the entire history of the purchase and thought process is detailed beyond that section, if you’re interested.

FINANCIAL DECISION

Once we decided on the van, we needed to figure out the price (more details are below). They offered $1,000 off the price if you financed, so we agreed to that. With our trade in value, taxes and fees adjusted, and the negotiation of work to be done, the net came to $9,000. The minimum to finance was $7,500. So instead of throwing the full $9,000 into the loan, we asked to put $1,500 on the credit card and finance the $7,500. By putting the $1,500 on the credit card, we made $30 in rewards.

The financing was 6.99% and we chose the option that allowed pay off after 4 payments. There was an origination fee of $175, which is rolled into the principle. Our payment is $151.94. The first 4 payments hold $175.07 worth of interest. So we will pay $175.07 of interest and the $175 origination fee as a means of taking $1,000 off the list price. That nets us, including the $30 of credit card rewards, $679.96 less on the list price. After the 4th payment is made in May, we’ll make a lump sum payment of about $7,134 to pay off the loan.

MINIVAN HISTORY

In 2020, we purchased a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica. It met so many of my wishlist items, and a dear friend of mine put a lot of effort into finding just what we wanted. Well, there were some things wrong with the sliding door, the steering wheel would get sticky at “10” and “2,” and there were a couple of small defects with the stow and go seating. The sticky steering wheel was a known issue, but we didn’t want to pay to fix it because they wouldn’t create a recall (for the record, it was pretty sticky… where I’d have to jerk the wheel to get it to move again).

In February 2023, with a 2 month old child in tow, we went to Ohio to look at another van. It was a red 2020 Pacifica. I didn’t love the red, but it came with an 8th seat and had a bunch of upgrades (heated seat) we didn’t have in the 2017 version. I have a clear memory of the car doing a little skip as we got on the highway multiple years ago, and ever since then, we’ve been watching some things with the engine. The car never had the ‘check engine’ light come on, but something wasn’t working smoothly in there. Mr. ODA mentioned a desire to get a new van, so we went looking.

He found several options nearby and we went out for test drives. Actually, we planned to do a lot of test drives, but it was a Sunday. Apparently car dealerships are closed on Sundays, and I had no idea.

First we tried driving other makes and models, but it’s hard to beat the value of the Pacifica. The other vans seem to be trying really hard to be fancy to compensate the stigma of being a minivan, but I’m not here for that. A van is extremely spacious and practical. I’m in a completely functional phase of life with 3 little kids and a dog.

PACIFICA TEST DRIVE #1

The first thing to note is that we went to two places and both places had the salesman drive with us in the van. I really thought covid killed that for us!

We went to the first one right in town. It was a silver van, and I don’t love that color. I thought I could live with that red van, but for 3 years it drove me crazy. When we got to it, it wasn’t so bad. It’s a really light silver. There were some broken things, and right off the bat, the salesman was gaslighting me that it wasn’t broken. Over the drive, I came to learn that he was proudly divorced with no kids. What a great job that the dealership assigned our online inquiry to this guy! He was super condescending about vans and kept cracking jokes about his awesome sports car and how we need one (or that we need a second Tesla). Mr. ODA shared a philosophy on debt, and he assumed he understood our position and wouldn’t let the wise-cracks go. Then to top it off, he handed our 3 year old a noise-making key chain. It took them 20 minutes to get us a quote on the van and our trade in, and I was on the verge of just walking out. The only thing keeping me there was knowing that our next stop was likely going to be a solid van, and I wanted this data point on what they were offering.

They have a required $1500-1800 certified pre-owned fee that’s on the car, and they weren’t willing to remove it. Their value for my car was low, and when I asked why the ‘good’ rating, he gave me some answer on what perfect meant and how no one is perfect. I tried to say, “so there’s nothing between good and perfect?” but people were too busy interrupting me, and I just shut down at that point. For the record, very good is in there, and my van was kept in great shape (outside of a possible transmission concern). They also tried to sell extras all over the quote, and our net was over what I wanted to pay. We got there at 10:40, and I was trying my hardest to run out of there by 11:45. Nothing about that experience should have had us there for over an hour.

PACIFICA TEST DRIVE #2

This vehicle was just under an hour from home. Ironically, this small town dealership was way nicer and the people were easier to deal with. A weird tidbit of us, but we prefer cloth seats over leather seats. The Tesla doesn’t even have a cloth option, so we have been living with the leather for over a year and it’s not so bad. I still would have preferred cloth seats, but there weren’t any on the market this week. After living without heated seats on that first van, that’s been a deal breaker for me. We also couldn’t find any vans with the 8th seat option. The 8th seat doesn’t make a difference to us as a family, but we did use it for guests visiting us fairly often. The possible transmission issue trumped our ability to serve others though.

Mr. ODA didn’t care to drive the first couple we drove, but he must have liked this one because he asked to be the one to drive it back to the dealership. That put me in the passenger seat, where I noted the visor’s clasp was missing. The visors were also swapped with each other (how does someone go about doing that with all the electric in there for the mirrors), and there was a clasp missing for the rear window shades. The outside has a dent on the side and couple of paint chips, so we asked for a paint pen also.

It was listed on their own website for higher than edmunds, but he pointed out that if we finance the vehicle, the final price was lower than edmunds by a little. They were offering $1000 off the list price for financing. We learned that concept on the drive out there. I thought saying, “I’ll hand you cash today” was better all this time. They take the financing because they make money off it. We learned they use a few banks, and one allows it to be paid off after 4 payments and the others require 6 payments before it can be paid off.

The salesman went to the ‘tower’ and got a quote. He didn’t show us. Instead, he pointed out what he purchased the car for, what they listed it at, and that they were already at a $651 loss. Um, I call BS. There’s no way your group made that type of business decision. He went back for the quote. He didn’t push the ‘loss’ concept, but he did keep mentioning it once in a while. I hope he noted we were seeing through the crap there. He was claiming they wouldn’t fix the things wrong because they’re already taking a loss. I said that was fine and we’d leave because I wasn’t about to put the time and effort into replacing a completely broken visor on a new-to-me vehicle. He went to get maintenance to look at the car and provide a quote. To their detriment, the tech put the quote on the salesman’s desk with just us in the room so we saw that the 3 things we asked for would cost under $100. Honestly, I’m wondering why they wouldn’t just go ahead and repair the visor. That’s a glaring thing that a drive would see daily, so why not just fix it so it doesn’t become a negotiation point of me, the potential buyer?

He came back with a net cost to us around $9,500. He said they’d take $200 off to fix those things. Mr. ODA said, “make the net $9,000, and we’ll take it.” And so, that happened. We walked in the dealership at 12:38 and had an agreed upon price at 2:30. We didn’t leave until 5:04. I was livid. The salesman said he could have us out of there in 45 minutes, which was a point to us taking the car off the lot that day because they’d have enough time to detail it. The car was detailed and I asked to look at it. It was not cleaned. All they did was vacuum and wipe down the leather seats. The cup holders and down the side of the walls were dirty and sticky, so I sent it back for more cleaning.

At about 4:30, I made a scene that I would have paid the $1000 to get out of there without waiting on financing for over 2 hours. At 4:40, we were taken into the financing office where he flew threw signatures and paperwork, apologized that there were 4 closings at the same time, and we were handed our key at 4:52. Since we hadn’t planned on actually finalizing a deal, we then had to throw all our stuff from our van into the new van while it was about 30 degrees and 25 mph winds (we had arrived in the sun and 50s!).

SUMMARY

We’ve learned over the years that our needs in vehicles change. Adding kids changed how things move. We drive to NY multiple times a year, plus all the driving we do for trips we take. We put one seat down so there’s room for the dog’s dog bed for trips. All 3 kids are in some sort of car seat or high back booster still. The youngest is annoyingly not independent on his car seat buckling and unbuckling (the other two were absolutely independent by this age). So for now, a van is still our need. By not investing in a brand new car, we don’t feel the need to keep it forever to protect an investment. This allows us the flexibility to switch what we have if we decide we don’t need something anymore (the dog is 13, there will be less car seat needs in a few years). Our trade-in net has been about the same each time, so I’m happy to pay about $3000 per year to own the car (in concept) without paying interest or a dealer for a lease agreement (along with the stress of issues when it’s a lease).

January Financial Update

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I have so much to say. January is a big time where people are willing to talk about finances, so many thoughts enter my mind that I want to squash some preconceived notions. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time.

PERSONAL

At work, I’ve spent this year managing year end things and getting the 2026 processes stood up. I’m supposed to be part time, but I’ve been putting way more hours in because of that process. The guy who was helping me left for another position and was out of the country all last week, so I had to make sure I was extra on top of things. With all those actions going on, I also was pulled into hiring someone to be my assistant (for lack of better term… it’s not assistant as in answering the phone and getting the mail… it’s doing the daily bank reconciliations and those types of tasks so I can focus on policy development). This has taken a significant amount of my time, but hopefully this person will be on board to help in a week.

Our youngest started preschool last month. He only goes 2 days per week, and both are my work days. I’d really like to get to a point where I can actually take advantage of guilt-free, kid-free time.

I have a new years resolution that I’m keeping close to the vest, but one part of it is to walk 10,000 steps per day. I’m failing miserably, but it’s a work in progress. My 7 year old son asks me constantly if I’ve hit my step goal. So…. maybe I’m teaching him it’s ok to fail, but keep trying? His new years resolution is to get better at being his nicest, and that’s just adorable. He also says he wants to learn basketball, and I just can’t bring myself to do that. We are signed up for Spring baseball that should start in March. The youngest has to wait until next Spring, but I can’t wait to see what he can do. I’ll probably also be putting swim lessons back on the docket in the next couple of months. The youngest hasn’t had any lessons. The oldest passed the test for his yellow band, but he needs to have a free style stroke to get the green band. The middle needs confidence; she can absolutely swim, but she likes to pretend she can’t do things.

RENTALS

Last month I reported that at the end of the day on the 5th, I was still missing 25% of the month’s rent. As of 7 am on the 5th, I had only received 30% of rent. Many came through, but there were more than the usual amount that didn’t. For one, I had to manage a grant program from one of the places a tenant lives. The check finally arrived yesterday, but it’s dated December 12th. They mailed to my PO Box, in a town I left in 2020. I didn’t even know my lease had an address on it, but that’s how long these people have been there. The check was returned to them, so my tenant went down there to give them my new address. I don’t love these people having my address, or that they now officially know I don’t live in the same state as them, but I needed to get this check. I gave them the address over her phone and received confirmation she typed it in. Somehow the check was returned to them, so my tenant had to pick up the check and FedEx it to me (I told her she didn’t have to pay that kind of money for that!). I have a tenant that pays twice per month (and pays a premium for that); her second part of rent is due tomorrow, so we’ll see if I can finally be fully paid for this month by the 19th.

I have a tenant who fell into some unfortunate circumstances. Her current plan is to vacate her place by the end of March. She’s lived there since 2019 with a dog and 5 cats, so that place will need all new carpet and a new paint job, but hopefully will be ready for a May 1 rental. Because she’s always paid and I knew her financial circumstances, I’ve been slow to increase her rent. She’s paying $975, but the market rent should easily get at least $1200. The house is in really good shape and is newer. We had people fighting over the other house in that town at $1150, and it’s an older house with only one bathroom.

FINANCES

Well we traded in our van for a newer year, but that’s a story for another post. I also still haven’t fixed my retirement account access from when I got a new phone number, so that’s a made up number.

I’m going to be tracking our spending much closer this year. We’re generally on the same path with our spending, and I know we don’t do anything extravagant. With Mr. ODA’s lack of income, I just want to keep a closer eye on that and pivot if we need to.

Mr. ODA has a more exact approach to figuring out what we can spend per month without dipping into savings. I like my number better (and it’s lower). I took our rental income, deducted rental fixed expenses, deducted our typical bills, and was left with just over $1300 per month. That would go towards food, clothing, gas, etc. If I remove things that are offset by a shop (Mr. ODA is a secret shopper) and the long term investment purchases (i.e., car and windows), we’re at $987 as of the 18th.

NET WORTH

We put $1500 on a credit card and finances $7500 to be able to save $1000. We also put $5500 on credit cards towards windows, which is also another post that’s coming. Our net worth took a hit for both these things. I also wasn’t able to update 3 accounts, so they’re just estimates, but at least our net worth still went up.