Month: February 2026

House13 Turnover

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We bought this house in September 2019. Based on the comps in the neighborhood and time of year, I thought listing it for rent over $1000 wouldn’t yield quick results. I had the property manager list it at $975, which would have been easy to get in a Spring market. When it was still sitting 3 weeks later, we dropped it to $875. It took another 2 weeks to get it rented. Honestly, I blame the property manager. I have yet to find a company-driven property manager rent a unit of mine in less than 6 weeks, where I’ve had mine rented myself in a matter of one-two weeks (with a recent exception tha took 3 weeks). There were some concessions we gave to make it happen (no payment until November 1st), and the tenant would pay half of rent the month before it was due and the other half on the first. There were numerous errors made on executing the lease by the property manager, and I don’t believe the tenant was vetted correctly, so I eventually took over management.

There were a couple of rent increases along the way, to where she was paying $975 per month as the lease expired. She lived there for a couple of months shy of 6 years. Going into the final walk through, we were leaning towards selling the house. But we had people hunt us down (either on the street, finding my phone number, or through Facebook) to tell us they wanted to rent it. It was crazy. This outdated house with street parking and only one bathroom. Your neighbor has a whole kitchen in his front yard. It was really hard to understand.

MAINTENANCE HISTORY

In 6 years, we spent less than $5k on maintenance on the house. She was really slow to report issues. We did a few plumbing fixes over the years, replaced the back deck that was basically in shambles, and replaced the roof through an insurance claim. The insurance claim also yielded us being dropped by that company because there was a trampoline in the backyard. I had to threaten the tenant with that removal for about a month, but it eventually was taken away.

When Mr. ODA would go there, he would note things that looked like a temper caused damage (the handle on the screen door was snapped), but it’s hard to point that finger. There were red flags all over the place, but I didn’t know the extent of the issues until a neighbor got our attention on a drive by check. I knew they weren’t the best tenants and that there were surely issues they weren’t reporting, but it’s hard to get a true gauge when you don’t see the day-to-day activities. Apparently the cops had been called multiple times for fights in the street and there were rumors that she was having her fun with the married neighbor.

She had people living there who weren’t on the lease, so that really yielded no reporting of issues. The neighbors claimed that she had moved to Ohio in May of 2024 and had her adult kid and her friends living there. When we weren’t the one to vet her or know her for the first several years, it’s so hard to then develop that relationship with a tenant. Rent was always paid on time, and we were there to at least see it was still standing a couple of times per year.

THE TURNOVER

She said they’d be out on July 22nd. We drove by on the 21st and saw that their vacancy was to just throw all their trash on the front yard. It ended up taking me 2 hours to sort through, get into bags, and either get it to the side of the house for a future available trash can or into a trash can at the curb (which was ironically empty and very clean). A neighbor was listing their house later that week, and their Realtor found out my phone number, and she called me to ask if I’d have it cleaned up for their listing pictures (she assured the owner that our house wouldn’t be in any pictures).

Surprisingly, we only spent about $1700 on repairs (outside of the fridge). It took a lot of our time though.

We showed up to work one day and I was hearing a weird sound in the back bedroom. It turned out that the water heater supply line was busted and there were several inches of water in the crawl space. The city actually called us to let us know (once we turned it off) that it had been running since midnight. They had Mr. ODA bring in the receipt to show it was fixed and knocked the $500 bill in half, so that was pretty sweet.

We had to replace the refrigerator because that was disgusting. The gasket around the door was sliced like someone just needed something for their utility knife to do. A tray and drawer were missing. That was $530.

There were random jobs that needed to be done, like replacing the sink sprayer, replacing broken light fixtures, replacing shower tiles that they had put mosaic tile in with caulk (why?), installed tracks for the bifold closet doors (where did they go?), fixing a stair tread that was broken.

One of our bigger concerns was the smell of urine. We spent weeks trying to get the house to not smell. It was bad in the bathroom, so Mr. ODA replaced the wax ring on the toilet. It was bad under the stairs (we think they kept a dog kenneled there), so we spent weeks laying baking soda, sucking it up, laying more, etc. We hung Arm and Hammer air cleaners. By the end, it didn’t hit you like a ton of bricks when you walked in the door, but I’m not sure we were 100% successful if you went looking for the scent.

FLOORING
The house has painted floors. The tenant must have been annoyed by the paint being scratched up because of her dogs, so she laid luxury vinyl plank. It was one of the worst jobs I’ve seen. She was really proud of it and was concerned about getting her security deposit back, so she kept pointing out that she laid the floor on her own dime. I kept pointing out she didn’t have approval to do that. It’s one thing to lay the floor that would just be labor to get it up, but instead of moving furniture to lay it, they just used their black caulk to cover the edge. Well, in many places except here, where this was apparently a worthy job.

And the floors are basically the subfloor also, but we couldn’t lay flooring over it because then the doors wouldn’t work, but we couldn’t shave down the exterior door because then it would be drafty. We decided to go with deck paint on the floors. They looked great, but they’re not going to hold up. We also painted all the walls and a few of the ceilings. The house was so dirty and not taken care of. The walls had a lot of tape and holes in them, so there was a lot of patching that needed to be done before painting even took place.

PAINTING
Someone painted the bathroom black, so I used some of my left over navy to repaint that room. I had to paint the ceiling in there because of water splatter marks and their inability to actually paint a room correctly, so the black wall paint was all over the ceiling. Someone also painted 85% of the trim in the living room black, so that was quite a few coats of white trim paint.

One of the bedrooms was painted wood paneling, so that took a lot of effort to get painted. All of the doors needed to be painted and nearly all the trim had to be painted because of their abnormal wear and tear.

DOORS
The biggest expense was the back door. Over the years, people had shimmed the door jamb and hinges. There was no coming back from that. We hired someone to replace the whole door. It turned out the door wasn’t a standard size, being about a foot shorter than normal, so it was a whole fiasco. That cost us over $1000.

We also had to replace the bathroom door because it was destroyed. We patched up the other doors that were also broken because of that temper I mentioned earlier.

EXTERIOR
When the original tenant lived there, she cared a lot about the outside. She put effort into a garden and even made a koi pond (absolutely against the lease). But a garden left unattended becomes an eyesore. We had to pull weeds and bushes, and it made a big difference to how the house looked. We also had to spray down the porch and paint that. That’s not something we really wanted to spend time or money on, but it’s the first thing you see when you walk in, so it had to be done.

THE LISTING

The house was vacant for a total of 67 days, but that was mostly because of the work we had to do to it. We listed it on the 20th, showed it to several people, and had the listing removed on the 23rd. We got it rented at $1,150. Mr. ODA wanted to go higher, but I was worried about the time of year and all the loss we had already taken on it. We probably could have gone higher. At least so far the tenant has been great.

The living room was my favorite transformation. This picture doesn’t truly capture the time that went into this room, but the end result is adorable. That wood feature wall was another thing the original tenant did without approval, but it’s not in terrible shape at least.

Organization Tips

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About once a year, I have an urge to share some tips. I’m blessed/cursed with the ability to see how to organize things and tasks in my day, which doesn’t come naturally to everyone. The cursed side is that I have 4 other people living in the house with me, and their desire for things to work efficiently doesn’t match my desire. As the end of the year approaches, and new years resolutions start to be made, here are some things I think about when I’m managing my house.

ONE LAYER ORGANIZATION

To the fullest extent possible, I’m going to put things one layer deep. I’m looking to take one action rather than multiple steps for small tasks. Like I mentioned with the milk, I’m going to make sure I’m able to grab the most used things with my free hand. I’m also not going to lay things on top of other things because that means I need to move those items out of my way to get what I need. I’m willing to go one layer deep. That means I want to grab something with one hand to reach the thing I’m looking for. I don’t want to move several things to get to the one thing I need.

I’m thinking multiple steps ahead in the decision today. Here are some examples of what I mean by that.

  • Milk is something that’s used daily in the house. So I put it at the front of the fridge. I just need to open the right door and grab the milk handle with my left hand. If I need to open the door, move things out of the way (possibly even set something on the counter), and then grab the milk, that’s an inconvenience that isn’t necessary when milk is a frequently used item.
  • Two kids were on medication, so we had a lot of kids syringes in the silverware basket. I put them into the basket upside down so they don’t collect water and get things wet as I pull them out. I’m thinking several steps ahead in the one action I take.
  • When we get home with groceries, I don’t just put them in the pantry wherever they fit. I take the time to rearrange items so that everything is where it belongs and now strewn about.
  • I rinse out the sink after dishes so that crud doesn’t harden onto the sink and require me to scrub it later.
  • When putting something away, don’t go 90%. I watched someone put shoes in front of the shoe bin instead of in it. Just finish the step if you’re that clsoe. Those ten-percents add up over the day (not to mention the distraction it causes me to see it, do it, and forget what I was first doing).

SWEEP CLEANING

Now, even though I mention putting those shoes fully away, I do have a caveat. My overall cleaning process doesn’t mean that I’m going to take an item and put it exactly where it belongs immediately. I’ve seen reels online about how people had a life changing feeling because they put something immediately away instead of putting it on a surface to move/touch a second time. I don’t agree. If you have a kid’s headband that belongs in her room upstairs, then taking that one item from the first floor to her room is time consuming. I like to sweep rooms. This isn’t for when you get home with something and need to put that one thing away; this is meant as a mid-day and end of day straightening up.

When I’m doing a full clean, I’m going to take the kitchen things that are in the living room and place them on the counter in the kitchen. I’m not going to put them where they belong in the kitchen; I’m just focusing on cleaning the living room. If something belongs upstairs, I place them on the stairs. I don’t take a dish and put it right in the dishwasher. I gather all the dishes and put them on the counter to load the dishwasher once. I follow this process through the whole house. If it’s something that I can easily put right away, I will. But after years of cleaning up after my family, I know that I’m going to find more than one thing in the living room that actually belongs upstairs, so I’ll create a pile to bring up when it’s time to move that direction.

REDUCE

The other main part of organization is just to have less stuff. Right before Christmas, I was tired of cleaning up after the kids when they play in the basement. Most of their toys (outside of crafts and board games) are in the basement. They’d dump bins to look for something or to play with things (it really wasn’t ever just to dump for the sake of dumping), but they wouldn’t pick things up. I finally went through and got rid of all the little trinkets. I used to hold onto things that I thought mattered to them, but I got to the point where having things is a privilege. If they couldn’t keep up with cleaning and keeping their pieces of items together, then it shouldn’t be here. I eliminated toys that were missing pieces or broken, and I got rid of all the trinket type things (think McD’s toys). Cleaning up is much easier and faster now because there are less pieces, so I can create piles of where things need to move to and get them put away without having to make many trips around the room.

SYSTEMS AND SCHEDULES

I have a few goals that I’ve set for myself. Now that I’m working part time, my free time is less and the kids want more of me. I discovered that my life is easier if I made a plan for cleaning. For instance, I used to vacuum every other day. That’s just not practical anymore. Now I look to vacuum twice per week, but that doesn’t prohibit me from vacuuming if there’s a mess made at the table. More specifically, I made Saturdays bathroom day. I learned that if I didn’t clean the bathrooms every Saturday, then I’d start noticing that it was dirty mid-week, when I didn’t really have the time to be dedicating to the bathroom. So I made it a priority to clean all the bathrooms at the beginning of the weekend. When I was working in DC, I had a friend tell me something similar about her cleaning schedule and I thought that was crazy. Three kids later, and it all makes sense now.

I also have a goal that we go into the school week with all the laundry done. While Mr. ODA does a load or two of laundry during the week, I strive to do a final load and clear our all the hampers before the week starts. Sometimes I get it into the dryer, but it sits in the dryer until the next load needs room in there. Sometimes I’m feeling really on top of things and I make it a priority to get it washed, dried, folded, and put away before the kids’ Sunday night bed time. It creates less stress and I hear fewer “is my shirt clean that I want to wear” type questions to eliminate that disappointment.

Frankly, I could add more things into this type of schedule, but I’m still learning the concept of juggling between work, school, home, and kids attention needs.

SUMMARY

Create a system that works for you. These are things that make my life easier, and I find it more straightforward and faster to clean up after my family of 5 with these thought processes. If you create a system and do a house reset each night, it doesn’t become an overwhelming task to tidy and clean when it’s actually necessary. It also eliminates the distraction of the mess, and it doesn’t create the anxiety and stress if someone shows up unexpectedly or you need to prepare for company.

February Financial Update

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Before I get into an update, I have a quick perspective moment. Our preschool has a 3.5% processing fee to pay monthly tuition online. Tuition is $265, so the processing fee comes to $9.27. If I paid it online instead of writing a check each month, that would be an extra $83.43 I paid for basically nothing. For perspective, I spent $82 on a grocery run of essentials (e.g., dog food, paper towels, milk, eggs, etc).

RENTALS

I had to give notice to one household by 1/31 if I were to raise rent. Their lease ends 3/31, and that will mark 3 years with me. I was panicking because it’s our most expensive house (it’s also our nicest and biggest, and it’s fairly close to downtown). Rent has been $1750 for the last 4 years. Last year I missed the notification to raise it because a January deadline surprised me, but this year I put it on my calendar for January 1st to do. And then I dragged that calendar reminder through the whole month, only needing to then set an alarm to make sure I did it at 8pm on the 31st. I raised it to $1800 and they accepted within the hour. Phew. They’ve been late three times in 4 years and clearly communicated what was happening each time. We’ve had two major issues at the house that they rolled up their sleeves and helped mitigate the damage before the tech could get out there. They’re just really great tenants.

I had two tenants pay rent before the 1st and one partially pay before. That was surprising since the last two months I’ve had very late payments come through. I still have one person with a partial payment outstanding as of this morning.

We had a water heater go out on Thursday in one property, but otherwise I’m counting all my blessings that we made it through 2 weeks of below freezing without incident.

PERSONAL

I’ve preached monitoring your spending by writing it down for years, but I hadn’t done it. I had done it a few times retroactively, but I never made the time to keep on top of it to make pivots. With Mr. ODA leaving his career, that’s a high six-figure income that we’re without now. I’m working part time, but that’s basically a one-to-one ratio of income to health insurance. I’ve calculated that we need to be about $1350 per month in spending outside of the mandatory bills (e.g., mortgages, utilities, tuition, insurance). My threshold is lower than what Mr. ODA said is his threshold, so this isn’t a hard-and-fast amount, but one that is my “I feel OK if we’re close to this number” concept.

We screwed that up a good bit by purchasing a new vehicle and putting new tires on said vehicle immediately. We also had to pay for a previous heating issue fix in our house and a downpayment on new windows (which, quick side note, are glaringly needed as we go through 2 weeks of single digits and can feel the drafts). I’m also not counting the things that we do as mystery shops since those are effectively reimbursed (sometimes our cost isn’t fully covered since it’s a whole family outing and not a single person, but I’m not drilling down in that detail since I don’t have the specific break down of how Mr. ODA is getting paid). If I take those things out and remove expenses for rentals, then we spent $1597 in January.

This isn’t the best representation of our spending, but I’ll develop this information as I have comparisons month over month. I also can’t seem to pick a better color scheme without it being a very manual process. Grocery, Entertainment, and Food are our biggest slices there. The entertainment category is basically why I gave up categorizing things years ago. Here I put things like going out for a drink, because while it’s at a restaurant or bar, the sole purpose was to have a drink and hang out. It also includes going to a gymnastics meet with my daughter, my fitbit purchase (I guess because I’m counting it as extra spending and not a necessity), and gift giving costs. We spent $528 on groceries this month, which feels low. I pushed really hard to clear out the food we have in the house already during our 2 weeks of being snowed in, but I hope that this is an accurate representation of monthly spending on groceries.

NET WORTH

It is higher than last month, so that’s good. Credit cards are carrying $4500 worth of windows, so it’s nice how low of a balance those are outside of that 0% interest balance we’re holding onto. Our investments struggled a bit over the past month, but the payments on mortgages and loans helped offset that.

Intentional Spending

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WE CANT AFFORD ICE CREAM

Several months ago, we went on vacation. While there, we got the kids ice cream from McDonald’s. It was $1.79 each. They had been given multiple “treats” during the day (not of the food variety, but riding the carousel and train at the zoo), and I didn’t see it necessary to spend $10-14 on ice cream after a big day. But it was something that would bring them joy, and it would be a surprise since it’s not a regular occurrence.

Our financial advisor told us that he has a saying in his family, “we can’t afford ice cream.” The statement isn’t meant as a literal statement of “we can’t spend $5 on ice cream because then we won’t be able to pay our necessities.” The statement is meant as a frame of mind. It’s meant to teach an understanding that you need to prioritize your spending and have the big picture in mind.

Treating our kids to the occasional ice cream is ok. Giving them the ability to know that ice cream is not going to happen all the time, but we can get it once in a while shows that we have to prioritize our spending and determine where this ice cream splurge fits in our budget and long term goals.

That comes across with a much higher sense of philosophy than I intend for this example, but the general concept is there. We take the time to determine whether spending money on something is valuable to us and worth the cost.

THE STARBUCKS / CONVENIENCE PAIN

So many people knock the concept of buying or not buying a Starbucks. I see things said all the time like, “I didn’t buy my daily coffee this week, so I’m practically a millionaire.” That density is keeping you in your poor mentality. You think that not purchasing a coffee and getting the instant gratification should yield the instant gratification of wealth. Instead, the point all along was on your mentality. Do you find it a priority to spend $6-8 on a coffee routinely? Perhaps that means you’re also thinking you can treat yourself to that new shirt, new shoes. Perhaps that means that you’re also willing to walk into a convenience store, like at the gas station, and buy a soda or an energy drink.

I also think back to a friend who would leave their house to go get a gatorade at the gas station down the road. They once left their house while we were there, bought 3 gatorades, and came home to play a game with us. This was routine. What if you went to the store and bought a case of gatorade? You’d have a cold drink that you want in your fridge on demand, you wouldn’t be taking the time to leave your house, you wouldn’t be spending money on gas, you wouldn’t be adding to the wear and tear on your vehicle (which eventually costs literal money), and you wouldn’t be paying a premium for the same drink.

A quick search tells me I could buy a 28 oz Gatorade for $3.69. I can buy a 12 count of 12 ounce Gatorades at the store for $7.98. In a given sitting, do you really want 28 ounces or can you get by with 12 ounces? Even if you want more and want to drink 2 Gatorades in one sitting, it would cost you $1.26 to have two of them at the ready in your refrigerator.

I recently was behind someone on a drive down a two-lane road. They were going 35 in a 45, in a car that had plastic as the driver side window, half the bumper missing, the passenger mirror missing, and a tail light busted out. They finally got out of my way at the gas station, where I watched them park in a spot and walk into the store.

STOP AND THINK

People don’t think about how that small decision can snowball. You’ve been trained through social media to think that you have “earned” a “treat.” Marketing by these companies tell you that it’s not a big deal to spend your money this way. Be stronger. Think about the decision. Take just one month to physically write down everything you spend. Yes, I mean take a pen and paper, write where you spent money and the amount. Categorize the spending. See if you can find just how much money went somewhere that could have cost you less or was unnecessary. I bet you’ll find at least $100 that was spent unintentionally, and it’s very likely more than that.

The TREAT for yourself is being more financially secure. It’s having the money for the necessities. It’s being ready for an emergency, but still being able to make your mortgage/rent/utility payment.