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!

New Credit Cards

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We turned over a rental in April, bought a new house that requires work in June, and turned over another rental in July. Those activities have a lot of expenses associated with it. While we could have strategically spent the money and paid off credit cards, it’s nice to have a cushion. When we’re faced with a lot of large expenses, Mr. ODA searches for a new credit card.

Why do we open a new credit card for big expenses? Because it’s a free short term loan for us. We’re looking for a card that provides an introductory 0% interest period, as well as some other bonus(es). Carrying a balance on a credit card and paying up to 25% interest is a non-starter in our financial portfolio.

Mr. ODA had searched for a new credit card back in the April timeframe, but we had multiple credit hits around that time, and I didn’t want to risk it. We paid off the expenses for the first rental turnover through our regular credit cards. Once we bought our new house and we knew that turning over another rental was looming (with big expenses like carpet replacement), Mr. ODA found a credit card he wanted.

At the last second, Mr. ODA switched which card he wanted. The card gave an introductory offer of $200 back after you spent $1000 within 120 days, up to 5% cash back on two categories you choose, 2% cash back on one everyday category, and 1% on all other purchases. It had 15 months of 0% APR and no annual fee. He received a credit limit of $500. Seriously. He called to get a credit increase and find out why it was so low, but they said they required another credit report pull to talk to him about anything. Nope. So we have this random $500 limit credit card in our portfolio. We’ve spent our $1000 and will get our $200 cash back (unless they find a loophole, which I would expect based on how this company’s relationship has been so far), and then this card will just sit unused until they close it years from now due to inactivity.

Since that was a bust, Mr. ODA opened a different credit card in my name (spread the wealth on credit inquiries). I was granted a $9,000 credit limit, and we got straight to work spending that. There’s no annual fee; it has a 15 month 0% introductory period; and earn 5% cash back on purchases in your top spending category (automatically, without choosing a category) up to the first $500 spent and 1% cash back after that. It gave us $200 cash back after we spent $750 in the first 3 months.

Two of our first few expenses were a vanity for our new master bathroom and 1,000 sf worth of vinyl plank flooring for a rental. Our balance within the first week was over $5,000. As much as I can’t stand to see that balance sitting there, it has helped us move money around. Usually we focus our spending in the categories that each credit card offers with higher rewards, but for these bigger expenses, we’re focused on being able to float them for several months.

We used a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) for the down payment on the new house. Originally, we had been paying down the principal on that, and put $14k towards that over the last month. We then decided we should focus more into buying the dip of the stock the market instead of paying down that account with 4% interest rate (although that’s variable). That’s what we’re currently focusing on, knowing that when we sell our current house, proceeds will pay off the HELOC in a short few months. We currently have about a $1500 cash cushion because we know that we have the HELOC to fall back on. For instance, we’re replacing the driveway and walkways at our new house, and we’ll pull cash out of the HELOC to pay for that (they don’t take credit).

If your credit is in favorable standing and you have large expenses looming (without a need for a new loan/mortgage in the near future), then look for a new credit card. Don’t open any random one. You’re looking for 0% interest for 12-15 months, no annual fee, and the possibility of a reward system (whether it’s an introductory offer related to spending, a cash back incentive for spending, or some form of both).

July Financial Update

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Welp, I haven’t posted in a month. We have been so busy and exhausted.

We bought a house on June 15. That process was not smooth in the week before closing, even through the day of. Our attorney had to come to our house the next day to have us sign other papers. Our lender was great, great, great, until they weren’t at the 11th hour. As always, everything went through, and we have ownership of the house. And that week will be a distant memory soon. But why does the mortgage industry get away with operating this way? I feel like there hasn’t been a single transaction we’ve done where there wasn’t a “where’s my paperwork????” or “why’s this wrong the day before closing???” moment (or my favorite, when we begged for the HUD-1 to review it before closing, and a traveling notary showed up at our house, only for the HUD-1 to be different than the closing disclosure and the numbers to be wrong on both documents).

We used our HELOC on our current house to pay the downpayment and closing costs on the new house, so that was a quick debt addition. We started with a balance of about 86k and have paid it down to 75k. We didn’t necessarily need to take the whole amount from the HELOC, but it was easier to get one cashiers check from the HELOC and immediately pay towards it than to transfer some from the HELOC and do a wire from our checking account.

This new house will be our personal residence, but it requires work. We’ve gutted the master bathroom, and I’ve been painting nearly all my free waking moments. I have the first floor mostly done (including making a ceiling go from navy to white.. ugh) and the kids’ bathroom done.

We opened two new credit cards in the last month, but I’ll get into that in the next post. Just note that our credit card balances are higher than our usual, and will remain that way.

We had opened a checking account for rewards a while back, and the account required $500 of direct deposits each month. It was one more account to manage, and it was no longer serving a purpose, so we finally closed that. Now we just manage two checking accounts.

RENTAL HOUSES

We have a vacant rental house as of June 30th, which I’ll also get into in a future post. The good news is that one of our houses that’s a repeat offender of not paying rent is now out of the picture. We still have one house that never pays on time, but I’ve at least got them paying half the rent by the 5th so that we aren’t constantly floating their mortgage and bills until the last Friday of every month.

We had two rental increases go into effect this month. One was for $20 (good tenants, long term, told us in advance they wanted to renew, but we also needed to cover our cost increases) and another was for $50.

Our property manager in KY hasn’t been easy. We’ve had to do a lot of managing the manager. All of our paperwork says not to charge the 10% fee on contractors. The document that they put in our file says it, and that’s the same document they put the charge on. I keep having to ask for all the documentation. Once I ask, they note the 10%, but it’s not until I ask.

We paid a plumber to fix a shower handle in one of our houses. On June 1st, she texted that it was loose. She didn’t really explain the situation, and I asked her to tighten the screw and let me know. She texted me on July 8th that it didn’t work. Where have you been for a month?! Then she said “let me know when the plumber is coming so I can wake my husband.” Um, you waited 5 weeks to tell me that it’s still broken, I’m not rushing a plumber out there today.

One of our insurance companies dropped us once they found out we don’t live within a certain radius of the houses. We have a property manager, so this rule doesn’t make sense to me. They let us finish out our policies, but they wouldn’t renew. Our agent quoted one company that doubled the cost we had been paying because the roof “may have been last replaced in 2000” (and we couldn’t prove otherwise). I said nope, and I asked another agent to give a quote. Their increased our cost by about $100, but it was better than $300. I executed that at the beginning of this month.

We had an HVAC go out, but luckily it was able to be fixed (for 225) than replaced.

NET WORTH

Well, even though our investments are declining and we took on a lot more debt, our net worth increased by 75k from last month. Truly, I’ve focused on the work we’ve had to do over the last month, and not necessarily on the spending or the market. At some point I’ll need to get through all our expenses and identify how our spending has changed, but perhaps that’s a job for another season while we continue to work on a new house and work towards moving our family in the coming months.

June Financial Update

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We ramped up our travel this month, which has actually led to us canceling a few trips that were planned for this next month. I went to visit my family for my sister’s baby shower, we went on a family trip for a long weekend, and then Mr. ODA was gone all week for work. We’ve done a few local activities, but several of our plans have been cancelled or postponed due to the current gas prices, which are about $4.75. Even Sam’s Club and Costco, which were holding strong in the low 4s, are both at $4.69 right now.

We’re working towards closing on a new house next Wednesday, so that’s been the stressor right now. We had a month and a half for closing, which is literally the longest we’ve ever had, and then yesterday I got asked for tax information. Seriously, what have you been doing for the last month since I signed off on the initial disclosures? We went with an online bank, so that’s been an extra factor in uncertainty through this process.

RENTALS

I served a notice of non-renewal to one of my tenants. Her lease ends on 6/30, and we want her out. It’s the first time in 6 years that we’re so fed up with a tenant that we actually said it’s time to leave. We’ve had issues with tenants in the past, but we’ve just increased their rent as a means of giving them the option to leave, or compensating us for our frustrations associated with them living there. She, of course, didn’t pay rent by the 5th. When I asked her where rent was, along with the balance of outstanding late fees and the current late fee, she said she was trying to secure a place to live, so she wouldn’t be able to “pay towards that” until the 17th. Pay your rent timely OR communicate a need for more time without the landlord having to hunt you down. That will keep a roof over your head so you don’t have to move when you don’t want to, and it’ll also put you in a position where your current landlord can actually provide a referral at a new place.

My other usual suspect, who I told needed to start getting their act together and pay rent before the last Friday of every month, paid half of rent on the 3rd and sent an email saying we won’t get the rest until the last Friday of the month. Progress, I guess.

We had a massive issue with our property manager in Kentucky. The accountant felt he had a little too much power and ran with it. Mr. ODA went to meet with them, where the accountant had to admit his mistake in charging us $900 in front of the owner. As a means of making amends, the owner credited us the management fee they took out of our security deposit. While I understand their thought process that our contract says “10% of income,” and a security deposit gets counted as income for tax purposes, I disagree with them taking a commission out of it. If that’s the case, our security deposits under them should be 10% higher than a month’s worth of rent. A security deposit’s purpose is to reimburse us for our costs to fix a unit that has been unreasonable mangled by a tenant before their departure. In this case, we have $4000 worth of costs. The security deposit was $895. Them taking $89.50 was insult to injury in this case, especially after they took 18 days before taking any action to confirm the place was abandoned. Moving on.

That house that was abandoned ended up getting rented for June 1st. We’re netting about $250 more per month with the higher rent there.

One of our mortgages was going to be paid off in May, which I mentioned last month. I scrambled to find out how to pay the taxes, which wasn’t easy (it’s a different jurisdiction than most of our houses… being in the county instead of the city). I finally got that figured out and paid the taxes at the beginning of the month.

PERSONAL FINANCES

This month we actually had a few “receivables” to expect. We learned that our lender wasn’t requiring an appraisal (we don’t get it), so they were going to refund us the appraisal fee of $525. We had a major issue with Home Depot and getting an appliance delivered, which ended with us going to the store, buying the appliance, putting it in our car, and driving it to the rental. We had to wait for the terrible delivery company to “scan” the not-delivered appliance back into their warehouse, and then we got $600 back. When I registered my kids for preschool, the system glitched and charged an extra $100, so we got that back. I had already registered my oldest at the same school as this year before we learned we’d be moving, and they were kind enough to return my registration fees, so that was $300.

All that to say, stay on top of your finances. Know what you owe so that you know when you’re overcharged. When someone says you’re owed a refund, pay attention that you receive it; we had to follow up on the refund, and it turned out she hadn’t processed it. Don’t be afraid to ask if there’s an option for a refund in some cases. Just those transactions are $1525 worth of money back in our pockets in a month’s time.

SUMMARY

We have work on a rental that’s still outstanding. I don’t expect her to actually be out on June 30th at 5 pm like she’s been instructed. I have our property manager handling the move out (even though she doesn’t manage that property). This way, if she’s not out on the 30th, I haven’t driven 8 hours to find out I can’t do any work on the property.

We plan on doing a lot of work on our new house after close next week. That’ll take up a lot of our free time over the next few months.

The stock market has somewhat rebounded. It’s not back to levels it was once at, but it’s nice to see balances go up instead of down. Our credit cards are down significantly because I am purposely keeping a low balance right before we close on a house (down by paying it off, not down by not spending…). Our funds for closing are coming from our HELOC, so it hasn’t been a stressor to keep a cash balance to go towards our cash-to-close.

Property 1 Turnover

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Building off of my last post about tenant abandonment, here’s what it took to turn over that unit. We rarely have units to turn over in our portfolio. Last year we had 1. This year we expected to have 1, but this abandonment made it 2. To have continued renewals over 13 properties is a blessing.

Usually, we need to clean and paint. Every once in a while, we have more work to do, but it’s rarely a massive undertaking. This one was a massive undertaking.

Our property manager walked through the house and saw that junk was left behind and it was filthy. There should be another word worse than filthy. I’m always surprised at how much damage someone can do to a place they have to eat and sleep in for two years.

This is a 3-story townhouse. The entry level is the garage and a den-type room; then there is a flight of stairs to the main living area of a kitchen, dining area, powder room, and living room; finally, there’s a flight of stairs to two nearly-identical bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. The two masters concept and a garage are benefits, but the two flights of stairs is a downside.

TURNOVER ACTIONS

The property manager had her maintenance staff remove everything left behind. I thought she was going to hire something like Junk Luggers, so I was pleased to see that this cost us less by her using in-house staff. They wiped down the baseboards, but didn’t clean. I was under the impression that it was going to be cleaned before I got there. I was also under the impression that the carpets were going to be cleaned on the 25th.

I was working weekends at the time, so I couldn’t get to the house until the 27th. I didn’t find the need to rush down there because I thought my property manager had action happening. Plus, I’m pregnant, so I didn’t want to be in someone else’s filth for extended periods of time, and I expected it cleaned up before I was scooting along the floors and in tight spaces. Well, I walked in and was so upset. The carpet was disgusting. It looked like someone made lines in the carpet with the steamer tool, but didn’t actually clean anything. Not a single thing was actually cleaned. The kitchen and bathrooms were horrendous. I’ll spare you pictures of what the bathrooms looked like. You can see “steamer” lines in the carpet, as someone had been there, but there was zero effort put into actually cleaning the stains.

I called the property manager, and she agreed to come meet me at the house. She agreed that the carpet cleaning was unacceptable, and I wouldn’t be charged for that. She explained that her guy didn’t have time to clean the place except for wiping baseboards, and they had decided to clean it once at the end. I said that would be fine if the house wasn’t this bad, but there should have been an initial cleaning. She showed me pictures, and even though the baseboards were gross, they had actually been wiped down because they had been even worse.

The property manager called her typically cleaner, and he agreed to get there the next morning. I showed up the next morning to find he was still there working. He said the house was in much worse condition than he was told, and they’d have to leave to go to another job and come back to this house. I wasn’t surprised, but I was very happy to see that everything was cleaned, and that I wasn’t completed grossed out by being there.

DECISION MAKING FOR TURNOVER WORK

There are costs that you just have to deal with in the turnover – junk removal, cleaning, carpet cleaning. Then there are costs that you don’t expect to be on your radar, but are necessary – replace broken floor vents, replace missing outlet covers. Then there are decisions that require more thought. For instance, we haven’t enjoyed this property in our portfolio, and we’re considering selling it. We’d like to recoup some of the costs we’re having to put into it now, but selling it is on our radar for the future. So do we want to clean the carpet, or start replacing the carpet with hard surface flooring to increase our property value for a future sale?

We recently received an updated assessment for our taxes on this property. I happened to look up their comps given. We bought this house for $86k. I noticed that the houses with no updates to it were selling around $110k, while houses with nicer flooring and fixtures were selling up to $130k. My goal was to start preparing for a sale in the future, and we’d have a few steps done instead of having to redo the entire house in a year or so.

The biggest actions I took while looking into the future were:
1) I painted the main floor baseboards white. The baseboards, walls, trim, and doors were originally all painted the same color – an off-white or beige. Over time, we kept the trend going because it made it easier and quicker to turn over the house. While I didn’t paint all the baseboards white, I did it in the main living area and in the stairwells. I painted the interior doors of the main living area (main entry door at the top of the stairs, the laundry room door, and the powder room door) and all their trim white.
2) Repaint all the main walls. At the last turnover, Mr. ODA went into the house and touched up the walls. The paint had gone bad, so the touch ups were very noticeable. I painted everything except one bathroom, half the laundry room, the powder room, and the two bedroom closets. Every other wall surface (including two stairwells…gosh) got painted a gray.
3) We did get a carpet cleaning company to come out and rotovac, which is an incredible process that brings a carpet in rough condition almost completely back to new. It’s truly impressive. They also charged us $159 for this more intense process, while the original company that just made lines in the carpet was going to charge $244 for nothing.
4) Instead of cleaning the main living area carpet, I wanted to replace it with hard surface flooring. We’ve had this house, with the same carpet, since 2016. That’s 6 years of carpeting that has been beat up (understatement) by 3 different tenants. The carpet could even be older than that because it’s what we inherited when we purchased the property. I explained in a recent post all the reasons why we laid LVP and how we accomplished it ourselves.

COSTS OF TURNOVER

I had to supply my property manager with specific costs associated with the work I did, so here’s that, along with the charges they had on our account. Not all of this gets billed to the tenant. For example, the dishwasher and refrigerator were at its useful life and needed replacement, due to no fault of the tenant’s.

While it was hard to get started, seeing the mountain in front of me when I first walked into this house, I do appreciate having done most of the work myself. We spent over 28 hours at the house. I did about half of that by myself. Mr. ODA and his dad helped get some progress on the painting one day, and then Mr. ODA and I worked together on the flooring.

We also have the months of lost rent that were unexpected. With notice, we could have listed and shown the house before the current tenant vacated. We were caught on our heels, and we lost 2 full months of rent. Unfortunately, we truly lost 18 days of progress in those 2 months because our property manager didn’t enter the house to confirm abandonment timely.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

We ended up listing the house on May 6th. They had several showings, but the layout is hard to get rented. One couple submitted an application on a Thursday. When our property manager reached out to them, they never responded. Our property manager had pushed to list the house at $1250. Once that couple ghosted us, I told her to lower it to $1200. Just as I was about to give up and have it lowered, she was able to get another application and a signed lease. Luckily, being that it was May 25th, these people wanted a June 1st rental. We increased our rent by $275/month and only lost 2 months of rent, which is mostly made up by the drastic increase in rental income.

Another silver lining is that we paid off this property’s mortgage multiple years ago. Therefore, we didn’t have the extra “bleeding” of money by having to make two mortgage payments without having the cashflow to offset it.

We don’t expect to see a dime from the old tenant of what we spent to turnover the unit. We didn’t have any issues with him while he lived there, and his abandonment and lack of communication was surprising. Someone who leaves like that, and leaves the house in such poor condition, isn’t going to put forth effort to pay a $3k bill he receives in the mail. It’s in the hands of our property manager at this point and will likely move to collections. We’re just happy to have new renters in the unit and have this one behind us.

Tenant Abandonment

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Most lease agreements state that you’re responsible for the entirety of the lease term, even if you try to leave early. Most landlords are willing to work out an agreement if you have a reason to leave the house early. We’ve let several people out of their leases early to either move out of the area or buy a new home (those are just the reasons we’ve dealt with, not saying those are the only reasons we’d let you out of a lease).

We usually default to two-months worth of rent as a “lease break fee.” You leaving early has increased our projected expenses for the house because turning over a house is expensive and you’re asking us to have more time without rental income. With that said, we’ve also left it at “you pay rent up until we get a new tenant in the house.” I’ve never taken more than a week to get a new tenant set up in a house, but my property managers (through companies, not the individual person we use in Virginia) consistently take 2 months to get a unit rented (I don’t get it!).

Then there are some people who just leave. No notice. No request. They abandon the property and stop communicating. Surprisingly, we’ve dealt with this twice in the last 6 years.

The positive, they’re mostly out of the house, and we can take action to get it re-rented, which is better than them living in the house while not paying rent. The negative, we’ve had no warning of their intent to stop paying rent. Plus, if a tenant is willing to just walk away from a house, s/he may not be leaving it in pristine condition.

ABANDONMENT #1

The first tenant abandonment ended well. In Virginia, if the house is abandoned for 7 days, it automatically returns to the landlord’s possession without the court getting involved.

I received a call from the public school system. They asked me if I was the owner and if so-and-so was living at this address. I truly could not answer. My property manager did the background check and set up the lease. I basically look at the lease to ensure the dates are correct and that all the initials and signatures are in place, but I certainly don’t commit names to memory. I gave the person my property manager’s contact. Connecting the dots, she must have confirmed the name of the tenant and the address because the tenant received notice that his children were no longer allowed to attend a school they were not districted for. This happened years ago. I always thought it was odd that they called in April to verify such a thing, when there was 4-5 weeks of school left. But then I was just telling this story last night, and someone said that if the kids are not causing trouble, they typically look the other way. So perhaps there was an underlying reason for the school system to go digging.

Well anyway, in true logical decision making, he blamed us for getting his kids kicked out of school. If I didn’t know his name, I certainly didn’t know how many kids he had or where he was sending them.

He let us know he was moving out, but he wasn’t cooperative. He said he’d be out by a certain date in May 2017, but he didn’t have everything cleared out. We finally got stern with him. By the end of May, he hadn’t paid what he agreed to, so we filed with the court.

We worked to get the house turned over in the last week of May, and we had new tenants move in on June 1st. We were only out 1 month worth of rent along with the costs of turnover. His security deposit covered a majority of the balance owed, so it wasn’t an immediate hit to our finances.

The court granted us the judgement. The total he owed was $1,074.76. Unfortunately, the judgement just writes the amount owed and whether interest is owed, but it doesn’t give a deadline for payment. The system expects the two parties to work together to make a payment plan. If he doesn’t live up to the payment plan, then we can go to the court and file for another judgement. We received $200 immediately from him, and then agreed to $200 every other Friday for the remaining $875.

He missed the second payment. We sent an email explaining that if he doesn’t reach out, our property manager will go to the court to file, which will then lead to a credit report hit and collections. He eventually started making a few payments, but I should have stuck to my guns and required 4-5 payments. In mid-November, he still had a balance owed of $685, plus 6% interest from the date on the judgement. We eventually got all the money he owed, but it took a year, and it was frustrating to constantly have to track him down and push him to finish the payment plan.

ABANDONMENT #2

The second abandonment just happened. In March, our property manager was tipped off by a neighbor that our tenant was moving out. Our property manager asked if he was moving out, and he denied it. Then he didn’t pay April’s rent, so she continued to follow up, but received no responses. I am not clear why it took until April 12 to decide to post notice to enter the property, and then why she didn’t actually enter the property until April 18, but that’s what happened. That’s 18 days of lost rent and lost productivity for us to turnover the unit. That’s $555 worth of rent that is just lost. We could have been working on cleaning out the house during that time.

Our property manager entered the unit and took pictures. She found that the tenant had left some furniture and garbage behind, but it was clear enough that he left and wasn’t returning. The house was also in bad shape. All the walls required a new coat of paint. The floors were filthy, as if things were spilled all over, never cleaned up, never vacuumed, and he left all the windows open for water to leak in. The kitchen was covered in fruit fly type bugs. The bathrooms were so horrendous that I refused to even be in the house until they got cleaned. It was impressively dirty. I always wonder how people live in such conditions. This is YOUR toilet. Why would you enter this room and think “yes, this is where I want to sit!”

The property management company had their staff remove the pieces of furniture and garbage from the house. Then they wiped down baseboards so that I could start painting. It was so bad when I entered that I had them get a professional cleaner in there before I’d spend much time there. I painted all 3 levels (including two stairwells), except for 1 bathroom and 3 closets. Then we got carpet cleaners in there and some maintenance items taken care of.

It was an extra 3 weeks worth of work that we did ourselves and coordination with contractors to get the house turned over. We lost April’s rent, and then we were set up to lose May’s rent. We didn’t get the house listed until May 6th, and then we didn’t get a confirmed renter until May 25th, for them to start a June 1st lease.

The silver linings here are that we improved the condition of the property over those 3 weeks; we could have lost even more weeks of rent, but we were lucky to find someone that wanted it nearly immediately; we have the unit rented $275 more per month than we had it leased for. Had we kept it rented through the end of the lease, we would have brought in about the same amount for the year that we’re bringing in now with the increase in rent, even though we lose 2 months worth of rent.

The tenant’s final cost, being billed for April, May, and June rent (I don’t know why the management company chose to include June), is $3,868.12. That’s after applying his security deposit to the balance owed. We probably won’t see a dime of that. If a tenant is willing to lie that they’re moving out, and then not respond to anything being sent after that, they’re not willing to work with us on a payment plan. We didn’t have any maintenance issues with the house, and we didn’t think he was unhappy with anything. Granted, I don’t know if our property manager was not responding to issues, but we weren’t aware of any. This house is in Kentucky, so we don’t have a grasp on how the court system works like we do in Virginia.

While it’s stressful and frustrating, eventually you move on. Once the house is re-rented, you start to feel better about the situation. Each day that you’re working on the house and each day there’s no application received for the property, you just keep building anxiety. While the first situation ended well in that we eventually received all our lost money, I don’t expect this second abandonment to end as well. Our long term (or more like 1-2 year short term) plan is to sell this property, so we’ll recoup that in the equity made over the last 6+ years with the house.

Jumping on the I Bond Wagon

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What are I bonds?

Series I savings bonds are a type of bond offered by the US Government, with the intention of hedging against inflation. They provide the purchaser a return that is commensurate with the rate of inflation during the life of the loan. The caveat – this rate adjusts every six months. Between the months of May 2022 and October 2022, these bonds will pay an annualized interest rate of 9.62%. Guaranteed. Depending on what inflation does by October, that rate may go up or down, but as long as you purchase the loan before Halloween, you can enjoy that rate for the first 6 months of ownership. This is because the rate only changes every 6 months and the interest accrued compounds semi-annually.

Some Rules

I bonds must be held for 1 year. Therefore, you need to be sure that money can be made illiquid for that amount of time. Think of it like a Certification of Deposit, or CD, you can buy from a bank; however, in today’s numbers, an I bond has a FAR higher rate of return. If you need to liquidate the I bond before 5 years, you must forfeit the final 3 months of interest from when you sell/cash it (e.g., if you hold it for 18 months, you earn interest for only 15 months). After 5 years, there is no penalty. The bond will earn interest at the prevailing semi-annual rate for 30 years if you don’t cash it out, and after that it wont earn anything. The rate will never go below zero, even if the inflation rate (Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers) does go negative, although is can be 0%.

There’s a minimum purchase amount, which is $25 for electronic purchasing and $50 for paper purchasing. Then there’s a $10,000 individual, annual (calendar year) limit for owning bonds each year for each individual, which covers receiving or giving them as gifts as well. Example, I can buy $20,000 in a year if I’m giving a relative $10,000 of them, but that relative then cannot buy any because they now own that $10,000 I gave them. There is not a limit per household, so spouses can double up.

I bond earnings are subject to federal income tax, but not state.

Calculate the Rate

The I bonds have a fixed rate and a variable inflation interest rate.

The fixed rate is stays the same through the life of the bond. The fixed rate is set each May1st and November 1st, and it applies to all bonds issued in the six months following the date the rate is set. The current rate is 0%.

The variable interest rate is based on the inflation rate. It is calculated twice a year and is based on the Consumer Price Index.

These two rates are then put into a formula to get the “composite rate.” Composite rate = [fixed rate + (2 x semiannual inflation rate) + (fixed rate x semiannual inflation rate)]. This means that currently, it’s [0.0000 + (2 x 0.0481) + (0.0000 x 0.0481)], which equals 9.62%.

Interest is compounded semi-annually.

How to Purchase

Series I bonds are bought through TreasuryDirect.gov after creating an account. This helps ensure legitimacy and provides simplicity for the purchase and ownership of the bonds.

You pay the face value of the bond. For example, you pay $50 for a $50 bond, and then the bond increases in value as it earns interest. For electronic purchases, you can buy any denomination, to the penny, between $25 and $10,000.

You can buy paper Series I bonds if you don’t want to set up an online account or make online purchases. When you file your tax return, include IRS Form 8888. Complete Part 2 to tell the IRS you want to use part (or all) of your refund to purchase paper I bonds. Purchase amounts must be in $50 multiples and you can choose to have any remaining funds delivered to you either by direct deposit or by check. There’s a limit of $5,000 worth of paper bonds. More information can be found on the Treasury Direct website.

I Bonds for Me

A guaranteed return of 9.62% for the first 6 months of ownership is quite enticing. High Yield Savings Accounts and bank-issued CDs are still hovering in the 1-2% interest range, and the most recent year over year inflation report announced for April 2022 was at 8.3%. Given COVID-19 numbers trending upward again, American and global supply chains still struggling, and the effects of trillions of dollars of extra money entering the American economy as bailout for the American public taking a long time to stabilize, I figured the consumer price index numbers that I bond rates are based off wouldn’t be dropping quickly anytime soon.

My logic. Again, a guaranteed return near 10% is phenomenal, even if possibly short term and variable. “Best” case scenario – the rate stays high and the interest keeps compounding for many semi-annual cycles. Granted, this also means that the inflation rate stays high and that isn’t something I’d prefer for my total financial outlook. But Series I bonds are hedges for the effects of inflation. So at least I’m “keeping up” in this section of my portfolio.

The most likely/medium case scenario – control over inflation happens in the next year or two and the rate drops several percentage points, such that it’s a real decision whether to keep a guaranteed return of 4-5% or to cash out the bonds and put that money into other investments. This would also mean that I’d lose 3 months’ worth of that 4-5% interest if this decision happens sooner than the 5 years.

“Worst” case scenario – for THESE bonds at least. Inflation stops and the interest rate on these bonds plummet. I cash out the bond in a year or two and I lose 3 months of interest. But let’s face it, the reason I’m quick to cash out is because the interest rate is low anyway. So I’m not losing much! And then, that also means that the rest of the American economy and my portfolio have been stabilized and things look a little more predictable.

When forecasting any of these three scenarios, I saw a fairly win-win-win situation, so I pulled the trigger on a major purchase of these bonds with some of the discretionary cash Mrs. ODA and I were sitting on as we navigate the craziness in our life right now.

HELOC

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HOME EQUITY LINE OF CREDIT or HELOC

A HELOC is a line of credit secured by the equity in your home. This is different from a loan or mortgage.

What is equity? It’s the appraised value of your home that is not mortgaged. You may have put 20% down when you bought the house, and now you’re looking to tap into that equity along with the principal of the mortgage you’ve paid down. Or perhaps your home value has increased drastically, and you want to utilize the equity.

What is a line of credit? It is a revolving account of credit. This means that when you close on a HELOC, you don’t get a check cut for that amount right then. You need to “draw” on the account, as needed, which is essentially writing checks from that account to either yourself or another entity. As you make principal payments, the amount of principal becomes available again for a future draw, as long as you’re within the draw period of the line of credit.

Do you have to disclose the purpose of the HELOC? There are no parameters on what you can use the money for when you draw it from the HELOC. You may want to pay off a credit card that has a higher interest rate, do home improvements, do other construction projects, medical bills, etc. While you’d want to utilize this for larger purchases, you can draw smaller amounts as long as you draw the minimum required by your terms (e.g., no less than $100). You earn interest from day 1, so this isn’t more beneficial than a credit card that gives you a short-term “loan” for your statement period (you don’t pay interest on a credit card balance that is paid off by the due date).

TYPICAL TERMS

The application process is similar to applying for a mortgage. A bank wants to see your credit report, along with some backup documentation (e.g., tax returns, account statements). We also had to update our homeowners insurance to show the HELOC as a mortgagee.

A HELOC will typically only cover a portion of the equity in your home, depending on the bank’s terms. If your appraisal value is $400,000, and your mortgage balance is $250,000, then the equity in your home is $150,000. While there may be instances where a bank would approve a HELOC for the full amount of $150,000, most are going to approve 80% or 85% of that amount.

There are no closing costs associated with the HELOC. Typically, the bank processing the HELOC will cover the costs associated with the line of credit initiation up front. However, they will require those fees to be paid back to them if the HELOC is closed within a certain period of time (usually 36 months). For our first HELOC, when we closed it within the 36 months, we paid back a prorated amount of the fees (e.g., if the fees were $300, and we closed it after a year, we owed $200). For our current HELOC, if we close it within the 36 months, we’re required to pay back 100% of the fees they covered, not the prorated amount.

A HELOC has a variable interest rate, which may adjust monthly or quarterly based on the lender’s terms. A variable interest rate can adjust up or down. But this is something to be aware of because it’s not like a loan or mortgage that has a fixed rate made known up front. The rate, in our case, is set at the index rate with a margin. However, there’s a floor to the bank’s rate. What does this look like? The index rate is 3.50%. The margin is -1.00%. However, the bank’s floor is 3.00%. Therefore, even though 3.5-1=2.5, the minimum interest rate they’ll lend at is 3.00%. Therefore, our current rate is 3.00%.

There is a “draw period,” which means you can only take funds from the line of credit for a certain period of time (e.g., 10 years). When you do draw from the line of credit, you’re charged interest on the principal balance. During the draw period, you must make the minimum required monthly payments on the account, which is typically the monthly accumulated interest owed, but some banks may require principal payments during this period also. When the draw period is over, it enacts the principal repayment period, meaning you have a certain amount of time (e.g., 10 more years) to repay the principal balance of the HELOC. There is no charge for the HELOC existing though; it can be there and never drawn on.

OUR PROCESS

The most recent HELOC we closed on had a different process than the first. We expressed our interest, and since they already had our documentation on hand from a commercial loan, they didn’t ask for supporting documentation (e.g., account statements). However, for some strange reason, she said she couldn’t use the credit report from our commercial loan, and she had to pull our credit again. At the time we were applying for another mortgage, so the hit on our credit counted as “mortgage shopping,” so we gave up the fight and let it happen.

This company would have given us 100% of the equity available in our home. However, two weeks after initiating the HELOC process, we told them we needed a pre qualification letter for an offer we made on another personal residence. They then told us that since we’re on record as wanting to sell our home, they would only approve 80% of the equity.

The loan officer asked for two references for each of us. There was no information given on what this personal reference had to know about us. We both handed over our people, but they were never contacted, so we won’t know the purpose.

Finally, they asked for our homeowners insurance to show them as a mortgagee on our policy, which I was able to do with one quick phone call to that office.

Typically, the process will include an appraisal. This bank had a valuation system that they used. Based on this woman’s inputs into the system (which were all wrong), she said that she could approve us for $100,000 without paying for a full appraisal. We don’t need more than that, so that was sufficient to us.

We closed the HELOC a month after expressing interest. Our process may have been slower than the typical period it would take because we were fighting the credit pull for a while (not to mention the company we were working with is notoriously slow at responding to inquiries). Mr. ODA expressed our interest in pursuing the HELOC on April 12th. We were cleared to close as of May 11th, but we chose to close on that following Friday. We went to a local bank branch, and a relationship banker went through the documents with us as we signed them.

WHY THE HELOC FOR US?

My general plan was that we’d have a HELOC initiated, so that when we found a new personal residence, we could use the HELOC for the down payment of that house without having to sell our current house first. In the past, we’ve sold our home, went into temporary housing, and then moved into a new home. Granted, all our past home purchases were in a completely different locale than where we were living, but I really didn’t want to manage storage of goods or go into temporary housing with two kids and a dog again.

We initiated the conversation on the HELOC without having any intent to move yet. Not to go into too much detail on this topic, but we need to be residents of this house for two years to avoid paying capital gains. Our 2-year mark isn’t until November, so we weren’t in a rush to move before then. A home with the same floor plan around the block from us sold for $190k more than what we bought this house for less than two years ago, so we expect there to be a hefty chunk going to capital gains if we don’t meet the two year requirement.

I was keeping an eye on the market, but clearly had no plans to move. To me, a regular check on Zillow lets me know what I can get for my money. However, there are some things related to our current personal residence that are concerning, and we had decided that this wouldn’t be a long term location for us. With the market right now, I knew we’d either be paying a higher mortgage than I ever anticipated in life, or I’d be compromising on my wish list. Well, a house that met a lot of our wish list popped up in the area we liked for less than $500k, so we jumped on it. The house needs work, so even though we’ll close on it over the summer, we aren’t in a rush to move into a construction zone.

Once we close on the new house with funds from the HELOC, we’ll start accruing and paying interest on the balance. We’re not required to make principal payments until after the draw period, which is 10 years. When we eventually sell our current home, the proceeds from the sale will pay off the HELOC seamlessly through the closing process.

May Financial Update

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This has been a whirlwind of a month. Our crashing investment accounts have been offset by home values, so we’re still over $3 million net worth. But those investments are very low; it’s the first time I’ve seen a negative in my 12-month performance history for my ‘401k.’

HELOC

A couple of months ago, we were standing outside playing with the kids when a neighbor walked by and introduced themselves. Being that we easily have $150k worth of equity in our house, we started talking about how we should open a Home Equity Line of Credit to be able to float a future purchase. The process was initiated, but not really started, when we made an offer on another house to be our personal residence. More to come on that. But we close on the HELOC today at $100k, which was the maximum she could do as an “administrative authorization” (for lack of a better term, and to pull on my government background), which essentially just meant no appraisal cost.

NEW HOME PURCHASE

We’re about 3 weeks in being under contract on a new house. We’ve submitted all our files to an online bank that we’re using as our loan, and we’ve locked our rate at 4.0% on a 5 ARM. Closing is expected to be 6/15. We’ll need about $75k or 80k out of the HELOC for closing on that.

We found out that our appraisal that was ordered for this house got cancelled. A quick inquiry to our lender and we found out that they decided our credit profile doesn’t need one! They’re going to refund us what we already paid, which was a pleasant surprise.

PART TIME WORK

I worked the weekends in April at the local racetrack. It’s good money and only required 8 days of me actually working. This meet’s experience was slightly different, and I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Fall meet, but I made more than I did in during that meet.

RENTAL UPDATES

We had a tenant abandon a property on April 1st, so that was a lost month of rent that we weren’t expecting. Our finances aren’t in a position that we need that money. It also helps that we don’t have a mortgage on the property. But we still put over $2,000 into the house (including two appliances) and a week’s worth of our time in turning it over since it was left in poor condition. We’ve been fighting Home Depot on getting a dishwasher delivered and installed, and that still isn’t resolved.

We had our usual suspects not pay rent on time. One did manage to pay in full (not the late fee though) by the 7th. The other I finally told that paying on the last Friday of every month is no longer acceptable, and it needs to change. She sent a nice email back, but we still haven’t seen a dime from them this month.

We had one rent increase go into effect; it went from $1025 to $1100. That also increases our property management cost by $7.50 going forward.

We had an insurance company drop us by not renewing us since they found out we moved out of state. We told them we have a property manager, so there is someone available taking care of the houses, but they didn’t care. Luckily, not all insurance companies have such a requirement, and our agent was able to find someone with nearly the same price that accepted a property manager.

We have officially paid off one of the loans that we had with our partner. We had intended to pay the loan off this month, on our terms. Instead, because the balance was about $400, the loan company took it upon themselves to use our escrow and close the account. We were purposely waiting until after escrow paid the taxes due this month, and now we need to scramble and figure out the tax payment.

NET WORTH

SUMMARY

We now commence a very busy time of life. We have several trips planned, we expect to turnover a rental that we’re kindly asking a tenant to vacate, and we have a lot of work we want to do on our new personal residence. Hopefully the turnover of the one house goes smoothly, we get the house that was abandoned in April re-rented, and that there are no more surprises in our rental world. We also had our AC go out in our 18 month old house, so here’s to hoping there are no more surprises in the personal expense world too.

Laying LVP

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We had a tenant abandon a property, and he left it a mess. There was some furniture and garbage left behind. I’d love to know what tenants do that destroys the walls in less than two years. I’d say the dog never went outside based on the carpet stains, but there was a giant pile of grocery bags fulled with poop outside the back door. We hired a carpet cleaner that was available the fastest, and that was a mistake. They basically just came and put lines in the carpet. I was not happy. Not only was their effort the absolute minimum of the task on hand, we had asked for it to be “rotovacced,” and it clearly wasn’t.

Recently, we received an updated assessment from the county, which included the comps they used. We bought the house for about 86k. The comps range from 110k to 130k. The comps at the high end had no carpet and upgraded fixtures. The low end had all original things. Looking to resale value, I wanted to lay Luxury Vinyl Planks (LVP) in the living area instead of replacing the carpet. Since we were nearly a month into unexpected lost revenue, the goal was just to address the main living area that would catch your eye.

WHAT IS LVP?

LVP is vinyl flooring made up of planks instead of being one sheet. It’s a floating floor, which means you don’t glue it or nail it down to the subfloor (e.g., plywood). The boards “click” together. When you get the connection right, the board lays flat on the subfloor.

Ironically, it was hitting the market around 2015/2016, and I declined it in the house we were building. I didn’t realize that it was going to be the “go to” flooring by 2020, and that it would be in our new construction house we bought then.

INSTALLATION TIPS

First, we had to remove the tack strips and staples from the subfloor after the carpet was removed. The floor needs to be mostly level. There was one spot where two pieces of plywood were not level, and it did cause issues with keeping the pieces connected.

Start in a left-most corner of the room, on the longest wall. Our living room is nearly square (13×13.5). The deciding factor on which way to lay the floor was to eliminate cuts against a schluter edge where there’s tile in the kitchen and dining room. When you enter the house, you walk up a flight of stairs, and you see the tile edge right away. Since this was our first time installing flooring, we wanted that edge to look good. The best way to do that was to not put any cut edges against it, but to lay the planks parallel to it.

Stagger the boards and create a random pattern. You don’t want to see a pattern in the flooring (e.g., don’t lay a full board, then a half board, then a full board, to start the rows). You also want to open 3-5 boxes at a time and mix up the boards. Different boxes may have different variations in the coloring, and you don’t want a splotch of a lighter shade of flooring in one section, so it’s best to mix up the boxes.

You’ll have waste. When you plug quantities into Home Depot or Lowes, they typically ask if you want to add 10% for waste. We calculated needing 9-10 boxes, and we opened 12, with 3 full boards left. There was a mishap with one of the boxes, but that probably lost us 4-5 planks, so I think we still would have opened 12 boxes.

Lay the short edge together first. The second board lays under the connection of the first board that’s already on the floor. When you connect the long edge to the board above it, just wiggle it until it lays down flat and you see no seam. Sometimes you need to use a tapping block to get it to fit together better, but when you get the right connection, it’ll literally just fall in place.

To cut a piece to fit at the end of a row, use a utility blade along a straight edge. When you go to snap the board, hold the straight edge in place. Both Mr. ODA and I tried snapping a board without the straight edge, and the board snapped in a different place.

When needing to cut the entire length fo the board, use a circular saw or table saw. It won’t be easy to score and snap because of having less leverage. To cut small areas within a board, such as floor vents, you can use a jig saw. Cutting the board with the circular saw makes a gigantic mess. Think of it like packing material that just explodes on you. However, there is a benefit that it’s not the clingy type of material, and it does sweep up easily.

At the end of each row, cut the board about a quarter inch too short. You’ll need to fit a tool into the crevice to pull it into place. I had been cutting it to fit under the baseboards, but then you can’t get the boards connected. At the end, you add shoe molding or quarter round to cover the cuts.

COST & TIME

The flooring, shoe molding, threshold to cover the carpet to floor transition, and an installation kit cost us about $700. We picked LVP because it comes with a cork type material attached to the back of each plank, and it doesn’t require underlayment.

We picked the LVP instead of getting new carpeting because of resale and because of the cost and time associated with carpet installation. At Home Depot, if you pick in stock carpet, it’s not subject to the free install. If you spend $499 otherwise, you get free installation. We would pick a carpet that is about $1/sf, so we wouldn’t get to the $499 price for free installation.

We arrived at the property at 10:30 am. We had to remove the tack strips and staples. Mr. ODA removed all the tack strips, and I started on the staples. When I got an area clean, he started laying the planks while I kept working on the staples and sweeping. At 2 pm, I will still working on staple removal, and he took a break for a work meeting. I took over laying the boards. We finished laying the floor, installing the quarter round, and caulking the seam between the baseboard and quarter round at 6:10 pm.

There was a big learning curve on how to get the boards to click together most effectively. We could have probably eliminated an hour of work where we were trying to figure things out rather than laying the floor. I also had a big speed bump trying to get the piece at the bottom of the stairs in place (a lot of cuts and having to figure out leveling the board since it couldn’t be butted up against the bottom of the step, which wasn’t level), which was probably a 25 minute delay. With that said, my back was killing me. It’s probably a project that’s better suited to be split over multiple days as a newbie, rather than powering through 8 hours of work.

I asked Mr. ODA if he would do it again (as we both complained about how much our bodies hurt), and he said yes! We just wouldn’t be in such a rush to finish one room in one day in the future, even if it was only about 200 sf.