We took a trip to Richmond, VA to work on rental properties. It was fairly last minute. I had a schedule of work at each house that I planned. However, I didn’t plan on the heat index being 113 and 112 for the two main days we were there. I was able to get everything on my list done except for staining the new deck at one of the houses. I didn’t want to risk it not applying or curing correctly because it was too hot and in direct sun. Plus, the tenant didn’t even clear it off so I could work on it.
I had multiple houses pay rent late this month. I was surprised. One let us know on the 5th that they had an emergency, so they wouldn’t be able to pay until the 17th. I had someone pay half their rent early in June, but then haven’t received an answer as to why the rest of her balance ($345) hasn’t been paid yet. Another tenant misunderstood her maternity leave pay, so she asked for more time to pay rent. She paid $800 on the 7th. I told her not to worry about it, and just pay when she can, without the late fee; she only has $150 remaining.
I’m currently working through two roof replacements. One of them will be covered by insurance, but then I’ll be paying to have vents added, the chimney torn off and capped, and the soffits repaired on top of what insurance can do. Then the other one we’re paying out of pocket for. It’s original to the house, which was built 24 years ago. There has been storm damage to it over the last year, and it’s just generally time to address the age even though it hasn’t caused any problems yet.
PERSONAL EXPENSES
Our medical insurance company had some glitches in their claim processing through the first half of the year. Now they’ve caught up, meaning I’m paying large sums of medical bills. Mr. ODA took on booking lodging for his guys trip later this month, which meant that the second half of AirBnB payments were applied to the credit card.
Mr. ODA increased each kid’s UTMA from $75 to $100 per month. That means we’re investing $3,300 each month into accounts, on top of maxing Mr. ODA’s TSP contributions and both of our Roth IRA contributions for the year.
Our contractor has ghosted us on our own deck build. We bought some new furniture for the main deck area. Once it’s not 100 degrees outside, we’ll work on doing the waterproofing of the deck ourselves so that we can start living on the patio under the deck and get that hot tub ordered this fall.
NET WORTH
I updated the valuation of the houses this month. I typically only do that 3 or 4 times per year. I try to account for the big increases we see at the beginning of the spring, and then adjust slightly around this time of year once the comparable houses have closed and sold. This update added $140k worth of equity into the equation. All of our liabilities decreased since last month, and all our assets increased since last month. That has equated to an increase of over $200k in our net worth.
I had this post mostly written by Wednesday, but we traveled earlier this week, and I haven’t kept track of the day very well. This is the first I’ve been able to update our net worth and get this done. Ironic, considering how I started this post when I expected it to be on time. And now..
This past month has been exhausting on me. I knew March was going to be busy. We had a bunch of sports schedules to manage, lots of kids birthday parties, hosting my dad for a long weekend that coincided with 3 family birthdays and the first anniversary of my mom’s passing, an assortment of Easter activities, a trip, and random other events. On top of managing these day-to-day things for our family, our deck replacement started, and we had to work on a massive turnover of a rental property. I’m in a perpetual state of tired these last few weeks.
DECK REPLACEMENT
On July 2nd of last year, a storm blew threw that destroyed our neighborhood. Honestly, we’re surprised by how little actual structure damage there was for our neighborhood because it looked like a war zone with the amount of trees down. A couple of houses had a tree fall on their roof, but only cause minimal damage that resulted in shingle replacement. We appeared to bear the brunt of the worst, which was a tree falling on our deck, crushing our furniture, moving all the supports, and cracking the concrete blow it. Another tree missed falling on one of our cars by centimeters, but that limb ended up cracking our driveway apron. We struggled communicating the extent of the damage with our insurance company, and they eventually realized what was needed and paid out on it five months after the incident. Our construction started on March 18th.
It hasn’t been an easy process. It’s emotionally draining on me because there were communication issues with our contractor that he wasn’t taking responsibility for. Then there were minor issues, but issues nonetheless. For instance, they installed waterproofing so the patio would be a dry area, but they cut through one of the barriers. Instead of realizing that was going to be an issue and fixing it themselves, I had to point it out. Then we went out there while it was raining to check it, only to see that there are 3 spots where water is just pouring through the seams. That just takes a lot out of me to have that conversation. They cracked off the top of our sewer cleanout, which not only made a mess in the yard, also caused a backup into our basement tub and toilet once it was glued back on because of a pressurizing issue (we think).
Then there are those hidden things that take energy, such as managing how to move money out of savings (while not exceeding the maximum of six transfers) and keeping track of all the bills, while ensuring the checking account has the right amount of money to cover the bills paid.
RENTAL PROPERTIES
Everyone paid rent on time! I had two technically pay on the 6th, but I sat waiting to see if it showed up before reaching out that morning. One of our tenants bought a house and vacated as of March 31st. They actually had left the house a little early, which was really helpful to us because the house needed a lot of work. The house had been flipped before we bought it. We knew everything was going to eventually need attention, but we hung on as long as possible. The neighborhood is really nice, so it was time to bring the state of the house up to a better standard. It had been “good enough” all these years, but there were definitely some items that should be replaced. This ended up being a huge overhaul, costing us over $10k. I’ll go into all the details in a future post.
NET WORTH
We’ve made a few substantial payments on the deck. We had been investing the money from the insurance company, while we waited for them to finish their estimates and then while waiting for the contractor to begin. Our taxable investment accounts have decreased a bit from that, and they’ll continue to decrease as this project finishes up in the next 2-3 weeks. The market is lower than it was a month ago, but our house values are starting their upward Spring trend, offsetting some of that loss. Overall, our net worth increased over the last month, but only by about $4,500 instead of the drastic increases we had been seeing month-to-month.
Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. Well, that’s how I think to start every thought I have to share, and it turns into a novel with research and ‘citations.’ Let’s see how this goes. Update: It’s long, there’s a legal citation, and I ‘teach’ math. Sorry. 😛
We have two houses with flat roofs. They’re a pain. They always seem to leak, and no one wants to work on them.
In 2019, we had issues with a house that had an internal ice dam and gutter system, in addition to a flat roof over an extension. Water kept leaking in the kitchen. After two years of issues, we finally had a roofer respond to our request for help on a flat roof. As soon as a roofer hears “flat roof,” they seem to shut down and say they don’t work on flat roofs. Here was the quote.
So we had this work done for $1,900, and we haven’t heard about the roof since.
We have another house where there was a flat roof added to an addition. In 2017, we had a roofer replace the roof. Somewhere, something was lost in translation of the job. We thought he’d address the flat roof and fix it, incorporating it into the main roof line. He finished the job, and it was clear that was not part of the scope as we thought, even though that was the whole reason we called him out. He simply said “I don’t work on flat roofs.” That wasn’t clear when we asked you to give us a quote, and how do you just ignore that there’s another roof line as a roofer?
The more we spent time and money on this roof, the more it came to light what happened. It appears that there was a deck that eventually was covered with a corrugated metal sheet. Then someone decided they wanted a laundry room, so they built a laundry room under this metal sheet. The roof line wasn’t properly insulated from water infiltration. We had several issues of water leaking into the laundry room. Mr. ODA put silicone and caulk along the roofline as a stopgap because roofers weren’t acknowledging us. We thought we had fixed it, and I had put a lot of effort into fixing the wet drywall and repainting the room. After two years, the silicone finally gave way.
Our property manager was able to get 3-4 roofers to come look at the job, but only 2 gave us a quote (why is it a norm to just ghost customers and not have the decency to close the loop and say you don’t want the job?). One of the contractors didn’t appear to understand the job, and that concerned me. He seemed to want to redo the entire roof, and that was definitely not in our finances for this house because we replaced the roof 3 years ago. Then he also suggested a ‘TPO roof’ for the flat roof. I don’t know what that is, and I didn’t like that the explanation to me started with “it’s a flat roof that…” No. I’m done with “flat.” Did I give it a fair chance? No. Do I care? No. I wanted a pitched roof line. This is important for later in the story.
I had several concerns about the other roofer’s estimate, but they were less fundamental (or so I thought). First, I was concerned about the terminology being used as a porch. Perhaps it’s just me, but I call the open-air overhang on the front of the house the porch, and the open-air part attached to the back of the house a deck. I was concerned that the terminology “pitched roof” was not explicit enough to our end goal. I questioned that his removal of the corrugated metal roof would leave the deck exposed, so the gutters would need to be rerouted and added. I also questioned about how he was going to cover the sides once the pitch was created – would it be just painted or would it be sided, and if sided, how would he match it to look right.
I had my property manager call him, I called him, and I emailed him, but I received no response. I was trying to confirm the scope of work. Mr. ODA told me that these contractors are good at their job, but not good at the administrative side, so just let it go. I was an auditor; accurate documentation for a job is important to me. 🙂
Here’s how it was written:
I decided to try to be easy going. There was a space for comments when I accepted the proposal. I added: I’m accepting this estimate based on the verbal agreement with [property manager] that the scope of work is confirmed as removing the flat roof over the DECK and laundry room (not sure ‘porch’ terminology), that the deck won’t be covered again and a lean-to roof will be put over the laundry room, and that all gutter systems will be appropriately rerouted to divert water from the house.
He gave me the quote on June 23rd. I accepted this work on July 5th. He kept delaying us. He would say “I’m going to get the materials today, so we’ll be there tomorrow.” Tomorrow never came. On August 25, he said he was going to 100% start the following Monday and be done by Wednesday. He finally called on Wednesday, and he said, “I got my guys out there today. I decided to do a TPO roof instead.” You’re kidding me, right? He kept pushing that it’s a “better” roof than a pitched roof, and I should be ok with it. Except, I signed a contract. The contract did not say their job was to install a TPO roof. I said that was unacceptable and I wanted a pitched roof. Here’s the picture that I received at that point. It looks really flat to me, and it has the point where it meets the main house still below the roof line (although you probably can’t tell there as well here).
On September 5th, he said they should be out the following day to finish it as a pitched roof. It took until September 11th for us to be told that the roof was done. As you can see, the gutters were not addressed. Luckily he said he’d get right out to fix that, and he did, which was appreciated.
While you can see that there has been a slight pitch added, it is not a sufficient pitch as required for asphalt shingles. Did I know there was a minimum slope requirement for asphalt shingles before September? Nope. But you bet I read up on it and figured it out as fast as I could. Nearly all manufacturers of asphalt shingles have a minimum requirement of a 2:12 slope. On top of that, Virginia Code has the same slope requirement.
This means that for every foot, the rise of the tallest point must be twice that in inches. A 7 foot long distance from the top of the pitch to the outer wall requires a 14 inch rise at the tallest point. That’s the simplest way I’ve been able to describe it.
While the connection point in the second try is above the wall/roof intersection, and it may have been ‘fine,’ I wasn’t here to spend $3,800 on “fine.” He kept pushing that he guarantees his work for 5 years. He also pointed out that a tropical storm was on its way that coming weekend, so it would essentially be a good stress test. So, he was asking me to pay him for a job that was “good enough” and hope that if there was a problem, he’d come back and fix it. No thanks.
He got up on the roof, held up a piece of metal (with no level), and claimed that his zoomed in distance was 2″ off the roof, so it was 2:12. Once I finally got to the point of saying, “what’s the distance from the house?” He said 7′. I said “so the rise has to be double that, so 14″. Is it 14″?” He said no and that he’d fix it. He finally got it done last week. He took pictures along the way to prove that he did the job correctly since I called him on not doing it correctly (or let’s just do the work right to begin with instead of hoping a homeowner won’t question it – where’s integrity these days).
All that was to share that you should do your due diligence when hiring contractors. Don’t assume that they’re going to do the right thing because they’re probably going to assume you’re not well-educated in their field. By no means am I a roofing expert at this point, but I appreciate knowing something new. I just wish I didn’t have to learn things quickly in order to protect my ‘investments.’ So now you also know that there are manufacturer requirements, in addition to your expected state-wide requirements in most fields. Take the time to be educated just enough or have someone you can trust to point out where it went wrong. In this case, I said “that doesn’t look like what I expected,” and I had our handyman look at it. He said the pitch isn’t enough, and that’s where I learned that there are minimum slope requirements. It’s hard because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I appreciated having other trusted people to bounce questions off of.
One Dollar Allowance 