escrow

September Financial Update

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Whew, we’ve been busy. Son turned 4. Lots of traveling. Kids started school. Managing two houses. Managing the rentals. Being 7 months pregnant.

We’ve been working on our old house to get a lot of the things moved to the new house, while keeping enough there to live. A slow move sounded great in concept, but dragging this out for 3 months now, with another 6-8 weeks to go probably, has been rough. We unload the car, put it in the new house dining room, and then I need to unpack all that and find it a home. Then we come with another dump of things right after I clear that out. It’s been exhausting. Meanwhile, I’ve been painting almost all of the new house, changing out light fixtures, changing out some electrical switches/outlets that were dated, etc. Mr. ODA has started working on the rebuild part of the bathroom renovation, so we happily have gotten all the electrical work that we wanted to do done (we need to hire an electrician to run a line for the dryer), and then got the shower framed. He’s also been working on the yard and landscaping, which is a big project because the original owner of the house put in a lot of landscaping, and then the people who owned the house for about a year before us didn’t maintain any of it.

We’re listing the house this week, and we’re hoping for a reasonable offer ASAP and a closing at the beginning of November. That closing will pay off our mortgage (~$265k) and our HELOC (~$82k).

RENTAL PROPERTIES

October brings a lot of rental bills. KY’s property taxes are due in October and November, and none of the houses we have here are escrowed, so I need to plan on about $6,500 outlay. Right now, we have a HELOC on our last primary residence, so I have that to fall back on. Typically, I project out 2 months of expenses, and I know how much I have “left over.” The “left over” usually is paid towards a mortgage or, currently, our HELOC balance; in the Fall, I plan to have that “left over” go towards the taxes. Luckily, our houses in Virginia that aren’t escrowed have the tax payments due half in December and half in June.

While our credit card balances are high (we’re carrying a large balance on one that’s 0% interest), we didn’t have a lot of expenses this past month. Mr. ODA’s work trip hotels and restaurants are on the credit cards that will get paid this week, and we’ve had higher gas expenses because of my driving to/from NY and then capitalizing on Kroger incentives so filled up one car. Other than that, we’ve only eaten at restaurants sporadically and have been focused on getting projects done, so haven’t gone out much.

This is the first month of the newly executed lease with a tenant who paid late every month. Their rent total increased for the convenience of paying twice a month (although the total owed now is still less than their rent and late fee they had been paying). They paid the first half on time, and they haven’t paid the second half, which if it’s not paid by the end of today will incur a late fee. Rent was $1450, so they were paying $1595 every month. Rent is now $750 twice a month. If they pay on time, it’s $1500 per month. If they pay half late, then it’s now $1575 per month.

I submitted the security deposit charges to the tenant that moved out. She asked a question about the charges on the list, but then didn’t acknowledge by the deadline. We need to have our property manager file the charges in court. Somehow it’s the 19th of the month, and we haven’t pursued that yet because we’ve been so busy.

Other than that, we didn’t have any service calls on any of the houses, and everyone else has paid their rent.

NET WORTH

We have a busy October planned. I hope we’ll finish the projects at the new house and be close to closing the chapter of our last house. Our investments have declined significantly (almost $91k!) from last month. Our cash is higher than usual because of the cycle timing for this update compared to the bill due dates. And finally, the credit cards are higher than usual, and they’re higher than last month, but that’s because we’re purposely carrying a balance on a 0% interest card. So while our overall net worth has decreased over $33k since last month, the stock market issues have been offset by paying down mortgages and increased property values.

April Financial Update

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The market has recovered a good bit, so our net worth jumped. Our retirement accounts were at an intriguing low, but they’re back on track now. We also saw a few sales in the neighborhoods where our rentals are, so that increased our net worth based on the comps. We added a new property over the course of the last month as well.

NEW HOUSE IN OUR PORTFOLIO

We closed on a new house on March 24th. We worked on it for a few days, I held an open house, and we were able to get it rented as of April 8th. We had 16 days of vacancy. While showing it, most people were looking for a May or June start date, so we were lucky someone qualified for an April date. Back in 2016-2019, we were looking to follow the “1% Rule.” That means that if you buy a house for $100,000, your goal is to set rent at least $1,000 per month. This house isn’t even close. This market doesn’t allow for such a goal anymore because housing prices are soaring. The next goal would be to list for about $1/square foot. This house is 2100 square feet, but since the upstairs has smallish rooms and the basement is all open, we thought it wasn’t really worth pushing for $1/sf.

We bought it for $240k net, and ended up renting it at $1750. I wanted $1800, Mr. ODA wanted $1695, and when I went to list it, Zillow suggested $1750, so we went with that. Multiple people commented on how they appreciated the price, so we may have been able to get $1800 without an issue. I’m happy to have it rented, and I think these people are going to take good care of the house.

RENTALS

We put more money towards the house that we’ve been paying off, which is owned with a partner. We put our half towards it ($8,500), and it has a balance of about $600 now. The pay off quote required us to pay the anticipated taxes that will be paid out of escrow in May. We didn’t appreciate that, so we just went ahead and paid it down. We’ll let the May mortgage payment go through, wait for the taxes to get paid out of escrow in mid-May, and then pay it off. That’ll make 7 houses that are owned outright! But that also means I need to stay on top of insurance and tax payments.

We were just informed that one of our properties in Lexington that’s under a property manager hasn’t paid rent. She said it’s unlike them and that they aren’t even responding. She’s going to go to the house tomorrow to check on the situation. Since we’re paid a month after rent is received, this hasn’t affected us. A neighbor reported that they were moving out last month, but the tenant denied it. Perhaps they abandoned the property.

Once again, our two usual suspects didn’t pay rent on time. However, both of them actually made a better effort than they have been. One has paid this month’s rent in full, but has a balance of $286.31 (seriously…) to make up several late fees. I’m happy to waive late fees when it’s someone who communicates and isn’t always a fight to collect rent, but I’m holding this one to the balance owed. Another one told me that they wouldn’t pay until the last Friday of the month. I drafted an email to tell them that this is unacceptable because it’s been several months that they’re paying this late, and we need to work towards getting back to paying rent at the beginning of the month. Right after I drafted that, she sent half of this month’s rent. Better than nothing!

SPENDING CHANGES

Over the past month, we didn’t go out to restaurants very much. We haven’t been traveling because my family came into town for our daughter’s birthday party, and then I’ve been working on the weekend. Most of our spending went to gas (going back and forth to Lexington (half hour drive) multiple times per week!) and expenses to get the new house ready for a tenant.

I’m flying to my sister’s baby shower next month, so that another large and unusual expense on our credit cards ($250).

SUMMARY

We still have our state taxes to get paid. We went through the process of entering all our taxes, but we haven’t hit submit just yet. Surprisingly, we’re expecting a refund from the Federal side. The amount owed and the refund basically end up as a wash.

Our new property’s loan is a commercial loan, so it doesn’t get paid on the typical mortgage schedule, but on the 1 month anniversary of the opening. Therefore, the next payment is due on 4/24, and there’s no “1 month without a payment” type thing.

Clearly, our cash balance dropped significantly since last month because we had the closing. That was about $46k that we wired out, which was the expectation when we completed all the maneuvering with the cash out refinances in January. Our credit cards reflect our lower spending too, coming in about half what the balances were last month.

Year in Review: Part 1

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Just over a year ago, I decided it was time to put more effort into sharing what we’ve been through. When I’m looking to learn something new, I like to find examples of how other people handle it. I want to know the places they struggled and how they learned. I find it a better way to form my opinion than by reading an article that doesn’t have any meat in it, only providing an outline.

In the last year, I learned that blogging wasn’t as easy to keep up with as I thought it would be. I have a list of topics still to cover, so it wasn’t a matter of content. But raising two kids hinders my ability for an uninterrupted thought process to write an article, unless I get to it before they wake up.

The blog was started by Mr. ODA in 2018. He wrote a few posts, and then it sat for two years. I decided to pick it back up in January 2021. During 2021, we published 65 posts. Each month, I wrote a post about our financial update; I included any major expenses, how management of rental properties was going, and how our personal spending may have changed month-to-month. I shared our purchase of 11 out of 13 of our properties, our sale of one property, refinancing mortgages, paying off mortgages, renting properties, maintaining properties, etc. I also shared just general life decision making along the way.

Part 1 for my year in review will address what happened with our rental properties. I’ll dive into our personal finances in Part 2.

As a quick recap, we have 12 rental properties. Nine of them are in Virginia, and three of them are in Kentucky. Two of the houses in Virginia are owned with a partner because we still had cash available to buy more houses, but at the time we had the maximum number of mortgages allowed by Fannie/Freddie (max is 10). The houses were purchased between February 2016 and September 2019. All 3 houses in Kentucky are managed by a property manager, who gets 10% of the monthly rent each month. I manage 5 of the Virginia houses personally, and then we have a property manager who manages the remaining 4, who also gets 10% for each house.

RENTAL PROPERTY MORTGAGES

In January 2021, we completed a refinance of one property, and then in December, we completed three cash-out refinances. The loan balances on these 4 properties increased; one increased because closing costs were rolled into the loan balance, and the other 3 included $190k worth of equity taken out from the houses and creating new loans.

We went from 11 mortgages (two of which are actually owned by a partner) down to 8. House 6 had a balance of $26,447 coming into 2021, and that was paid off by June. Two other houses had a total balance of $157,500 at the beginning of the year. Their balances dwindled through regular monthly payments and one lump sum payment right before we completed the cash-out-refis and completely paid them off.

We have been working on paying down another mortgage that is owned with a partner. Between the two of our families, we paid off about $44,000 additional principal for that mortgage. We’re matching each other’s additional principal payments so that the math is easier to follow, so we can only make additional payments in line with what he can do also. We each owe about $10k on this mortgage now.

Even though there were so many mortgage-related transactions in the year, our overall loan balance only decreased by $6,000.

The market has continued to rise due to the limited supply, and so our home values on the rentals actually increased over $500k over the last year.

RENTAL PROPERTY LEASES

We turned over 1 property the whole year! The tenant that was living there had already told us that they were renting until they found a place to buy, so we knew they wouldn’t be long term tenants. We had a relationship with them from a previous house, when they had moved out of the area and then back. They had a poor experience renting in another area and reached out to us since they appreciated us as landlords. They found a house towards the end of their first year, but we let them out of the lease early. Their lease was slated to end October 31, 2021. We don’t usually have leases that start/end in the Fall if we can help it, but we had let the previous tenant out of her lease early to purchase a house also. The tenant said she was able to be out at the end of August, and we preferred moving the lease closer to the summer months anyway.

We raised the rent on 6 properties.
– The one house that was turned over went from $1200 to $1350 per month. However, we added a property manager who gets 10%, so our cash flow only increased by $15 per month.
– Two of our properties have long term tenants; the rent is significantly below market value, but we value not having to turn over the house. These houses are on a cycle where we increase the rent $50 every two years.
– Our KY property manager tried to increase rent on the 3 properties she manages. One was increased by $25, another by $5, and the other one cried that she couldn’t afford an increase. That’s the one where we plan to increase by $75 next month, and if she doesn’t accept, we’ll turn it over and get $75-$100 more per month.
– We increased rent by $150/month for one of our properties that we have with a partner. It was a risk, but this is a house that claims 3 people live there, but they have 5 queen size beds in the house. We figured either they leave and we get several big things fixed up that have been deferred because of all their things in the way, or we make up for all the years that we didn’t manage their rent and didn’t increase it. They accepted the increase.

RENT COLLECTION

We were very grateful that we made it through those initial months of the pandemic without tenants not being able to pay rent. We had a few people let us know that they were laid off or unable to work (e.g., restaurant business), but we learned most of our tenants worked in the health care field. So while we made it through 2020 without many issues, 2021 brought more challenges. Nothing was insurmountable, and it wasn’t debilitating financially, but it was still something to manage.

We had some big struggles with non-payment of rent on one house. She was 31 days late paying August rent, then she didn’t pay September’s rent, and then she applied for rental assistance to cover September, October, and November, which we didn’t receive until February 2022. That was all on top of her generally being a week late in paying through the beginning of the year too. She doesn’t maintain employment, she doesn’t communicate, and we’ve just had something new and different pop up as an issue every few months. We eventually received January 2022’s rent, but we still haven’t received all of February’s rent – just in time for March rent to be due.

We have another property (the one that was raised $150 per month) that is perpetually late. They eventually pay, and they’re getting better about actually paying the late fee (when they pay rent 20+ days late…), but they were late for 10/12 months of the year.

Everyone else paid their rent on time. In general, we’re lenient with late fees and issues. If you reach out to us and mention that there was a hiccup and you’ll need one more pay check to pay rent, our response is typically: please pay what you can now, pay the rest next week, and don’t worry about the late fee. However, when you don’t communicate and/or you’re consistently weeks late and we’re having to carry the expenses, there needs to be a consequence to incentivize you getting back on track.

RENTAL EXPENSES

We replaced the flooring in House3 ($4,000), hot water heater in House9 ($1,500), HVAC in House10 ($3,300), washing machine in House10 ($250), and HVAC in House12 ($3,900). We also had various electrical and plumbing work that needed to be done in several houses. We also spend about $7k per year in property management fees.

Usually turn over is an area that requires us to put a lot of money into a house. Luckily, the one house that we turned over this year only required some paint work, and we didn’t have any other turnovers.

While it’s nice that our assessments have increased and our housing values have increased in our net worth calculation, it comes at a price. Our taxes have increased on all the properties. In total, they’ve increased over $2,500 in just the one year (meaning, that doesn’t include all the previous years worth of assessment increases that have occurred!).

GOALS

In this year, we hope to add one more rental property to our portfolio. We’ve been actively working on it, but this market is crazy! We’re not willing to overpay on a property and get into a bidding war just to be done with the search. It’s interesting to see that we haven’t bought a new rental property in almost 2.5 years, when we had purchased so many all at once. We had gone back and forth with saving for another down payment or just paying off more mortgages after we paid off House6 in June. Once the cash-out-refi was a possibility, we decided to go ahead with purchasing another property. We’ll self-manage whatever we acquire. We had been looking in Virginia and Kentucky, but have started to settle into a Kentucky property (I like the laws for tenant/landlord relationships better in Virginia) so that we can save the 10% management fee and the expensive leasing fee, since housing prices are significantly higher than what we’d prefer for the rent ratio we’d be getting.

We have 8 houses that still need negotiation and/or lease termination coming this year. Two houses have already agreed to their rent increase, and we just need to get the new lease signed. Five houses will be offered a new lease term with a rent increase (averaging about $50 per month on the increase). One tenant will be asked to leave at the end of her lease term.

We want to remove the tenant from House2 at the end of her lease term. She has been a concern in numerous legal ways, does not hold steady employment, and the house is well under market value rent. Turning over that property will require us to go to Virginia to work on it. It’ll need repainted, the carpet will probably have to be replaced, and I worry that she’ll do some damage when we tell her we’re not interested in renewing her lease.

SUMMARY

I like to look at the details of the rental properties all at once in this format. Sometimes, I get caught up in all the things that I need to get done, and I feel like it’s so much work. In those moments, I forget that there are most days of the year where I don’t even think about the properties. Even when expenses seem to be piling on top of themselves, to look back and see that our expenses totaled less than $15k over 12 houses is encouraging. We’ve also reached the point where we’ve replaced most HVACs and several roofs, which are areas that can create problems that compound on themselves, whereas a replacement is expensive, but then I don’t have to get all the calls that something went wrong.

February Financial Update

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This month is basically just story telling, from insurance tidbits to mortgage annoyances, while not addressing the decline in the market and our investment accounts. 🙂

It seems all my mortgage payments are increasing on 3/1, so I’ve been managing those changes. I mentioned recently that one of our houses had the escrow analysis done incorrectly. Luckily, that was addressed, and the increase in our mortgage payment is only about $100 instead of nearly $200. Our personal mortgage increased by $16, another property increased by $52, and then our last 3 mortgages were all refinanced in January and this ‘first payment’ has been a bear. The information out of the refinancing company has been contradictory, they requested a bunch of information weeks after closing to support all the money they already gave us, and it’s just been rough. Rough enough that I ran to the post office to get a check in the mail at 4:48 pm today, only to get home to an email saying that I had to send that check (due tomorrow) to a different address. Ugh.

I was excited to share some positive news this month, but that got overshadowed by these mortgage payments! Anyway, we came home to some surprises after our vacation.

First, I had a medical procedure done in January. It was originally scheduled for November, but the week of the procedure, I had my heart go crazy on me. That cancelled my procedure because I couldn’t go under anesthesia until they knew my heart would be OK. We got my heart sorted out enough that I was cleared for the procedure, but once I was able to reschedule it, it went into 2022 ….. a new deductible year. They said that I needed to pay half the cost of the procedure before they’d schedule it. Since I had been waiting since September for this, I wasn’t going to question anything, and I gave my credit card number for $1200. Well, my insurance hasn’t processed the procedure yet, but I guess since I paid in advance, some sort of system review showed I had overpaid, and they refunded me $1196. I don’t know how they decided to keep $4, but I’ll cross that bridge when I see my claim is processed on my insurance website.

Second, I’ve mentioned before that you need to stay on top of insurance! I received a bill for my heart-related-ambulance-ride for over $900. The last time I was in an ambulance, I ended up owing the full bill, which was $500 at that time. When I saw $900, I figured, gosh 10 years later and a new jurisdiction, and THAT is what I owe. It said “we billed your insurance, and this is your balance.” Hmmm. Log into my insurance website and see there’s no claim history for an ambulance ride. I then learned, for the first time ever, how to submit my own insurance claim. I let the fire department know I submitted the claim, and then they said they’d do it for me! Why did your paper say you already did?! Well, the surprise I got was that my insurance covered all but $46 for the ride!!! I couldn’t believe it. That’s the happiest I’ve ever been to spend $46.

The most random thing that happened was a check from our electric company from our Virginia house. We sold that house in September 2020. Our mail forwarding isn’t active anymore and it was sent to our old address, so I really have no idea how we got it. It was $31.09 due to a required review of all accounts every 3 years. It’s not anything crazy or life changing, but that was truly a surprise!

RENTAL UPDATES

We had our usual suspects not pay rent earlier this month. One flat out said they won’t pay until the 23rd. I’m not even sure how to handle them anymore. I keep reminding myself that we raised their rent $150/month to get them to leave, but they accepted. So at least we’re in a good position there? The other paid us $700/$1150 on Friday (late). She at least emailed us with the awareness that we shouldn’t have to hunt her down for rent payments, so she got a pass because I was about to send the default notice at 12:01 am on the 6th. I’m also once again in a position of tracking down a rent relief payment on another house that’s supposed to cover December, January, and February. While the tenant ended up paying December rent, we’ve still been floating the January and February finances. The approval of their application (that was submitted in November) was January 10. As of today, no information from the State and no check in the mail.

I got a tenant renewal processed this morning. We increased their rent by $50/month (starting 5/1 when their current term ends), after it having been steady for 2 years. Our usual baseline to keep a good tenant is a $50 increase every 2 years.

We gave two property managers notice to increase rents on 2 properties that are up for renewal on 4/30. We do 60-day notices. It’s not entirely necessary, but I look at it as a way to negotiate with the tenant for a month, and then if they don’t agree to new terms, we have a month to get it rented. One ‘cried COVID’ last year, and we let her by. She’s been there 2.5 years at the same rate, and she even got the house under market value originally because it was November (bad timing). She’s at $875 and we said we’d go to $950. That’s a larger increase than we usually do, but the market rate for the house is $950-1000. If she balks, we’ll manage the turnover and get a new tenant in there. For another house, they’re at 1025 and have been since October 2019. They even negotiated a discount back then for an 18 month lease, so they’ve been under market. Despite our efforts to grieve our taxes, the City thinks this house is in an affluent neighborhood and has charged as such. We’re offering them a bump to $1100. Again, more than our usual $50 increase, but it’s been more than 2 years and $1100 is under market value. Then we had a 3rd person say she wants to stay in the house, but her lease isn’t up until August. She’s been there since August 2017 and has been at $850 rent since then. We’re looking to increase her rent to $900. She’s an awesome tenant that never needs anything, and I know she’s in grad school without much money. We’ve made her so happy for the last several years by renewing her without an increase, so I hope she understands the need to increase it now.

I paid the insurance on our townhome, which is a property we own outright, so I need to manage the escrow-type transactions. That was $210.

After our cash-out-refis in January, we have been looking for a new property to purchase. We’ve made 4 offers that have been out-bid. Mr. ODA has been trying to work the off-market angle. We made a full price offer for one of the houses contingent on seeing it, and the guy said that he’d now prefer to sell off his portfolio as one instead of each individual house. He declined our full-price-off-market offer. Sketchy. Then another guy said he wanted to wait until the new flooring was installed in his house before letting us see it, and then he won’t respond to messages now a week or so later. Interesting. We’re now trying to work another off-market deal through our Realtor, but the seller and our Realtor are out of town. I ran the comps on it and come to $235ish, while they were expecting $250k. I don’t deny that they’d get an offer in this market at $250, but I don’t know that it’s worth it to us. Then again, to be done with this driving around, seeing houses, making offers, and losing out, may all be worth an extra $15k.

PERSONAL TIDBITS

This month, we went on a trip for just about a week. The flight was paid for in a previous month, so that’s not captured in our spending. We stayed with a friend, and she made us nearly all of our food. We paid for our brewery visits with her. It was a great trip, and I definitely recommend Bend, OR! We did a last minute change from Touro for our rental car to a ‘regular’ car rental place at the airport, so that charge shows up in this month’s finances. We also booked 2 last minute hotel rooms, once for the night of our arrival and one for the night of our departure (we flew in/out of Portland, which is about 2.5 hours from Bend, so it was easier with the kids sleep schedules to be near the airport those two nights instead of arriving really late or leaving really early).

We bought Hamilton tickets. We were late on that band wagon until we finally found a friend with Disney+ who wanted to watch it with us even though they had seen it 257 times. Since December 2020, we’ve watched Hamilton a whole lot. We got on right when tickets were being sold and were about to accept the $200+ ticket price until Mr. ODA found the ticket sales through the actual venue were only $130! It’s not until June, but that’s something to look forward to!

We finished our basement over the last year and have been using for the last month now. We had a projector on hand that we used as our TV down there, but it started to die shortly after we hooked it up. We bought a new projector and have been really happy with it, and I was happy with it only being $270.

While our electric bill was surprisingly low last month, it was surprisingly high this month. They did an estimated meter reading, putting the estimated kWh usage at the highest it’s ever been. When I questioned their estimation process and shared the current meter read, they said that next month will probably be an actual reading and since it’s not more than 1000 kWh difference, they’re not going to change anything. Sure, I can afford this $414 bill that may be offset next month, but many people can’t. Their estimation process shouldn’t put the projected energy usage at an all-time-high, thereby dumping surprisingly large bills on people. Regardless, it’s something that works itself out, and isn’t something I’m going to fight any harder on right now. It’s just annoying knowing that our energy usage was high last year because we had a broken unit without our knowledge, and then with a working unit, they’re estimating that we’ve used more than ever.

Mr. ODA changed one of our credit cards, so I’ve been all out of sorts here now. The credit card was a travel-related card, and they increased their annual fee by $100. He ran the numbers and determined the benefits didn’t outweigh the cost increase. Instead of closing the card, they agreed to change the type of card. However, all the things we used that card for are now on different cards, and this change “activated” an old card of mine. Our credit card usage is convoluted; perhaps I’ll do a new explanation and update my last post on it (and then maybe that’ll get me to remember all the changes!).

NET WORTH

Our net worth dropped about $15k from last month, but that was due to the market. While not fun to see those numbers go down, it doesn’t affect our day-to-day. Our cash balance is really high right now while we keep cash liquid for a downpayment while finding another investment property.

Escrow Analysis Update

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I posted about how one of our houses updated the escrow calculation and claimed our new mortgage payment needed to be $185 more than it had been to cover an escrow shortfall. Our escrow balance was negative, so it wasn’t a surprise that the amount was increasing, but that seemed to be a drastic increase. Most of what I said was right, but I did the increasing math incorrectly. The concept was there, but not the details.

Here’s the current escrow analysis from the mortgage company. It’s similar to what I did on my own. I knew that the new escrow amount to cover just what we owe in the year is $199.25, which is the same. I knew that there would be a shortfall in May of $256.89. This next step is where I was wrong in my calculation.

I took $256.89 and divided that specific shortfall by 12 months to come up with $16.60. Instead, I needed to take that shortfall and add it to the required balance of 2 months worth of the escrow payment. Therefore, $199.25*2+$256.89=$655.39. Take that number and divide by 12 to get the monthly payment to cover the shortfall, which comes to $54.62 (rounded).

The new payment is the new base amount plus the shortfall coverage. So our payment actually increases by a total of $96.95 because our previous escrow payment was only $156.92.

House7 Escrow Analysis

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We received a notice that our escrow needed to be increased by $185 on this account. That seemed to be a huge jump, considering this was a new account for this year (we refinances January 2021). Our taxes went up about $35 per month, so the $185 increase stood out.

Mr. ODA’s brain works best in these scenarios, and he quickly noted that the analysis double counted our tax payment (they claimed it to be paid in December 2021 and January 2022). My brain can figure it out, but I need to write down every step of the math to understand it. 🙂 Since I took the time to analyze the escrow changes, I thought I’d share it in case anyone was interested in knowing how their analysis works.

They double counted our tax payment, so the increase truly should only be $58*. As someone who needs to see the details and can’t think in the abstract when it comes to math, I ran my own escrow analysis.

First, you need to know your taxes and insurance total for the year. Take that total, and divide it by 12 to get your monthly expense. This is because your escrow additions occur monthly. For this property, our monthly cost of our taxes and insurance comes to $199.25 (green). The old escrow amount of our monthly mortgage payment was $156.92 (orange).

The ‘Escrow Needed’ column is increased each month by $199.25. The ‘Required Balance’ is double the monthly expense for our account (199.25*2). Then the difference between the ‘Escrow Needed’ and the ‘Required Balance’ is the column in blue. The escrow shortfall is determined by the greatest negative. Therefore, I took the difference for that month (May 2022) and divided it by 12, getting $16.60*.

The escrow analysis then results in an escrow increase of $199.25 (the amount needed to cover projected expenses), minus the old escrow contribution amount of $156.92, plus the shortfall amount of $16.60*, bringing the increase to $58.93 per month and making the new monthly escrow payment $215.85.

EDIT: *These numbers are not right. For a detailed edit, see this post: https://onedollarallowance.com/2022/02/14/escrow-analysis-update/.

Rental Property Management

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Every once in a while, I like to share what I’ve been doing to manage the properties. There was a lot of activity needed over the last two months.

RENT INCOME

One of our usual suspects for late rent payments was late again. We seem to only have a one-month streak for on-time payments with them. She at least communicates with us that they’ll be late and gives a projection on when we’ll see it. She ended up paying rent on the 14th, and said she needed to pay the late fee on the 21st.

Two other houses haven’t paid rent, but they’ve applied for rental assistance.

RENT RELIEF PROGRAM

House2 applied for rent assistance in September, and we still haven’t received that from the State. I did finally get a tracking number on the 19th that it’s on its way. She paid $400 worth of January’s rent on a Friday and said she’d have the rest on Monday. Well, as she has a history of not communicating and not upholding her word, I wasn’t taking a chance with her. I served her the default notice on Saturday to indicate that she didn’t pay rent in full and had 14 days to remedy that. She remedied that by applying for rental assistance again. She said that she only applied for January assistance, so hopefully we’ll have February rent on time. I wish I could dig into her finances and find out how she didn’t have to pay any rent for September, October, or November, only had to pay $600 towards December because she had a credit from a payment plan previously in place, and then can’t pay January rent in full.

House3 had to apply for rent assistance. They’re great tenants and have been with us since we purchased the house. In November, she applied for December, January, and February assistance. The application expires 45 days after it’s sent, as a means to protect the landlord from floating the expenses on the property indefinitely. This tenant ended up paying December’s rent, but hasn’t paid anything towards January. Luckily, we did receive approval for their application on January 11. Hopefully we’ll receive that money in less than 3 months time like the last time this program was involved. What she paid in December will be counted as March’s rent (2021 income for tax purposes, but she won’t pay March rent because she has that credit now).

REFINANCES & MORTGAGES

We had to provide several post-closing documents on the refinances. It was horrendous. They asked for new types of documentation. Clearly, whoever is purchasing our loans didn’t like the lack of due diligence done pre-closing. Except for the new request, everything else they requested could have been ascertained by looking at the documentation already on hand, so we didn’t appreciate that. Then the new request was to explain how we paid off a mortgage, which was paid off 4 months prior to us establishing a relationship with this company to refinance the other loans. I had to provide proof that it was paid off, and then I had to provide the funds used to pay it off. The balance was $3,100. Paying a $3k bill hardly touches our finances. I want to become an underwriter so I can understand how they need so much detail and are sticklers for the type of detail, but they don’t need to know how to read the details they request.

We had an escrow analysis done on House7. It said that our mortgage was going to increase by $183 each month, but the increase should have been just about $60. I’ll explain details in another post, but that took some time. Mr. ODA called and walked the representative through the error. He said it took a while for her to get there, and we’re awaiting an update.

Since our refinances occurred at the end of the year, and all our city tax payments are due in January, I was nervous about the right amounts getting paid. The initial closing disclosures had the old tax payment amounts on it, but every one had increased. I was able to catch it and request that they be updated before our closing, but it was a day or two before closing. I was afraid it wouldn’t catch correctly. I had to stay on top of the payments and make sure they were all paid in full, and I had to pay the property taxes for those that aren’t escrowed. I was most worried about the three properties that were being refinanced, but then the issue ended up being one of our other houses. The escrow check was sent on 12/21, and it still hadn’t processed as of the tax due date of 1/14. I sent an email to the finance office hopefully showing that I had done my due diligence timely. Luckily, when I checked on 1/20, the taxes were processed by then.

LEASE MANAGEMENT

We require action from the tenant no later than 60 days from the end of their lease. There are 3 properties that have an April 30 lease term expiration. One tenant already reached out and asked to renew their lease. They’ve already been there for two years, and their rent has remained steady at $1300. We have precedent of increasing long-term tenant rent every 2 years by $50 (but we also have precedent of not actively managing houses and not increasing the rent at all.. oops). I explained to this tenant how there have been several increases in our expenses over the last two years. They’re really great tenants, and they hardly ever ask for anything from us. I felt guilty, but we’re trying to run a business, so we need to take care of that side too. Plus, if we didn’t increase slightly this coming year, it’ll be hard to manage future increases. It’s a lot harder to keep a good tenant if you don’t raise their rent and then hit them with $100-$200 increase down the road, so it’s best to keep with inflation. I did the cash-on-cash analysis for this property and discovered that the $50 increase falls slightly short of our expenses and keeping our rate of return the same.

I have to work with two other houses (via a property manager on those) to determine their new rent amount. One house negotiated a lower rent for a longer lease term at their lease initiation, which was October 1, 2019. This property in particular has had the highest jump in taxes. We grieved them to no avail. They’re claiming our neighborhood is part of a more affluent neighborhood and refuse to see how their district lines aren’t accurate for the type of house and street it’s on. I plan to push for an increase of $75 on that one, since their original lease amount is based on a discounted rate. One the other house, the tenants wield a lot of power to our property manager. We tried to increase rent last year, and the tenant flipped out on us about it. We’re already below what we thought market value was on the house, so 2.5 years without an increase is insult to injury. I’m going to request an increase from $875 to $950 on the house and see what the property manager says. If she agrees to a $50 increase, that’d be acceptable, but it’d be nice to recoup some of the other expenses too.

EXPENSES

We have a tenant in one of our houses that is amazing. He treats the house as if he’s the owner. He’s quick to take care of problems, and only seems to let us know when it gets to be a certain level of problem. This house has always had a mice problem. One tenant, who we evicted, created a really big problem that involved several mice making this house their home. She refused to do her part in cleaning up food messes, be it old food sitting on the counter or in the sink, grease splattered all over, or just general mess left behind. We got it under control, but the occasional mouse still rears its head. He sent us an email saying he’s been having an issue, and he’s tried really hard to address each individual mouse appearance. He said it has gotten to the point where he wants to do something more drastic, but wanted our permission. I said that it was absolutely at the point where it’s our issue to deal with, not his, but we thank him for his efforts. I called our pest control company, and we’ll see if that helps. One or two mice is one thing, but for him to say he’s caught 9 in a year, that’s a bit much. The pest control was $165.

One of our KY houses has a bunch of little and weird expenses pop up. This month’s explanation on my report from the property manager simply said “Repaired door by adjusting door to fit opening and resetting stuck plates.” I don’t know what door or how the plates got stuck, but I threw in the towel on that $60.

We were also informed that a toilet at another property stopped flushing. When asked for more detail, we were told that she presses the handle and nothing happens. My response? “Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to spend $125 for someone to reconnect a chain.” Our property manager’s husband said he’ll go look at it, for $80. That’s a downside to not living near the property and being able to check on the issue yourself. We got a text later saying that he talked the tenant through the issue, and it turned out that the flapper was just stuck. So luckily it’s nothing at the moment, but it could be an expense down the road.

SUMMARY

So that was a lot for one month. Luckily, our expenses themselves were low (225), even though we’re missing some rental income ($1,900 and $145 worth of a late fee) and we had to do more management than usual. By having 12 properties, late rent payments or non-existent payments don’t create a strain on our finances. For example, if we only had House2, who paid $1550 worth of 5 months of rent because of the rent relief assistance program, then we’d be floating those mortgages each month. By having more houses, those other rents are covering the expenses on the one house.

In 4 weeks time, a ‘full time job’ would be 160 hours of work. I estimate that all the action that I took this month (and the phone call Mr. ODA had to make to our bank on the escrow issue) comes out to about 6 hours. There’s the perspective. Even when it seems like a lot, because it’s more than nothing, it’s still hardly anything.

Refinance Results

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There’s a company in Virginia that offers $0 closing costs for refinances. That applies to personal residences being refinanced. They still cover most of the closing costs associated with investment properties, but there’s an investment property fee that we need to pay. They also have a fee associated with taking cash out as part of the refinance. Another stipulation is that the new loan has to be at least $100,000 after the refinance. I spoke of the initial details in a post last month, and now I can discuss the details and results of the refinance.

We first talked about taking $50,000 out for each Property2 and Property3. Then we added Property8 into the refinance. The opportunity to use this company to refinance a loan is only available in Virginia. We decided it was best to pay off both Winchester, KY houses instead of just one. The appraisals came back higher than anticipated, so we decided to increase each loan to the max amount of 60% loan to value ratio.

Note the change in value on these houses. We’ve owned 2 and 3 for 5.5 years, and we’ve owned 8 for just over 4 years. The value of these houses have more than doubled in that time, with minimal effort on our part, all the while having a tenant cover the mortgage and maintenance costs.

CASH FLOW

At first, the thought of going from $60-70k to $123k-138k worth of loan payments is an overwhelming sight. I’m a visual person, so I broke it down to a place where I felt comfortable with this move. That comfort is in the cash flow.

With the $190k cashed out, we paid off two loans. Due to a huge issue with our insurance payments, our escrow accounts were substantially negative. Therefore, the payoff required making the escrow accounts whole. Our bank that held these loans used to have such a great online system. Through the course of 3 updates, they killed it. They took away loan history in an easy-to-view format, they took away options to make principal-only payments same day, and they removed the payoff request concept (they had made it difficult in the last update by making it a request that you would have emailed to you, and then in this update, they took it away all together, forcing me to call an automated system that just kept telling me about covid-relief options….. I’m not bitter).

After these two loans were paid off, we were left with just under $50k in cash. This will be used for a downpayment and closing costs on a new rental property, which is a search underway.

To the cash flow part – the removal of those two loan payments was worth $1,184.62. The three properties refinanced had their mortgage payments increase by $1,117.70. The change in my monthly cash flow is now $67 more than I had been netting. I’ll note that the cash flow also involves one of the houses going from a 20 year mortgage to a 15 year mortgage, which increases the monthly payment disproportionately to just an interest rate change.

That’s the black and white, month-to-month change; there are some caveats though. Previously, Property2 hadn’t been escrowed, so I was paying that on my own. Now, with the two houses paid off, I’ll need to pay those previously-escrowed costs on my own. When I factor those details in, my annual cash flow actually decreases, and my out of pocket costs for the year increase by about $700.

While the monthly cash flow increase of $67 isn’t a drastic difference, the fact that we have cash left over and $50k of the new loan balance will be used to create more cash flow with the purchase of a new rental-producing property benefits our portfolio.

MANAGING BILLS IMPLICATION

With the payoff of the two houses in Winchester, KY, I now am responsible for paying the taxes and insurance on the properties (instead of escrow). In October, Kentucky sends the owner as of January 1 of that year the tax bills (meaning, if you own the property on January 1, 2020, then you receive the tax bill on October 15, 2020). It’s frustrating. It’s on the old owner to forward to the new owner if there was a sale during that year. They also send it to the owner even if there’s a mortgage with escrow. So every year, I need to call the mortgage company and make sure they received the bill themselves. Even though I need to stay on top of paying the taxes and insurances now that there’s no escrow, it’ll actually save me time because I won’t have to call these companies to make sure they received the current tax bill. Oh! They also give an incentive for paying early, so I’m always worried that the escrow payment won’t be released to give me that incentive and that they’ll focus on the due date.

Property2 had not been escrowed. There was a screw up in the paperwork that I capitalized on because I don’t like that escrow keeps my money tied up without any incentive to me. Well, Mr. ODA thought I had said I preferred things to be escrowed, but I don’t remember ever definitively saying that. I may have said a comment like “gosh, it’s nice to not have to remember to pay this bill,” but not that I’d prefer to see my monthly payment go up each year because of an escrow reanalysis (I feel like I wrote a post about this……). Property 2 is now escrowed through the refinance.

I removed two tax payments to Virginia and one insurance payment, but then I added back 4 tax payments and 1 insurance payment for each year. The one insurance payment for two properties is what caused me to have an escrow fiasco, so now we’ll avoid that mess by paying it ourselves. Plus, when we pay the insurance ourselves, it can go on a credit card where we earn cash rewards.

SUMMARY

In 4-5 years, we’ve more than doubled the value of these houses that we purchased. While that isn’t immediate cash in our pockets, that’s a substantial increase in our portfolio’s net worth. That increase in value costs us more in taxes in each year, but it also provided us with this opportunity to refinance and take cash out to purchase another property. With two houses paid off, we have also increased our monthly cash flow by about $67. On top of all the near-term gains for this transaction, there’s also the interest payment gains we received. All 3 loans dropped their interest rate, and one loan transitioned to a 15 year loan from a 20 year loan, which decreases the interest owed as well.

Escrow Payments

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A theme I stick to in this blog is that you need to watch your money. I’ve talked about ways that I’ve fought to get money back where it wasn’t billed correctly (e.g., medical bills), and today’s warning is about escrows.

An escrow account, in the sense that I want to talk about it, is tied to your mortgage. Your monthly payment includes an amount that goes into a separate account held by your mortgage company, and they manage paying out your taxes and insurance on your behalf.

The benefit of an escrow is that you don’t have to manage your insurance and tax payments. You don’t have to pay out a large sum of money once (or twice) a year because you’re paying towards this account every month that will manage that billing for you. The downside is that this escrow account requires you to maintain a balance, so it’s holding your money where your money isn’t working for you. Another downside is that your money movement is less transparent, and you just expect that the payments will be made accurately. The bank basically takes on the administrative burden of paying these bills on your behalf, in exchange for continually holding this money without paying you interest.

Each month your mortgage payment includes principal, interest, and escrow. For example, I have a mortgage payment that is $615.34. The P&I total will remain the same amount each month, but the principal portion of each payment will slowly increase while the interest slowly decreases. In my example, the total P&I is always $428.11, but the breakdown of what’s principal and what’s interest changes (e.g., October’s payment due included principal of $119.58 and interest of $308.53; November’s was $120.03 of principal and $308.08 of interest). The escrow amount each month for this mortgage is now $187.23; this number stays the same until there’s an escrow re-analysis.

An escrow analysis is conducted once per year to verify that the escrow account will have sufficient funds to pay out the bills received (typically taxes and insurance), while maintaining the required minimum balance. Sometimes the increase is known ahead of time because you can see that the estimates for the initial escrow contributions were off (or in our case, new construction uses estimates based on last year’s tax payment, which only included land value and not the final sale of the home, so we know there will be an escrow shortfall in our future). A shortfall may also occur when there’s been a drastic change in your property value assessment, causing taxes to increase more than an expected amount (like in 2021!), or when insurance costs change more than projected.

Below is an escrow analysis of one of our accounts. The highlighted row shows that when our taxes are paid, the balance will fall below the required minimum. The document says that the minimum “is determined by the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), your mortgage contract, or state law. Your minimum balance may include up to 2 months cushion of escrow payments to cover increases in your taxes and insurance.” If you are projected to dip below the required minimum, they’ll offer you the opportunity to make a one-time contribution to the escrow account or your monthly payment will increase to cover that projected shortfall.

The increase is calculated in the image below. My payment to escrow at the time of this analysis was $126.18. They take my insurance and taxes owed, divide by 12, and come up with my monthly base escrow payment ($149.81). At the lowest point in my escrow balance (highlighted in yellow above), the account will be -149.43. The difference between this balance and the required balance of $299.62 is $449.05. Divide this number by 12 to get the $37.42 in the image below indicating the monthly shortage for the account.

The new escrow payment is added to my P&I payment (which stays the same), and this is my new monthly mortgage payment.

An escrow analysis showing that we’ll fall below the balance required inevitably means that my monthly cash flow will decrease (because we always opt for the change in monthly payment instead of a one-time contribution). As taxes and insurance increase, so does your requirement to fund your escrow account. While the reason for the escrow increase is to cover the taxes and insurance, which I would have to pay anyway, the escrow increase is higher because of the required minimums. One of our houses started with $766.96 as the monthly payment, and it is now $802.96 due to the escrow analysis. Another one started at $477.77, and it’s now at $537.60.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

Honestly, the only way I’ve checked my escrow balances in the past is at the end of the year when I’m verifying the insurance and tax payments “make sense.” I’m not even verifying the details behind the numbers, just that it was similar to last year’s amount as I update my spreadsheet. Well this time, I logged in to update my spreadsheets with the new mortgage balances for the October Financial Update, and I saw my escrow account was negative by over $1000! That makes no sense because these accounts are reviewed annually through an escrow re-analysis to ensure you’re not projected to dip below their required minimum balance, and if it were to be negative, it would only be by a much smaller amount.

We had recently changed our insurance. Usually when we change insurance providers, we pay the current year on our credit card (to get those points!), and then all future billing goes to our escrow account. I don’t know why we didn’t do it this way for the most recent change, but I’m inclined to blame the fact that the process took months to get new insurance because this company hasn’t been responsive, so we just wanted it done and weren’t thinking. Since we didn’t get the new policy issued before our old policy was billed, both insurances were paid out by our escrow. Sure, that should have affected our escrow balances, but still not by $1000.

One house had a policy that cost $573.31 and the other had a policy that cost $750.06. The new policy includes both houses under one policy (this becomes annoying and it makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can’t seem to articulate to the agent) and costs $1,180.87. Each mortgage escrow paid out the original policy amounts since we didn’t execute the new policies timely. After these were paid out, the mortgage company received a bill for $1,180.87. For reasons I can’t quite figure out, the company paid $1042 from each of our escrow accounts, and then one escrow account paid $138.87 (which is the balance of 1180.87-1042). The $138.87 covers the policy fees; so someone realized that there was a separate line item for policy fees, but didn’t realize that the $1042 should have been split between two houses (even though they knew there were two houses because they took from both escrows).

I questioned the process with the new insurance company, but he didn’t take responsibility for it. He claimed that the mortgagee had to know to split it and they don’t manage any of that. I explained that I’ve had multiple houses insured by one company and have never been given one policy number for it. He acted surprised. My gut says this is wrong and isn’t going to work, both for future billing and the possibility of a need for a claim. We did receive a check in the mail for $903.13 (the difference of $1042-138.87), but we still have paid the $138.87 and want it reimbursed. I sent an email this morning explaining again that I’ve confirmed with my mortgage company that this insurance company was paid $1042+$1042+$138.87. He again responded that the $138.87 is the fees portion of the bill, and I again said that I know, but it’s been paid twice, and I’d like it back. So now I’ll stay on top of that $138.87 to make sure we get it back.

You need to fight for yourself. You need to know what companies are owed and know what you’ve paid. Then don’t back down to keep asking for an update. I recently discussed how I had to fight for medical bills (multiple times) for a year at a time to get the money reimbursed that I was owed. I even recently had to call on another medical bill that I paid before realizing it hadn’t been submitted to insurance (I would love to understand why this keeps being an issue that my medical bills aren’t submitted to my insurance before billing me). Then they submitted it to insurance and sat on my reimbursement until I called twice asking for the reimbursement (that both times they agreed I was owed and it was “in process.”). Manage your money. Especially because that $138 that I’m waiting for now could mean a big difference to a family in need or living paycheck to paycheck.

Moving States: Part III

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There are a lot of factors that go into a home purchase. There are the simple ones, like the number of bedrooms and bathrooms your family desires. Then there are more complicated ones, like what compromises are you willing to make on your wish list to get to the price and location you want.

HOME CRITERIA

I started looking at real estate options in central KY just out of curiosity in June. I knew we wanted 4 bedrooms and at least 2 bathrooms, but it would probably be more like 2.5 bathrooms (master bathroom, kids’ bedroom bathroom, and a powder room on the first floor for guests). We knew we wanted a 2 car garage, which worked out well for us in our RVA house.

Then there’s more trivial things that I learned from experience. I preferred the master bedroom to be on the second floor with the kids bedrooms. When we built our RVA house, we didn’t think it would be too much to have the kids on a separate floor. Well, we made that decision before we had kids, and it turns out that having infants doesn’t make it easy to sleep on a separate floor. Yes, I had monitors. But kids are noisy. So once I ‘kicked’ them out of my bedroom, I didn’t want to have a monitor right next to my head to still be kept up by all their little squeaky noises through the night.

Our RVA house had a loft upstairs. It had a ‘wow’ factor to it, but it wasn’t practical. We used it as a den before we had kids, and then it was hard to keep it organized and clean once kids came around. Therefore, we put a basement on our must have list, and we weren’t going to compromise on that. We knew from our living style that a basement was going to be something we’d enjoy for a long time and didn’t want to take that off our list just yet.

We had a lot of criteria associated with the lot. We wanted about 0.25 acres. We felt that 0.5 an acre was more land than we really wanted, but anything less than 0.25 acres wasn’t going to leave enough room for multiple kids and a large dog to enjoy. We want to be in a neighborhood with several neighbors close, but we want more room than a garbage can width between the houses.

One of the sad parts of the house we were leaving behind was the backyard. We had a really nice natural area in the back half of our yard. We had put a firepit in and had a beautiful tree-scape back there, but still had a decent size grassy area for the kids and dog to play. Another downside for leaving was that the playground and pavilion (hang out space) for the HOA were two lots away.

FINANCIAL CRITERIA

When Mr. ODA and I got pre-approved for our first home back in 2012, we were approved for $750,000. Sure, we could afford that monthly payment, but then we couldn’t afford food or furniture or electricity. We had set our spending limit based on our down payment available at the time because we didn’t want to pay PMI. For this purchase, we could have afforded a monthly payment associated with a $500k house (or more), but that size house isn’t necessary for our life right now and we didn’t want to be saddled with that down payment.

I’ve already quit my job. Mr. ODA expects to quit his job in the near future. We don’t want to have him quit his job to hang out in an expensive house and never be able to do anything else because we need to pay $2,500 per month for a mortgage.

When looking at houses, we’re fluid in the cost. We preferred to stay below $400k, unless there was something we could get for more than that making it worth it (e.g., more land, more amenities). We found out that we could get everything we wanted for $350-400k, so it would have been hard for us to go higher than that.

When you’re pre-approved by a bank, they’re looking at your debt to income ratio. Your debt is categorized by your routine monthly payments (e.g., car loan). We don’t have any loans or debt payments in that sense, so they’ve set our pre-approval almost solely based on our income. This is a faulty expectation in a homeowner’s reality, since we all have fairly fixed monthly costs: cable, internet, cell phone, electricity, gas, water, etc. Then you have the cost of groceries and entertainment that may or may not be on a credit card and able to be tracked against your credit. Essentially, we don’t need a bank to tell us what we can afford, and we set our own expectations.

We know what we have for a down payment and closing costs, and we know that we’d prefer to pay $1200-1500 per month for our mortgage, which includes our escrowed real estate taxes and insurance.

OUR HOME

We got a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom (with another bathroom roughed in for the basement), 2,750 square foot house with an unfinished basement, on about a 8,500 square foot lot. The basement is not a walk-out, which we were bummed about, but at least we have the space we wanted. The lot is slightly smaller than we set out looking for, but because our house is really wide and not deep, we actually ended up with a nice size back yard, which was really the intention of our lot size desire. Our house cost about $346k.

FINDING THE HOUSE

We looked in Lexington, KY first, and we explored resales and new construction. The neighborhood I was really interested in was sold out in one section or over $500k for a new-build in another section, so I started over. For resales in Lexington, we were looking at houses that were about 30 years old and needed updating. I really wish I had an eye for the potential in some homes. When I started investigating the new construction market, I realized that we could have a new build house for the same price as the resales that needed work. Most of the neighborhoods in Lexington have the houses on top of each other too, which we really didn’t want. We like neighbors, but we also want to be able to walk between the houses.

Through July, I tried to figure out the new construction market in the area. I thought I had a head start since we had built our house in Virginia a few years ago, but the process for these Central KY builders was much different. It was hard to stomach the fact that their build time was 11-12 months, and growing. We had built our house in Virginia in less than 4.5 months from contract signature to move in.

I looked up the different floor plans for as many builders as I could find. One builder had very large, but partitioned off, floor plans. Another builder had options available in Richmond, KY, and another builder had those options available for a year from now. I found a deal being offered by one of the builders in Richmond, KY that said “last basement lot of this section – free finished basement.”

I reached out to the listing agent. She took me on a virtual tour of the floor plan I liked, and it was by far my #1 contender. I asked her what “free finished basement” meant, and she said they’d cover the basement and finishing it. I verified several times – a $50k value??? Well, Richmond, KY wasn’t my preferred location, but hard to beat this deal. Plus, that neighborhood was just starting to be built, and we really liked being at the beginning of our last neighborhood’s build out. The listing agent put together a contract, but didn’t mention this deal. I said I wasn’t signing anything that didn’t have that in there. She added it, and then said she had to wait for her boss (the company owner) to come back to town in a couple of days to go over the details. Well, the deal was too good to be true. The deal was that we paid for the basement pour, but they paid to finish it. This deal was going on because the lot was less than favorable, so between the poor lot and less of an incentive, we walked away. That floor plan is still my favorite though, and if we ever move again, it’ll be hard not to go back to that builder. Also, they have the laundry room connected to the master closet or bathroom in their floor plans, and this is the most logical, amazing thing that I had even pointed out in our last house as something that should have been done.

Well, now I was getting desperate. How are we going to find something that we can move into? Maybe we’ll have to wait to list our house in Spring of 2021 because we’ll only find something to build that’s several months out. I’m very grateful that we found something when we did and didn’t have to wait until Spring of 2021 when housing prices have risen so much!

I had tried to get more information for a house that was under construction. We couldn’t change anything, but it was mostly ok. I didn’t love the tile in the bathrooms. The house layout was manageable, but it had a lot of wasted space (we don’t need a sitting room in the master bedroom or a formal living room). The house had a walk-out basement and was part of a neighborhood that had golf and a pool. It was also $393k. Affordable, but not what we were looking for. The lot was over 10k square feet, which is something we wanted. We asked Mr. ODA’s parents to go check it out. They went to see it and were quick to say no. I’m glad they did, and that I didn’t settle. We want our kids to ride their bikes in the driveway and street, and this house is on a greatly sloped hill (like recently rode our bikes down it, and I was scared).

I kept looking. We mostly were looking around Lexington, KY, but not within Lexington because of the lot spacing. We considered several re-sales in Winchester, Georgetown, and Richmond. They all were about $400k and not perfect, so it was hard to jump in.

At the end of July, a house popped up on my search. It was new construction and had been under contract, designed by someone that had to go with a different house because this one was significantly delayed. It was being built by the builder that had 11-12 month lead time on newly constructed homes, a builder without a good reputation, even to me, someone who didn’t grow up in the area. I requested the ‘spec list’ so I could see if there were any deal breakers in the design and selections.

I had hoped for white kitchen cabinets, and these were dark. I loved that there was a covered deck and that the already-selected upgrades to the floor plan were exactly what I would have selected (e.g., mudroom, guest suite, laundry room location, master bathroom layout). It had a pit basement. It was in the area we wanted; it was on a flat part of the road; and it could be ready before next year. The light fixtures were more eclectic than we would have chosen, but those weren’t a deal breaker.

We were told that it was probably going to be ready at the beginning of November. We figured a mid-August list on our home may take a week or 2 to get under contract, and then usually you see a 45 day close (versus our push for 25-30 days usually on rental purchases). We thought we may have a couple of weeks to bridge between selling our home and getting into the new house. Nope.

This was just as the bidding wars were really ramping up and people were losing out on 20-bid type offers on listings. Our house was under contract at the end of the first weekend. They wanted a 3 week close, and we pushed it to 4 weeks. That left 7 weeks of us being ‘homeless,’ which I covered in Part I.

SUMMARY

This is very specific to our needs and desires, but I hope that the thought process and ‘give and take’ in the decision making can be helpful to some. This information is also geared towards the Central KY market, and what you get for the price of a house in different areas of the country varies.

While we’ve had several issues with our home in the first six months, we’re happy to be in KY with family, the location of our house, and the general feel and functionality that it’s given us.