investment properties

Risk Mitigation – LLC or CLUP

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Not that I expect you to know these letters right away, but bear with me.

There’s a common question that comes up with rental properties: have you formed an LLC? An LLC is a limited liability company. This is a business mechanism in which you create an official business for your properties, thereby separating them from your personal finances.

That’s the positive to an LLC – an LLC separates the rental properties from your personal finances. This protects your personal finances in the event of a tenant suing you through one of your properties. However, for this protection to really work for you if you have multiple properties, each property would need to be within its own LLC. For example, if you put 12 properties in an LLC, then yes, they’re separated from your personal finances, but they’re not separated from each other. Meaning, if someone sues you, they can go after your entire portfolio.

Mr. ODA and I have discussed grouping a few houses in different LLCs, but we don’t see the benefit of the costs that go along with it. There are fees to form the LLC, put properties into the LLC, and then an annual fee ($50 in Virginia). We have an LLC for the two properties we have with a partner, but we went a different way for the properties that we own ourselves. We pay $250 annually for a Commercial Liability Umbrella Policy (CLUP).

CLUP

A Commercial Liability Umbrella Policy (CLUP) extends the limits of your primary liability insurance policies. Our CLUP is through State Farm, but our individual policies are not necessarily through State Farm. There are many nuances to how it works; for instance, you cannot have a CLUP on top of commercial liability insurance. We have individual personal insurance policies on all our houses, required to cover $500k, so we can have the CLUP extend those coverages. Each property is listed in the CLUP, even the ones we have with a partner because our ownership had to be at least 50% for it to be covered (which it is).

While the cost will vary based on each scenario and coverage, we pay $250 annually for a $2 million policy. Every 3 years, we’re expected to weigh in on our policy, which includes sending individual homeowners insurance policy documents, each policy’s 3 year loss report, and current pictures of the front and back of each house to our agent. We’ve only had one claim on a property, and that was a car accident that took out our air conditioner in House 1.

CREATING A PARTNERSHIP

We do have an LLC that has two houses in it, but that’s because we own them with a partner.

There’s a cap of 10 mortgages that an individual (or a couple, in our case) can have. When we reached that threshold, we asked our friend and Realtor about other houses we were interested in. Our Realtor purchased two houses as an individual, and then we put them in an LLC to give us ownership. After the first house purchase, we had our real estate attorney set up an LLC. Then after the second house closed, we just had to add that house to the same LLC.

When our partner went under contract on the first house, we created an agreement with him. We owed him half of the down payment and closing costs to be 50% partners on the property. At the time, we didn’t have the cash liquid, and he agreed to allow us to pay him monthly, with interest. So he paid the funds-to-close, and we structured an amortization schedule at the market rate to pay him back. It only took us two months to pay him the balance based on our cash flow, which equated to about $44 in interest for him.

I now manage most of the maintenance, collect all of the rent, pay all of the bills except the mortgage payments that our partner has on automatic billing, and pay him out his 50% share each month.

SETTING UP AN LLC

To establish the LLC, we paid our real estate attorney $393 (split 50/50 with our partner). We answered a few questions, and then we met in their office to sign the paperwork during a half hour meeting. The attorney handled filing all the paperwork with the state and were set up as the “Registered Agent.” A Registered Agent is an individual or business entity that accepts tax and legal documents on behalf of your business.

A year after the LLC was established, I received a bill from the attorney’s office. The bill was for $100 – comprised of $50 for the LLC fee from the state and $50 for the attorney processing the payment. If you’ve read more than one of the posts in this blog, you’ll know that wasn’t going to fly; we don’t pay extra for things that we can do ourselves. I started researching the purpose of a Registered Agent and who could serve as such a person, and I found out it’s not required to be an attorney.

I outlined my proposal to our business partner, and he agreed that we didn’t need to have the Registered Agent as the attorney. He would prefer his other LLCs be managed through them so nothing gets missed, but since I keep a pretty well organized business, I have mechanisms in place that will trigger a reminder of payment if I don’t receive the bill in the mail. We paid the $50 processing fee that year, and then I filed a change with the State Corporation Commission to eliminate the middle man.

LLC AFFECTS

One of the concerns with putting a new mortgage into an LLC was that the bank could “call” the mortgage through the “due on sale” clause. A due-on-sale clause is a provision in a loan that enables lenders to demand that the remaining balance of a mortgage be paid in full if the property is sold or transferred. Transferring a mortgage to the LLC risks triggering the “due on sale” clause, although there were historically very few times a lender would call the mortgage due to an LLC transfer.

Another weird nuance to owning a property in an LLC is that homeowners insurance companies charge more for the same house, with the same human clients, simply because its ownership is placed in an LLC compared to in personal names. For example, after we transferred one of our properties to LLC ownership, the same company increased our annual rate from $484 to $874. We have not been able to figure this one out. Presumably, the biggest source of risk to an insurer is the fact that the people living in the house are not the owners, although when we don’t have a house in an LLC, the insurance company still knows that it’s used as a rental. If there’s anyone out there that can help us understand this behind the scenes insurance nuance, please drop the info in the comments. We were able to find an insurance company with a reasonable price, but it’s still an odd nuance.

For our risk tolerance, we’ve decided that a CLUP is enough coverage in the event of a catastrophe ($500k in regular insurance plus $2M in umbrella). We haven’t established any other LLCs because the cost of establishing individual LLCs is more than we want to take on. However, we did use an LLC where we needed to establish a joint property ownership and be able to legitimately claim expenses for tax purposes. We have two houses, both of which are with the same partner, in one LLC.

August Financial Update

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This has been a crazy month. We went to St. Louis and New York, we tiled the basement bathroom that we’re building, I refinished a desk that I purchased 6 years ago, and we had several activities to occupy our time. Being that we’ve been so busy, we haven’t set any new goals and are still talking through what we think the next few years look like. We are still managing sleep disruptions with our nearly 3 year old, and that takes a lot of time from my day and night. Anyway, here’s how things shook out over the last month – very high credit card bills to cover many large expenses.

just for fun – my before and after of the refinished desk that I bought for $15
  • Utilities: $240. This includes internet, water, sewer, trash, electric, and investment property sewer charges that are billed to the owner and not the tenant. I find it interesting that it’s not routine to have irrigation in Central KY, and that’s led to surprisingly low water bills. Our water, sewer, and trash is all together each month, and it’s only $53 in the middle of the summer!
  • Groceries: $390. On top of that, I had a charge for a 4 month supply of the vitamins that I take, which I pay for up front because I don’t want to pay a surcharge to pay monthly (if I can afford to pay $300 now, I’d rather pay that then end up paying $340 for the same product at the end of 4 months).
  • Gas: $230
  • Restaurants: $215
  • Entertainment/Travel: I broke down the St. Louis trip costs in my previous post. We booked our flights to NY through the Chase portal using points. It was the equivalent of $833 for 3 round trip flights (our daughter as a lap child). We paid for parking at the airport ($36), and that was it. On top of those costs, we had several sports fees and activities that we paid for. I didn’t add up the details, but I estimate that those cost us about $300 this past month.
  • I paid $3,800 worth of medical bills (high deductible plan… we got there).
  • We spent about $175 on tile supplies for the bathroom, which includes returning about $40 worth of materials.
  • Rental work cost us a good bit this month.
    • Our plumber made his rounds to 3 of our houses on one day to address items that I found during the walk throughs in July; this cost us $730.
    • Somehow (very unlike us), we had an outstanding pest control bill from December. When I called to schedule another appointment, they requested payment (rightfully so!). We spent $290 on pest control then.
    • We purchased a hot water heater and a refrigerator for a rental property after our property manager did her walk through. We also purchased a fan and had that installed (we would have done it, but we don’t live there anymore), but we split that cost with our partner. These cost us $2,317.
    • As usual, two houses were late on rent. One paid on Friday and actually included the late fee (10% of rent). Another gave us a letter about a car accident she was in and said she wouldn’t have rent until she received the settlement money from that. It’s the 16th and we still don’t have rent. The positive here is that we have several other properties worth of income that cover the expenses on this house (mortgage), so we’re not floating the mortgage with our own money for this one house.

Here’s a tidbit of my spending. I don’t have Amazon Prime. Rarely do I need something in 2 days or less than $25 that I would need to pay for this service. I search Amazon for things that I eventually want, put it in my cart, and then when I need to hit the $25 free shipping threshold, I add the items to the cart to check out. This is how I handle Christmas shopping basically. I have thoughts on what to get for people, keep it in my “save for later” section, and then order it when I place an order. I actually have several Christmas gifts already purchased.

NET WORTH

Since I’m not able to find the time to coordinate updating all our accounts with Mr. ODA, this is just a rough update of our financials. Our net worth has increased about $58k. I’ve paid down the very high balance on our Citi card already this month, so this snapshot in time isn’t showing that I’ve already made $5k worth of payments towards that. About half of that increase is attributed to an increase in property values. The rest is attributed to the usual mortgage payments and investment balances increasing.

Property Walk-throughs

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Early on in our investing in real estate, we were told to make regular walk throughs of the properties. We were taught to use changing the HVAC filters as the guise to get into the property and look around once a quarter, even if changing the filters was put in the Lease Agreement as the tenant’s responsibility. Realistically, we have mostly great tenants that will tell us what goes wrong in the house and take good care of it. But this isn’t always the case. Plus, once we added two kids to our lives and I no longer worked (i.e., no longer have a set schedule for being out of the house), the rental properties moved to the back burner unless a tenant brought something up specifically.

After our experience with House 9 – both the hoarder and the guys who just turned off the gas to the stove instead of telling us about a gas leak (yea….), we decided it was important to get into these houses at least once a year. In many instances, either one of us or our handyman is in the house at least once a year for a repair, so it’s not a big deal. But there a couple of houses we hadn’t seen in a while. Add in the pandemic, and we really haven’t been in houses all that much.

We moved out of Virginia, where we have 9 properties, last Fall. That means getting into these properties is more of an effort that needs to be properly planned and orchestrated now. We already planned to be in Virginia for a wedding in September. However, the issues that stemmed from the flooring replacement in House 3 made it imperative that we get there as soon as possible.

I emailed all the tenants to let them know that I planned to walk through the property for a quick inspection. I asked if they had any definitive times of day or times of the week that they would prefer I not arrive (e.g., works night shift, child’s nap time). I let them know that they didn’t need to be present for the walk through, that I would send them a document outlining anything I noted, and that I would try to avoid their times of being unavailable, but didn’t guarantee it.

Of the 9 properties, 3 are with a property manager. We took two off the list after they responded positively about how they replace the filters, had several conflicts around the holiday weekend, and we have been in these houses for repairs in the last 6-9 months. One is a house that we had been in regularly and knew she was treating it like we’d treat our home, and the other had our handyman in it recently, who said, “they seem to be by-the-book people.”

While there, we took pictures of the front and back of each house to give to our insurance company. We have a commercial liability umbrella policy, and the underwriters like to update the file every 3 years (details in a future post!). So instead of posting pictures of all the “dirty laundry” (literally and figuratively) I encountered, here’s a picture for this post that’s of our nice, pretty house with great tenants. (Note – Mr. ODA tucked in that piece of vinyl on the back right just after I took this picture!)

HOW DID IT GO?

Well, I started in a house that I’ve only seen one room of since we bought it (this is owned with a partner – he and Mr. ODA have handled most issues to date). I was overwhelmed. There were 5 full/queen size beds in the house, where the lease holds a husband/wife and adult daughter. There was stuff everywhere. We just replaced the HVAC in the house, but they had all the windows open, fans on, and the HVAC running. I knew that there was water damage from a plumbing issue, but I didn’t realize that it had affected the kitchen and the basement (thought it was just a part of the basement). It was a hard way to start. I should have started with an easy one that I knew would be in great condition. 🙂

From there, it went pretty well though. Most people obviously cleaned and changed the filter because I was coming. This is a good thing and a bad thing. If I don’t show up for a year, is the house cluttered and a mess? Then there was a house that I went in, where he didn’t bother picking a single thing up for my arrival. Dirty socks, things strewn about. It wasn’t to the point of hoarding, and I didn’t find any food laying around to attract pests, but it wasn’t how I would manage a household.

I ended two days of seeing 7 houses with a lengthy to-do list. Plumber, HVAC technician, roofer, electrician, pest control, and then a random assortment of things that I don’t know who to call for (e.g., replacing bedroom doors, closing in literally 2 sections of chain link fence that are missing). I also made note of things that will require our attention during a turnover, but that don’t necessarily require attention right now (e.g., removing old caulk around the tub and re-caulking it).

TENANT FOLLOW UP

I sent an email to each tenant. I thanked them for their time, outlined the items that I noted needed attention (e.g., vacuum HVAC filter cover, vacuum dust build up on bathroom, unblock exits), documented anything we did while we were there (e.g., gutter clean out, caulking), and sent a list of reminders that are the lease items we see most frequently broken (e.g., only adults that have passed the background check and are on the lease may reside there; any fines incurred by lack of yard maintenance will be passed onto the tenant who is responsible for yard maintenance per the lease; change air filters no less than every 3 months; all surfaces are to be cleaned and remain clear of food particles as to not attract pests).

Contractors are scheduled a couple of weeks out, so nothing is moving very quickly, but at least we’ll get into these houses for some preventative maintenance.

Lesson learned that when life gets in the way and active management of rental properties becomes a little too passive, the to-do list grows pretty long. There was nothing critical that we weren’t aware of, and we could handle these things during turnover, but I’ll try to get ahead of some of it in the near term, especially where we have long term tenants.

Hear more from Mrs. ODA

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Back in May, I was a guest on Maggie Germano’s Podcast, “The Money Circle.” I shared some of our background and how we started investing in real estate. We brushed on topics like establishing an LLC, tax advantages, and how you don’t need to start big to just get started. It was a brand new experience for me, but I’m passionate about our real estate experiences, and I loved being able to share. I hope you’ll check it out!

The Duds – Walking Away From Contracts

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I just shared the details of the home inspection contingency in the real estate purchase agreements in my last post. I was laying the foundation to share what we’ve encountered to invoke the termination clause of the home inspection contingency.

COMMERCIAL PORTFOLIO

There was a time where we were trying to grow fast. We wanted to work smarter not harder, so we investigated commercial portfolios instead of buying one single family house at a time. We worked with our Realtor’s office’s commercial team to find an off-market deal of several houses. The owner of all these single family houses had lumped several houses in his portfolio by geographic area of Richmond, VA. He had provided us with 13 ‘sub-portfolios’ to review, but he was willing to sell individual houses.

We went through the entire portfolio to decide which houses we were interested in. We were able to eliminate several from the start because his rent to purchase price ratio were far from the 1% Rule we aim for (the monthly rent amount (e.g., $1000) is 1% of the purchase price (e.g, $100,000). We identified 10 houses we wanted to see and met up with the owner’s property manager to get into each house. Afterwards, we went through the list of houses, the comps we could find for purchase price, and discussed the condition of each house as we saw it. We ended up making an offer on 5 houses.

We received the ratified contracts on May 9th of that year, and we immediately contacted our home inspector to come through the houses with us. We met with the property manager, our home inspector, and our Realtor to inspect the 5 houses in one day. We negotiated with our home inspector that he didn’t need to write a report for each of the houses; I would take notes as we went through everything, and he wouldn’t charge us full price for the inspections.

We knew the houses weren’t in great shape, but we weren’t prepared for all the details we found in the home inspections. During our time at the houses, the tenants were quick to complain about the maintenance on the properties, saying things would take a long time to get fixed or they wouldn’t ever be addressed. The inspection found strong evidence of mold, patch jobs in structural beams in the crawl space, appliances not in full working order, windows screwed shut, and several other minor things.

We attempted to negotiate by the seller providing $10,000 per house in seller-paid closing costs. We didn’t ask for anything to be fixed because we saw the work that had been done in these houses, and we wanted it done right. The seller denied our request for funds to address the home inspection issues, and we walked away from all of the contracts.

FIRE DAMAGE

This was a hard one for me to walk away from. The house itself was in a high-crime neighborhood of Richmond. However, only THREE! parcels away, houses were being torn down, rebuilt, and sold for significantly higher than purchased. I saw the potential of the area’s revitalization. But we were not in the business of flipping houses nor doing major repairs. Not only were we not interested in that because we wanted to be able to create the cash flow as fast as possible, we also want to be able to hold these properties as rentals instead of flipping them so we maintained a continuous income stream.

There were several concerns when we walked through the property. The kitchen was a mess, there were signs of water damage in multiple places, the floor felt soft upstairs, the upstairs deck didn’t seem stable, the house needed a lot of TLC with the overgrowth, and then best of all – clear fire damage to the structure of the home when we went in the basement.

This isn’t a picture from when we were looking at the house, but this is the condition 3 years later, which shows just how ‘great’ of a house it was. 🙂 This is the backyard.

We were under contract for $72,500 in May 2017. The house recently sold for $296,000. Although it seems we missed the opportunity that I felt was there, I found pictures of a failed flip attempt in 2019/2020 that uncovered even more damage behind the walls than we even knew (although we suspected), and none of the houses around it have sold for nearly $300k. Therefore, we don’t believe that was a reasonably-expected sale price had we taken this beast on. And what’s not known in those numbers is just how expensive the flip was to that owner, both in headaches and wallet!

A KENTUCKY MESS

Mr. ODA went to see a house in Winchester, KY without me (it was easy because he was working near there, and it wasn’t worth me packing up our baby to go walk through a house that we may not even want). He and our Realtor walked the house and decided it was worth putting an offer in. The house had two units set up inside it, which was a goal of ours (duplex = one building the maintain with two income streams). The cash flow on it was great, so he probably turned a blind eye to too many negative issues during that first visit.

The inspection was $500. I was there for the event, but didn’t walk the house with the inspector. He ran through everything with me after he was done, but the tenants were present, and I didn’t want to bring my baby into their smoke-infested house (first red flag because we don’t allow smoking in any of our properties).

The first thing the inspector said was that the roof needed replaced. He pointed out that several tree limbs were in contact with the roof, and the roof had considerable algae growth on it. Basically, everything on the outside of the house needed repaired or replaced: siding, decks, roof, gutters, removal of vines on the house, negative slope of ground towards the house. The doors and windows were old and broken, so none had the proper seal to prevent water infiltration, in addition to not being able to maintain temperature.

On the inside, there were several code violations with how the kitchens were built (e.g., venting for range), and several large cracks in the walls, some of which were patched poorly and never repainted. There were five or six electrical issues that needed to be addressed immediately because they were a fire hazard. There were signs of water damage in the ceilings, as well as in the bathrooms where the peel and stick tiles were ‘floating’ and warped.

As if that wasn’t enough, the straw that broke the camels back for me was the head room given for the upstairs unit entrance. The required head space by code is apparently 6’6”, and we only had 5’6”. This seemed to be a big problem because an average man is 5’9”, and the average height of women at 5’4” doesn’t exactly give much wiggle room.

I was worried about all the work that needed to be put into this house. The tenants weren’t taking good care of the house, so it wasn’t worth putting a lot of money into it, just for them to destroy it. They had been there for a while, so it wasn’t like they were going to leave voluntarily any time soon. The neighborhood wasn’t in great condition, so a fully renovated house wasn’t called for when it came to resale or the type of client looking for a rental there.

It was a difficult balance, but the house had way too much deferred maintenance, way too many things poorly fixed/maintained when there was an attempt, several unfinished projects, and too many code violations to move forward. Mr. ODA really wanted to buy a house in this area before the summer was up, and he was pushing for the cash flow side of it since it had two separate units bringing in income. But that cash flow is non-existent if you’re having to put it back into the house.

These are the three main stories that have stuck with me. We learned a lot about houses through the process, and we feel we made the right decision on each of them to walk away. Through these experiences, we solidified our decision-making to focus only on houses that have been properly maintained and require little work to get rented. Having a unit already rented with long-term tenants isn’t always the “diamond in the rough” that you think it is.

The inspection is buying you information. Once you find out that information, the money is a sunk cost, and you should use it to now choose if the house is still worth owning or not. While inspections aren’t exactly cheap and aren’t tax deductible if we don’t buy the property (if you have a legal strategy, drop it in the comments please!), that information gained is important. That $500 “lost” is better off because you’re not buying a money pit that will cost a lot more in the long run. Remember, this is a business, and it’s best to keep your emotions out of it. Don’t pinch pennies and end up costing yourself big dollars later on.

Most times you’ll do an inspection, find some things to fix or negotiate down on the purchase price, and even find yourself in a situation where the inspection “pays for itself.” Other times, it doesn’t work like that. Life lessons can cost money, and inspections can help point out duds so that those lessons don’t end up costing a lot more.

Happy investing!

Home Inspection Clause

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I’ve mentioned that you shouldn’t be afraid to [legally] walk away from a contract on a house that isn’t going to work. I thought it would be fun to run through the duds (houses) that we walked away from and why, but first, what is the home inspection clause and how does it work?

The home inspection contingency is a clause within the real estate contract that allows the prospective buyer to enter the home and inspect it before closing. The clause usually has an expiration date on it, meaning the inspection and any negotiations need to be done within X days of the contract ratification (ratification is once all parties have signed). I would recommend using a professional to look at the house, versus you thinking you can find the signs of a major a problem. It will cost you 1-2 hours of time and about $300-$600.

It’s important to note that even if a house is sold “as is,” you can still inspect it, ask for corrections, and/or walk away from the contract. “As-is” just means that the buyer should not enter the contract with the intent of the seller doing anything for them. But really, anything in life is negotiable, right?

Additionally, putting a home inspection clause in the contract doesn’t mean you have to perform a home inspection. So put the clause in there as a means to ‘escape’ if you need it.

THE LEGAL LANGUAGE

I was going to share a screenshot of one of our contracts, but the home inspection section is over a page long, so I’ll paraphrase. The contract was subject to a home inspection, and the Purchaser had to “provide the seller with all inspection reports, cost of repairs and Purchaser’s written repair request no later than 10 days after the Date of Ratification.” It continues to state that the inspection is paid for by the Purchaser, and the Purchaser cannot require the Seller to perform any inspection or pay for it. Then there is an outline for how long each party has to review the request and return it to the other party (e.g., negotiation period). Finally, there’s the clause that allows the Purchaser to walk away.

In one of our Kentucky contracts, it also states that all inspections must be ordered and paid for by the Buyer, and that the Seller must provide reasonable access to the property to perform inspections. Interestingly, the Kentucky contract focuses heavily on removing any responsibility from the Realtor(s) during the inspection process. I hadn’t noticed that nuance before, and now I’m curious how much has gone wrong in Kentucky that there are several sentences along the lines of “The parties hereto release the above Realtors and real estate companies from, and waive, any and all claims arising out of or connected with any services or products provided by any vendor.”

The Kentucky contract’s home inspection contingency is as follows. “The BUYER hereby agrees that he/she has inspected the property and hereby accepts the property and its improvements in its present “AS-IS” condition; with no warranties, expressed or implied, by SELLER and/or Realtors. BUYER may have the property inspected and may declare the contract null and void, with earnest money returned to the BUYER, by notifying SELLER or SELLER’s agent in writing within 15 days from contract acceptance. Failure to have inspection and notify SELLER or SELLER’s agent in writing within said time shall constitute a waiver of this inspection clause and an acceptance of the property in its “as-is” condition. The time frame established in this paragraph is an absolute deadline.”

I’ll say it again: I applaud Virginia’s plain language use in their contract templates. While the home inspection clause is lengthy in Virginia’s template, it’s written in an easy way to read and understand, unlike this Kentucky paragraph. I’ve also read New York’s template, and it’s even more painful to read and is written in legal jargon.

Quick aside. Virginia is a “buyer beware” state. This means that the seller does not have to disclose anything about the condition of the property to you. Whereas Kentucky requires the seller to fill out a form that identifies all known issues. Know the requirements where you’re purchasing/selling.

THE INSPECTION

Remember that you need to have the inspection completed and the inspector’s report written up with enough time for you to review it with your Realtor and decide how to proceed (e.g., ask the seller for repairs), all within the timeframe established in the contract (e.g., 10 days from ratification). If you want the house inspected, you should look to hire that individual within the first day of ratifying the contract.

When you hire a home inspector, they’re going to look through the house and identify any deficiencies. They’re looking at all the major mechanics of the house, identifying any safety issues, recommending repair/replacement, and making note of items that aren’t currently a concern but may develop into one. You should have a good understanding of the house’s foundation, roof, plumbing, HVAC, electricity, and appliances through the inspection.

While it’s not required for you to be there during the whole inspection, I’ve found it to be more helpful if you are. We’ve done it where we were present through the entire thing, but there’s a lot of down time for that, and we’ve been there just for the end to get a walk through of the findings. If you’re not there to see it in person, the pictures and explanations may not be completely clear.

The inspector will provide you with a detailed report within a couple of days of the inspection, which has pictures of the deficiencies and possibly an estimated cost of repair. The issue could be as small as paint imperfections, or as big as a structural issue. Here are some examples we’ve had on homes we did purchase.

BUYER’S NEXT STEPS

  • You can accept the deficiencies identified and take no further action. Sometimes there’s a contract addendum that’s required where you state you completed the home inspection and are requesting nothing from it.
  • You can request repairs from the seller, or you can negotiate the contract price to compensate for the deficiencies. The seller is unlikely to address superficial notes (e.g., painting), but may take notice for any major issues (e.g., gutters, roofing, HVAC). You can request the seller to repair any item from the list, but understand that you’ll catch more bees with honey. If you submit every item to them, they’re more likely to say no to many items on the list, and you no longer hold the control of what’s getting fixed. If you provide a short list that appears important, they’re probably going to accept the repair list. The list should be formally submitted (i.e., signatures) to the seller, and the seller should have to sign the list, agreeing to the repairs, within a certain period of time. As good practice, the buyer should be walking the property within a day or two of closing; you want to verify that the house is still in working order and the same condition as when you signed the contract to purchase. We did have an issue where the seller was not performing the tasks agreed to on the home inspection request form, and we had to make a few trips to the house to ensure it got done.
  • In extreme cases, you can invoke the termination clause and walk away from the contract. We did this on a house that several maintenance issues that were deferred and a structural issue; on another house that had several issues that were fixed poorly and one tenant showed us a huge mold issue in a closet; and on another house that had fire damage that was never fixed. Sometimes the seller will request the home inspection report. It’s a service you paid for, so you’re not required to provide it (but check your contract language to verify you’re not required to turn it over).

HOME INSPECTION MINDSET

If fatal flaws are uncovered through the inspection, you may feel like you’re committed once you’ve spent $500 on a home inspection; think of it in terms of how much you’ll save in headaches and costs down the road fixing all the things that you were made aware of through that process. Real estate investing is a business, and sometimes there are just costs of doing business that may not feel good, but are worth you moving forward in a positive direction in the long run. Just know that the home inspection contingency is a tool in your tool belt as a buyer.

The 4% rule – How does Real Estate Play In?

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The common goal in the FI/RE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) community is to reach a point where your net worth is 25x your annual spending, meaning your expenses are 4% of your net worth. This is an extreme oversimplification of things because of the number of variables associated with where your net worth might be, and how to access it. For example, retirement accounts have requirements to be met before drawing funds; while you may have hit the 4% expense to net worth ratio, it may not mean that you have that money liquid to cover your spending.

When the ODAs started down the path of FI/RE, we did it with a real estate rental portfolio. This path of net worth growth really doesn’t fit the traditional mold. It provides regular cash flow, rather than an account with a balance that’s drawn down. 

As mentioned in previous posts, there are numerous ways to make money in real estate. The path we have taken is probably one of the simplest and most repeatable for anyone. We own a portfolio of single family rental houses, most of which were bought straight from the MLS. These basic properties are in basic neighborhoods with regular tenants. Nothing special. We acquired these properties by focusing on the 1% rule in real estate – try to secure 1% of the property’s purchase price in monthly rent. Another oversimplification of how things really go, but if we were able to find a $100k property that rents for $1,000 a month, we know we’re going to make money long term. 

For these properties, we typically put 20%-25% down and finance the rest through a conventional mortgage. We find a tenant, and then the 4 ways to make money in real estate go to work for us: appreciation, tenant mortgage pay-down, tax advantages, and most importantly for our situation and FI/RE – cash flow. 

I want to talk about how we can reach a FI/RE number through real estate cash flow differently and more quickly than using traditional stock market investing. 

The $100k house had a 20% down payment and mortgage rate at 5% interest, which brings the monthly principal and interest payment to $429. Add another $121 for taxes and insurance (using round numbers here!), $100 for maintenance and capital expenditures savings, and $100 for a property manager; this comes to $750 worth of monthly expenses. At $1,000 per month of income, you have $250 per month of cash flow in your pocket. $250 per month equates to $3,000 per year of cash flow. With the $20,000 down payment and about $5K in closing costs, it means that our $25k investment nets us $3k per year in cash flow. 

Circling back to the 4% rule for stock market investments, $3k in cash flow requires a savings of $75k. But we only had to invest $25k! We’re banking on the monthly cash flow, rather than a “stagnant” savings.

We took that math and ran with it. Our rental portfolio has 12 houses in it. While we’ve shown in prior posts that each house’s numbers aren’t as clean and simple as this example (some better, some worse), if we take that $3k annually and multiply by the 12 properties, we have $36k in annual cashflow for only $300k invested. 

What would you rather need to produce $36k income – $300k or $900k?

Can you scale a rental portfolio to reach enough annual cashflow such that you can live off the cash flow? 

Rental property investing is not completely passive. We have tenants to manage, properties to maintain, property managers to manage, income and expenses to track for taxes, lending efficiencies to explore, and the list goes on. But if you’re willing to put in a little work to reach financial independence (the FI part), you can do it substantially faster by finding strong properties to provide significant cash flow than if you were to take the totally passive route of simple stock market (index fund) investing. 

Note, there’s nothing wrong with that – we have a substantial position in the stock market due to the tax free growth benefits of retirement accounts. The power of real estate investing saw our net worth grow faster than we’d have ever dreamed since we bought our first rental in 2016. The proof is in the pudding and we advocate to anyone to just get started!

New Flooring

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I had this post teed up to share at the beginning of the month. I thought the story line was going to be that I went on vacation while all new flooring was installed in a home 500 miles away with little effort by me. It’s no longer a positive story. This post is to share that there’s struggles, but they’re only a few weeks of the year. It’s not a cumbersome year-long process to have rental properties.

This house has the same tenants in it from the time we purchased it in 2016. They’re a family of 5 with a dog, so it’s not surprising that the carpet reached its useful life. I don’t know when the carpet was installed, but I assume it was right before these tenants moved in, which was a few months before we purchased the house. The carpet was matted down in the high traffic areas, and it was starting to separate at the seams. The vinyl between the kitchen and laundry room was also peeling back. While I wouldn’t typically look to do such a large project while tenants are still living there, we made the exception to keep them happy and wanting to stay even longer. We decided to replace all the flooring in the house, except for the bathrooms.

My first lesson learned: keep these major projects to vacant houses. While there are exceptions, such as these long term tenants, the tenant just doesn’t understand the work that’s going to go into it. We had a bad experience that dragged this out for multiple weeks, but even with that, the tenant had a lot of complaints about having to move their closet things and move their furniture. I kept reiterating that it’s short-term ‘pain’ for long-term gain, but he kept wanting to tell me how much work it was. It was hard to not retort that he asked for this and we could have said no.

PURCHASE PROCESS

The experience to purchase the carpet was less than satisfactory. We’ve had several positive experiences, so I wasn’t going to name the company over this one incident, but it just keeps getting worse, so here it is: Home Depot. Eight phone calls before installation, and that doesn’t count the mess I’ve managed for the last two weeks. Typically, I would just go into the store to make the purchase. However, our closest store is now a half hour away, and they have an 800 number, so I thought it would be fine. I should have just driven down to the store after the measurement was done.

I was trying to compare replacing all the flooring with vinyl plank against putting sheet vinyl and carpet back in. In a previous house, we spent slightly more by tearing up the old carpet and refinishing the floors under it. We saw it as a long-term investment. Instead of replacing carpet every 5 years, we just needed to mop the floors, and they’d last longer. For this house, since I knew vinyl installation was expensive (relative to carpet), I thought maybe it would be better for us to spend more to get hard surface flooring installed throughout the house instead of replacing in-kind. The house was built in 2007, so I didn’t have the prospect of beautiful hardwood flooring already being under the carpet.

Home Depot’s process to compare the two was painful at best, so I gave up on the comparison between carpet/vinyl and hardwood/vinyl plank.

They run a promotion that carpet is free installation if you spend $600. Apparently, that’s only for non-in-stock carpets. So I asked, “which aren’t in stock?” Their response? “I don’t know; we just need to try SKUs to find out.” Quite an inefficient process. Our carpet and installation came to $1.24/sf, so I quickly priced out of the SKUs that were less than that without installation in our trial and error process of finding carpeting.

The sheet vinyl always comes with a high installation price tag, so I was ready for that. I wasn’t ready to be told that several of the first ones I tried weren’t eligible for installation. I was left with one option, but luckily it’s a pretty gray-wood-look.

I finally approved the carpet and sheet vinyl options after 3 phone calls and the measurement appointment.

The receipt I received after I paid said that there were some items to pick up. Well, if I’m paying double the cost of the material for it to be installed, I don’t intend to go pick up product. That took 4 phone calls to get squared away. And honestly, it wasn’t even any of the calls I made that solved it; someone from the store called me to ask if I wanted to move forward with my quote (that I had already accepted and paid for in full), and she got it all figured out so that it was right. Or so I thought.

INSTALLATION DAY

The installer showed up to the house without the material. He missed the note that he had to stop and pick up the items because, for some reason, that’s not the norm. I truly am confused that I pay for the installation of a product, and it’s my responsibility to gather all the materials (lifting, carrying, organizing, storing) until the installation day. I hadn’t encountered this before. In the last house that we put vinyl in, we purposely saved $75 by borrowing a friend’s truck and bringing the vinyl there. That was an active decision to change their norm of delivery, so this was surprising.

The installer removed the vinyl in the kitchen, and then went to the local Home Depot and gathered the materials. He was gone from the house for 2.5 hours to do this, with the store 10 minutes away. When he returned to the house, he got the carpet completed (which honestly was impressive) in the rest of the house, and then around 7 pm told the tenant he couldn’t do the vinyl because of damaged subfloor in the laundry room. I’m frustrated because 1) he could have done the kitchen part and returned for the laundry room part, since there once was a seam, and I don’t think they would have tried to cut and mold around a doorframe to keep it all one piece; and 2) he could have told me this when he removed the vinyl before noon, so I didn’t lose a business day trying to get the subfloor taken care of.

I didn’t even know the whole story. I had to call the installation company (i.e., not Home Depot) to ask why I hadn’t been told the next steps. The customer service representative didn’t know what I was talking about. She had to call the installer to find out the story. The installer claimed that there was a “huge” “pool” of water on the floor and water was just continuing to pour into the house at the door jamb. I found this hard to believe. These tenants call us over every single weather crack in the drywall; there’s no way they had water coming into the house and didn’t tell us about it. Regardless of my frustration, the result was the same: I had to find someone to fix the damaged subfloor.

Our handymen options that we’ve used were unavailable for weeks, so we asked a friend of ours if he wanted to make some money and take care of it. He did a great job! He cut out the rotted wood and laid new plywood and luan. We would have preferred the installers handle this. It’s surprising because for a roof replacement, we sign off that they will repair any damaged plywood during their installation and bill us for each piece laid. Why can’t the flooring be the same set up? It became especially frustrating when we heard that the next installer was cutting wood on site.

INSTALLATION DAY: ROUND 2

Now we needed to reschedule the installation. I called as soon as our friend finished the job, and they said they had an installer who could be there the next day (a Friday)! I should have known it wasn’t a good thing that they could fit me in last minute. The arrival window, for this man coming from Maryland to Richmond, VA, was 10-1. At 12:30, he told me he was almost at Home Depot to get the materials. Well, the materials were at the house, which I told him. So then somehow, he took his sweet time, and at 1:30, he called to ask me where the address was. I told him the address and that no one else had an issue finding this house. He told me he had arrived at about 1:45.

At 4:00, my tenant called me to tell me that he helped the installer move all the appliances into the living room and that he hadn’t been in the house yet because he was outside cutting wood in the rain. Wait. I just had to repair my subfloor because of water damage, but you’re out there cutting wood in the rain to put into my house while it’s wet? I was also irritated that all the appliances were moved before the job was ready to be started. I called the installation company, and I was livid. I was already frustrated with the communication and process to date, and this was just icing on the cake.

As I was complaining to them about the situation, I received a text from my tenant saying that the installer said he was quitting for the day because of the rain and MAY be back tomorrow. He left, leaving the appliances in their living room, with no certainty that the job would be completed the next day. So my tenants were left without an operable kitchen (violation on me at that point) and with a cluttered living room, with no certainty it would be put back together the next day. Plus, this was originally a two day job. One day was already taken with ripping up the vinyl and replacing the carpet, meaning only a few hours should be needed to lay the vinyl. To be told this is going to be a two day job just for this installation is wrong.

The installation company tried to tell me to be patient because the installer is coming from Maryland. It’s not on me to account for this man’s 2-3 hour commute. I can’t work in DC, but live outside of DC (like many do), and say to my employer, “I live 3 hours away, so I can’t start before 11.” No. That man should leave his house at 6 to account for that difference, or you shouldn’t assign this man a job that’s too far away. Don’t inconvenience your customer, making a 3 hour job into a two day job, because your installer lives outside the region.

The company made the installer go back to the house to fix it that night. Instead, he just picked up the wet wood and tools, and left the appliances for my tenant to return to the kitchen.

INSTALLATION DAY: ROUND 3

I was adamant that installer #2 was to not return to the house. The next available date was a week later, and I said I’d rather it done right than fast. The new installer came and finished the job in under 3 hours.

RESOLUTION

The flooring is in. The communication and process was horrific. While managing the installation company, I also had to manage the tenant’s expectations and hear out his complaints. It took more effort than I anticipated, but it’s now over, and I shouldn’t have to deal with flooring in this house for another 5+ years.

This was self-inflicted. I chose to replace the flooring while a tenant was still in there because the flooring was degrading and they’ve been good tenants for over 5 years. In the future, I’d prefer to hold off until there’s tenant turnover, or I will more clearly communicate how the process works and how much effort it will take to manage while living there.

BONUS: TAXES

Quick teaching moment. The entire cost of full flooring replacement cannot be captured in this year’s taxes. The IRS expects the cost of flooring to be depreciated over its useful life, which is 5 years.

We’ll say the entire cost of the purchase was $4,000. I divide $4,000 by 60 months, which is 66.67 per month over the 5 years of depreciation.

Since I made this purchase in May 2021, I will only capture May through December for this year’s cost. The monthly cost of $66.67 is multiplied by 8 months (inclusive of May), which is a repair/maintenance cost of $533.33 for 2021 taxes.

For the years 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, I will capture 12 months worth of the depreciation monthly cost, or (66.67*12) $800.04. For 2026, I have 4 months left of the total cost that haven’t been claimed on my taxes, or the balance of the total cost that I incurred in May 2021, $266.68. However, if I claim this total, it will over-claim the total cost by $0.17, so this final amount should be adjusted to 266.51.

When filing your own taxes, the software typically calculates the depreciated amount for you. We enter the total cost, that we’re do a 5-year straight-line depreciation, and the amount already claimed on previous year taxes. The system will auto-calculate the amount to be claimed for the year. It’s important to keep track of these expenses year after year, to ensure you’re not claiming more than you spent.

June Financial Update

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We’re continuing our spring/summer of travel and activity, which is why there are fewer posts and lots more spending.

The stock market has increased, which has been the main factor in our net worth change. We paid $2,000 towards the mortgage we’re paying down, leaving a balance of $3,300. This mortgage will be paid off once all our rent is collected for July; it was pushed back a little bit because of the flooring replacement that occurred in one of our rentals, which is why our credit card balance is much lower than last month. We’re also still waiting for half of one property’s rent, which is the norm these days.

  • Utilities: $250. This includes internet, cell phones, water, sewer, trash, electric, and investment property sewer charges that are billed to the owner and not the tenant.
  • Groceries: $518
  • Gas: $268
  • Restaurants: $165. Our credit card reimburses for many of these expenses; we received credits totaling $120.13 in the last month.
  • Entertainment/Medical: $1,093
  • Investment: $1,100
  • Insurance Costs (personal and rentals): $845

VIGILANCE ON CREDIT CARD REWARDS

Mr. ODA discovered that our PNC credit card rewards balance was decreasing, despite earning new rewards this cycle. He investigated further and noticed that we had been losing rewards for a few months now. PNC has a policy that they don’t issue their rewards until you hit $100 worth of rewards. Once we hit $100, PNC sends us a check in the mail. Since they send a check, we still receive paper statements, even though we regularly check our financial accounts online. Over the past few months, both of us checked the balance to see “ok, we’re nearing $100,” but didn’t put any more effort into knowing the details of the balance. Mr. ODA happened to notice that the statement didn’t make sense.

$89+3 somehow equals $82. There isn’t a single section on our statement or via our online account that identifies the loss of rewards Mr. ODA called PNC to ask for more details and learned that our rewards expire after 2 years, despite their policy of not issuing a check until you hit $100. They basically said, it doesn’t matter that your account is over 10 years old, or that credit has been used less in the last year due to the pandemic, or that they don’t clearly identify the expiration of rewards and just identify a lower balance. As a comparison, and I keep going back to Chase, but Chase changed up their reward categories to allow the consumer to earn more rewards during the pandemic (e.g., in addition to giving rewards in the travel category, since consumers weren’t traveling, they added grocery and home improvement stores as major reward categories).

The PNC customer service representative reinstated 60 days worth of lost rewards and issued a statement credit. We don’t want a statement credit because we no longer want to use this credit card, earning rewards that we’ll never be able to capture. If we use this credit card to use up the statement credit, that’s rewards that could be earned on a different credit card. Now Mr. ODA is fighting for the credit to be applied to our checking account or to have a check sent to us (which is the preference on our profile) and fighting for the reinstatement of the rest of the rewards lost.

Without PNC, we’re down to 4 credit cards in our regular rotation. We have 3 cards that we use for categories (gas, grocery, restaurants, travel, home improvement stores), and then we have the Citi Double Cash card that is for “everyday purchases.”

May Financial Update

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RENTAL PROPERTIES

We paid $2,850 in extra principal towards the main mortgage we’re paying down, leaving that mortgage with a balance of $5,500. We had a $4k flooring purchase on another house that has set our pay off timeline a few weeks back, but we’ll still have that mortgage paid off in the next couple of months. We have a rental property that we purchased in 2016 that has flooring that’s at least that old. The carpet has long passed its useful life, and the linoleum in the kitchen and laundry room has started to peel up at the seam. Typically, we wouldn’t want to replace flooring while a tenant still lives there, but they’ve lived with this for almost a year, and they’ve been our tenants since we purchased the house. As a means of keeping the tenant happy, we agreed to replace the flooring in all the rooms except the bathrooms.

We had two of our tenants not pay rent by the 5th, as required by the lease. They’re the two that are typically late, and they’re typically not up front with telling us about it. We’ve said several times that we’re really flexible landlords, but we can’t be flexible if we’re not told what is happening. With one tenant, who had just recently irked us with a plumbing issue and being incommunicado, we didn’t even reach out for information. We’ve had enough of their antics and having to chase them for rent. So I simply sent them their notice of default letter, outlining all their rights as tenants as now required under COVID-related procedures. I received an email letting me know that they’d pay on the 7th. I love their nonchalant response, like they hold the power and will pay whenever they feel like it (hmm). For the other tenant that was late, she texted to say she’d be late with the payment on the 7th, and then on the 7th only paid part of the rent due. She said she was in a car accident and there was an issue with her sick leave pay out, but she’d get it to us when it got fixed. She resolved it on the 12th, although still without the late fee.

We were able to get the invoice on the HVAC replacement for one property, which meant we paid our partner the $3,288 we owed him, on top of his usual $2,167 that we pay out for him to pay the mortgages and then his share of the profits (since I manage all the rent collections).

OUR SPENDING

Our credit card balances are high for several reasons. The $4k flooring purchase; as well as the insurance for one of our properties that isn’t escrowed because we paid off that mortgage, which was $436; an expensive gift purchase that isn’t transparent in the cash and credit line items because that cost was split 3 ways (i.e., we received 2/3 of that cost back in cash, but it’s still reflect in the credit line); and our travel.

We booked a camp site for the end of the month that required payment up front. We just got back from a trip, which increased our spending. But I’ll note that when we travel, we’re not eating expensive meals. Our interest is in the experiences and activities, rather than exploring sit down local restaurants. Our food for 5 days cost us $161 as a family of 4. We also ended up only paying for 2 of the 4 nights in the hotel because the air conditioning was broken, even after they came to ‘fix’ it, and then, when I was checking under the bed to see if any toys or socks got left behind as we were leaving, I found a large, dead roach. We didn’t ask for any comps; one was automatically reflected in my final invoice without my prompting, and then when the manager was speaking to Mr. ODA about his stay, he volunteered removing another night.

We opened a new credit card to take advantage of the bonuses since we knew we’d have this travel and the flooring cost to meet the $4,000 spending threshold for their bonus. This credit card has an annual fee of $95 and no 0% interest period, which goes against our norm when looking to open a new credit card. However, the bonus can be transferred to our Chase Rewards Portal, where we can use it to book travel at 50% the cost. We also received a $50 grocery credit.

ROUTINE UPDATES

  • My husband and I cashed in the last of his savings bonds that we got as children, so that was an extra $735 that we brought it that wasn’t planned.
  • We paid about $6,074 for our regular mortgage payments. Several of our properties had mortgage increases due to escrow shortages. I haven’t figured out which I dislike more: planning for tax and insurance payments, or the large escrow increases that seem to happen year after year. I think it’s the escrow though.
  • Every month, $1100 is automatically invested between each of our Roth IRAs and each child’s investment accounts. I should also note that I don’t speak to other investments because they happen before take-home pay, but my husband maxes out his TSP (401k) each year as well, which I had also done when I was employed.
  • Our grocery shopping cost us $700. Honestly, I don’t even know how to explain that cost jump. I think it’s because my husband shopped some deals at Kroger and Costco, so we stocked up on some things that aren’t part of our routine purchasing.   
  • We spent $200 on gas. Two trips to Cincinnati, our trip to Atlanta, and then more-than-usual trips around town. 
  • $400 went towards utilities. It’s higher than last month because we paid 3 months of our cell phones, which gets us back on quarterly billing as a family. Utilities include internet, cell phones, water, sewer, trash, electric, and investment property sewer charges that are billed to the owner and not the tenant. We still haven’t sought reimbursement from the builder on our electric bill, but this month’s bill was even less than the last month’s. 
  • Our entertainment costs included baseball game tickets for our trip as well as two games later this summer, parking for the games this past weekend, a new shirt for our son, activities for the kids, and the hotel. This past month, we spent $650 on things I’d classify as entertainment related. I also included boarding for our dog ($100) in this total.
  • Speaking of our dog, he had his annual appointment (shots and the year’s worth of preventative medicines), and that cost us $500.
  • We spent $292 eating at restaurants and ordering take out. We utilized a Door Dash credit on one of our Chase credit cards, which was about $30.
  • But! I killed it with running errands this month and actually returning things that needed to be returned. I returned $150 worth of items one day!
  • We paid our State taxes during this period too. Between two states, that was $954. Also, anecdotally, I’ll share that we spent $6.40 to mail our Virginia tax return. We processed our taxes through Credit Karma, as we had done last year. We got through the federal e-file and moved onto the state filing, only to find out that if you’re filing partial states, Credit Karma doesn’t support it. I had to print 70 pages of our federal return, sign it, and ship it off to Virginia.

SUMMARY

Our net worth actually dipped this month. The stock market is the main factor in that, but the house valuation estimates are starting to level off and look more realistic as well.

Between our personal lives and our business life with these rental properties, we were sure kept busy. We expect the Spring months to be a busy time of year, and honestly it feels good to be active again. While we’ve loosened the purse strings for the summer months, especially after having done hardly anything for the last year, it was still a shock to see just how much we spent in these categories. But that’s the benefit of looking at your finances regularly. We can either choose to remain on course with our summer plans, or we can dial it back if we feel this was more than we expected.

Since we know we’re on top of our finances and have set up a healthy mentality when it comes to spending, we’re comfortable looking at this information once a month. If you’re currently developing these money habits, you may want to do these types of check-ins more frequently.