investment properties – Page 3 – One Dollar Allowance

November Financial Update

November 14, 2024November 20, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

We bought a hot tub! It’s something that we’ve been talking about for almost a year, went looking at in May, and then finally ordered it last month. It was delivered and set up this week.

RENTALS

We replaced the roof on one of the houses. I go into that a little more in the ‘insurance’ section, but that was a $6,300 payment that was made.

INSURANCE

The fact that I have a separate category to cover my insurance efforts is just frustrating.

Last month, I complained that we were threatened with our liability policy being dropped because we didn’t provide the necessary documentation … that. we. were. never. asked. for. So I dropped everything and got the documentation as fast as I could, while being praised for my organization and response time as usual. Then a few weeks later, I was told that our policy has expired because they couldn’t get to our documentation review fast enough. Awesome. I love the one way street. We were finally informed that everything was reviewed and our policy was reinstated with no lapse in coverage. I paid that policy.

During that process, we were informed that one of our policy providers does not qualify to be covered under our liability policy because their company rating fell below A. Ironically, we had already pulled all but this one policy from this company. We requested a quote from another agent, but she said they couldn’t write a policy on the account at this time. It’s frustrating to me that once you file claims on your insurance (which it’s there for), you’re blacklisted. There were no claims for 8 years of rental properties and 12 years of homeownership, but that doesn’t matter. Since 3/4 of our claims in the last year are all in the same location … all those houses were hit by the same wind storms to cause damage. I certainly didn’t request trees to fall on two houses. Add in that the damage to our house was severe, making our policy pay out high for the last year, so getting new insurance policies where necessary (and on houses with no claims) has been difficult. There’s nothing to say we can’t keep this policy on this house even though the rating declined (which I would have never even known about), so we’re not stressing about it.

One of the wind damaged houses with a claim caused that company to drop us. That’s fine. I have been working on this replacement since September 23rd and finally got everything squared away on October 31st. One of the frustrations on that was that I’d ask multiple questions, and this guy would either not respond to an email or respond to half of it. One of my complaints was that my original request was for $500k of liability coverage (which is higher than offered on most policies I’ve had written, but is the minimum required for our liability policy), but he wrote it at $1 million. I asked for it to be lowered no less than 4 times. He finally responded when I got stern and called out the lack of action; he said that since it’s only about $25-30, they just go ahead and do it. I finally said (again) that I have liability policies that give me extra coverage, so I don’t want my individual ones to give extra coverage “just because,” and that it’s up to me to decide whether that $30 is worth it. He finally reduced it. The new policies are $510 more than the policy we were covered with that got dropped.

Oh – the original policy that we got dropped from included two houses. It wasn’t clear whether the company was dropping both houses, but I went ahead and switched both. I was hoping that the new policies would be written like all my other houses – individually. Unfortunately, it’s under one company and they handle things the same way, so both houses are tied together under one policy number again. I have multiple houses covered by Travelers, and they’re each on their own policy. I don’t understand why these houses get lumped together.

Another house of ours was given “high risk” insurance because of our roof condition. Our partner didn’t tell us about the transfer of insurance or the reason why. I discovered it when I received weird paperwork for our liability policy (which, ironically, now that I think of it, my liability coverage didn’t call out as odd, but they weren’t happy about that company getting downgraded…hmm). I discovered this on September 6th. I started getting quotes for roofers immediately, but that process took forever. I finally got the roof replaced on October 18th, and then I requested her to find us new insurance on October 31st. We have a new policy being issued effective November 15th, which will cancel the higher insurance. The total savings equates to about $450, but it’s still over $300 more expensive than the original one that we walked away from.

TAXES

Central KY taxes were due this past month. I paid 4 houses worth of taxes. 3 were cashed immediately. I pay via online bill pay, where they send the check on my behalf, instead of online because there are fees associated with that. Well, now one of them is floating out there without my knowing what to do next. There’s a 2% discount if you pay before 11/2, and that check didn’t get cashed by that deadline. So now I have to make phone calls to track down why the check I sent via bill pay didn’t arrive, even though another one arrived just fine. I also have a city that I have to pay a small amount of taxes to, and I’m waiting for those two checks to cash as well.

NET WORTH

Our net worth is almost $100k over last month’s. Not reflected in the credit card yet is the payment for the hot tub that just happened this week. By next month’s update, I’ll have to pay off the 0% interest credit card, so the total credit card number probably won’t change drastically.

September Financial Update

September 12, 2024November 20, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

We have two kids in school now, and my days are chaotic to say the least. I have not figured out my organization of all the “required” activities I have. I’ve written our schedule out several times over the last few weeks. It seems so easy because nothing overlaps, but my days are full of stress. I have 3 little humans’ emotions to manage on top of the organization of activities. Everyone’s tired because this is a change from the summer process. I keep hoping that “next week” will be better, but better isn’t coming. So, I missed last week’s post. I am taking several days to write this post. We’ll see how it goes.

Kid1 went to kindergarten this year, and Kid2 moved up to Pre-K. She went to school two days per week last year, which was $175 per month. Now she goes 5 days per week, which is $375. Since Kid1 is in public school now, I saved $175 per month, right? Mr. ODA is going to hate that line. 🙂

We got hit hard with charges this credit card cycle. I purposely held an insurance payment until our main credit card’s statement started over so that I could feel like it was a less expensive month. I paid that the day $1500+ that the new statement started. Unfortunately, the remaining payment to the electrician also came due on that day, and that was $1,766 hitting the card at the same time. Mr. ODA went on a work trip, which gets reimbursed, but that hotel is still increasing the credit card balance. A gift for the grandparents keeping the kids while we went to NY last month, three invoices for rental work, and our YMCA membership are all on there. Our actual spending on things outside these costs is quite low, but it doesn’t look that way with the credit card balance.

I hit 100% of August rent paid as of August 30th. So I knew that I wasn’t going to be at 100% for September right away. I have one tenant who still owes half her rent, which is hopefully be paid over the next week and a half. They have blue collar jobs and seem to be caught up in layoffs. But they get a ton of credit because they always get right back up. They just ask me for a few weeks during that transition period, and I can’t respect that enough. They’re late a few times each year, but I’ve never charged them a late fee.

NET WORTH

Our net worth is up almost $600k from this time last year. From last month, it has increased by about $50k. Our credit card balance is similar to last month. Our cash has decreased a good amount as we had a roof replacement get paid out, but otherwise most line items moved in the ‘right’ direction.

Summer Trips

August 29, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

In 2021, we looked to buy a lake house. We tried so hard to find something, and we almost settled on something that didn’t fully make us happy. It was March or April of that year, and we finally stepped back and said, “instead of buying a house here that we feel pressured to come to every weekend, what if we just went on vacation more.” Up until that point, we traveled a good bit, but it was typically with a purpose instead of just traveling for the sake of seeing somewhere new (e.g., one of us tagging along on work travel). We calculated that our mortgage payment on that second house would be $1200 per month. That was our budget for travel each month. I wrote a whole post about it.

Then I got pregnant and we bought a new primary residence in the summer of 2022. Almost all our ‘travel’ that summer was just us going to the new house to work on it before we moved in. Then the summer of 2023 was spent recovering from the newborn phase of that third kid that was unbelievably painful. I was just happy to be sleeping and in a routine again, and I wasn’t willing to leave home much and risk lack of sleep.

We made up for it this summer.

JUNE: MD, NY, OH, MI $1,251

Our first trip of the summer was two weeks long. I was so nervous to manage 3 kids (one of which is still a high maintenance sleeper) and a dog for that long, but I had hoped it would be fine if I prepared correctly. We hit four states.

Our son was on the Oriole’s for his baseball team this spring, so that became his favorite MLB team. It just so happened that they were playing at home on our drive from KY to NY (meaning, if we really wanted to, Baltimore could be on the way). As an added bonus, they were playing the Braves, which is Mr. ODA’s favorite team. So we made that work. We booked a hotel in Baltimore that was pet friendly and walking distance to the stadium, and then we bought the tickets. Actually, we bought two tickets for 5 of us to go. The Oriole’s stadium has a program where if you buy a ticket in the upper section, you can have up to two free tickets for kids up to 9 years old. It’s an incredible program. The detour cost us more in tolls than we’d typically spend on our route. It was worth it. Our son watched the whole game and was so happy with it.

Then we traveled to NY. There’s no lodging cost there because we stay at my dad’s house. We went to the local team’s baseball game one night, hung out at the beach one night, had two cookouts, and went to my cousin’s bridal shower. The bridal shower was the reason for the trip. The Michigan component then was booked as the other side of the family’s annual trip. It didn’t make sense for us to drive home from NY and then back up to MI, so we just buckled up for the two weeks gone. We didn’t eat at any restaurants while we were in NY, so our costs were a couple of grocery trips and our family cookouts.

The trip from NY to MI was 13.5 hours without any stops, so we didn’t want to push the kids that far. We typically do the KY to NY trip in one day. That takes 13-14 hours depending on traffic and our stops. It would take about 11.5-12 hours without kids. We usually do two quick stops and one longer meal out of the car when we drive straight through. But with it starting at 13+ hours, I didn’t want to risk it. Plus, I wanted to arrive in Michigan around check in time, which would have us leaving NY at about 2 am. I covet my kids’ sleep too much to risk that one!

Our stop on the way was Cuyahoga Falls, OH. Again, we needed to find something that was pet friendly without charging us $175 to have the dog there for 14 hours. We found a hotel that didn’t charge for a pet, and it appears that’s because they don’t really care about cleanliness. The room was disgusting. The mirrors looked like they’d never been cleaned, the counters had someone’s old rice on them, the door wasn’t fully attached to its hinges, and the sinks didn’t drain. At least the bedding was clean (I inspected closely). I was grateful to only be there for 14 hours.

We went hiking that morning and then headed to MI, dropping the dog off at a sitter on the way there. We use Rover to find a sitter, which is where the sitter takes the dog into their house. I appreciate this type of care/attention than a kennel; we’ve used this service for 11 years now.

Our MI trip was Mr. ODA’s family trip for the year. His parents treat us to the house, and the kids’ families cover the food. Usually our trip doesn’t involve many extra expenses, but this year we sought out a place with activities, so there was a lot of money spent. We went on a dune buggy ride, walked a windmill island, went to a little ‘dutch village’ theme park, picked cherries, and spent a lot of time at the beach. We usually eat all our meals at the AirBnB, but we did have two meals out and lots of ice cream this time around. Honestly, it was the best trip we’ve taken in a while. I appreciated the ‘vacation’ aspect of it, where we did things around the area and had fun with activities.

JULY: VA $570

This was actually a work trip. Last summer, we didn’t make it to Richmond to do property walk throughs because our baby was such a handful. We’ve had a lot of work done over the last year, and there were a few things noted by tenants that are just easier for us to handle in a few minutes than pay someone hundreds to handle.

We cleaned the siding on multiple houses, checked some gutters, replaced a few things, and painted a front door and front porch. It was a 3 night trip, and we put about 20 hours worth of work into it. It was hard to juggle the work that needed to be done, having 3 kids in tow, and a heat index of over 110 each day, but we got what we could get done. I wrote a post about the work we did earlier this summer. Our expenses were the hotel ($401), gas, and food. We actually had a surprisingly low food expense on this trip considering we stayed in a hotel (lack of kitchen and time).

While there, we were able to see a few of our old friends. However, we planned this trip fairly last minute and had to fit it around other activities already scheduled at home, so we didn’t get as much ‘play’ time as we’d prefer.

JULY: CO $3,350

Mr. ODA’s brother wanted to celebrate his 40th birthday by hiking 14-ers in Colorado. He invited a few people to join, and Mr. ODA spent the first half of this year getting in shape for that activity. Honestly, in January, this idea seemed so far away, so it was exciting when the moment arrived. Mr. ODA wanted to go out earlier than the trip’s original itinerary to acclimate to the change in elevation. That’s where I came in.

We booked a flight for all 5 of us to fly out there on the 18th (well, the baby was free). We spent the weekend around the Denver area, and then I flew home with the kids on the 22nd, while he stayed to hang out with his brother’s crew.

We had to buy flights, rent a car, book lodging, and buy groceries/meals. We did more-than-average entertainment for this trip with a concert and baseball game, so that increased our expenses.

On our first full day, we visited Mount Blue Sky, which is a drive up to the top of a 14er (a summit above 14,000 feet). It was a really unique and cool experience. On Saturday, we hiked at Red Rocks and went to a concert at Ball Arena. On Sunday, we went to a Rockies game and walked around Denver. It was a great trip, and the kids were troopers through all the fun.

AUGUST: NY $430

My cousin got married in NY. Typically, I’d take this opportunity to get my whole family to NY to see my side of the family. However, our oldest started school already, and I didn’t want him to miss any of that, especially on day 3. The whole family flying to NY is expensive, plus we’d have to figure out the babysitting need for while we’re at the wedding. While I have a few people I could call on, it’s more difficult when the intent is for the closest adults I know to be at the wedding.

We booked direct flights for Mr. ODA and me to fly out Friday afternoon and come back Sunday afternoon. We had the kids stay with grandparents for the two nights, and this way the grandparents didn’t have to manage any kid activities except getting our oldest off the bus. Our two flights cost $376.40, and it included a checked bag if we wanted it because of our American Airlines credit card rewards. Parking at the airport is $11 per day, so that was $33. Our original plan was to take the train from JFK to where my dad’s house is, but we pivoted because he offered to pick us up and take us out to dinner. Our meals were covered except for on the way out and the way back, and one coffee I purchased while there. It was a nice little trip where we had fun and could just focus on that versus managing the kids’ schedule, so I appreciated that.

Mr. ODA had two work trips this summer on top of all that we did as a family. Those net us income instead of expenses, so I won’t go into them. I mention it just to point out how busy and entertained we were. I’d say we’re looking forward to winding down, but now baseball and gymnastics start up on top of managing kids at two different schools. But I’m loving it and looking forward to what this next season brings.

August Financial Update

August 15, 2024August 15, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

Many of our activities over this last month were already paid for or minimal cost. We went to Colorado, and we’ve been doing back to school type activities. Mr. ODA was in Colorado longer than the rest of us (I flew home on my own with 3 kids!), and he went on a work trip for a week, so my goal has been activities outside of the house as much as possible in this final stretch before school starts. We’ve had quite a few activities on rental properties too.

RENTAL PROPERTIES

Historically, if the 1st through 5th of the month falls on a Friday, that’s the day that I receive rent. Meaning, if the 3rd is a Friday, then I get rent that day. This month, the 2nd was on Friday. I received very little rent. Going into the 5th, I was still waiting on 60% of rent payments; I was already told by 3 tenants (making up 23% of that amount I’m waiting on), that rent will be late this month. Luckily, 2 of those 3 tenants had paid partial rent already. That left 4 houses going into the 5th that hadn’t paid and I hadn’t heard from. That’s more than normal and was a bit worrisome. By the time of this post, I’m missing nearly $2,000 worth of rent, which is over 10%.

We’ve had several small actions that needed attention from our handyman, so I paid out on that. We had an AC go out before a hot weekend, so we had our technician go out and fix that (I haven’t seen that bill, but it’s expected to be around $1,000). Mr. ODA went out to a local house to properly fix their kitchen cabinets that were apparently never installed correctly (before we owned the house) to install them into the studs.

I was called for a garbage disposal that wasn’t working, and I attempted the fix on my own. I was nervous going into it, but I successfully fixed it in about two minutes. That felt good. I also went out to check on a roof replacement at a local house, and Mr. ODA replaced their deck. This tenant doesn’t communicate well whatsoever with us. She said “the deck is in bad shape.” That was it. Didn’t send a picture, didn’t give any details. I went out to check on it, and the deck stairs were hardly sturdy and none of the pickets were installed anymore around the decking part (it’s more of a landing than a deck when you think of size). It’s infuriating that people could not communicate such a dire issue. Most of my tenants do a great job, but this is why annual inspections are necessary.

PERSONAL ACTIVITIES

It has been a crazy month! I have thrived with the busy scheduled and a sense of accomplishment.

I was elected to our Homeowner’s Association board of directors this past month. I’ve spent a significant amount of my time going through that information and trying to get things organized and back on a schedule. I had my first meeting on the Landlord/Tenant Advisory Committee. And I joined on with a start-up school to be their financial consultant.

We signed our oldest kid up for Fall Ball and our second for gymnastics. She did acro last year, but I said all year that she would thrive better in actual gymnastics where they do more activities than dance. Our oldest started kindergarten, which is really exciting. That also required a lot of attention between back-to-school activities and paperwork to be filled out. I ran a 5k with zero training (I had run 1.4 miles the week leading up to the race), but my friend and I beat last year’s time by 5 minutes!

We worked on our own deck. A tree fell on it last July. We had to get our insurance company to understand our issue and fully cover the repairs that were necessary (it took them forever to get an engineer involved instead of all different adjusters). We finally got started in March on the replacement. After weeks and weeks and weeks of our contractor working on it, he finally ghosted us because he couldn’t get the waterproofing to be waterproof. So this past weekend, we tore up our deck boards and repairs the waterproofing issue. It’s supposed to rain this weekend, so hopefully we’ll see that our fix worked finally. Once we prove to ourselves that no water is getting down there, we can have the electricity finished. We also built a little wall to hide the storage being kept under the stairs under the deck, which was cool.

NET WORTH

Obviously, our investment accounts diminished slightly since last month, as the stock market has been a constant discussion point recently. Last August, my updated said: Our overall net worth went down slightly from last month because of market fluctuation. So this seems to be a typical cycle! Last year it was offset by a large insurance check we received, while this year our cash balance is much lower from last month to this month.

I have about $9k to still pay out on a roof replacement (insurance is covering most of it), about $1k to pay to a plumber, and a couple of other odd jobs that are waiting on invoicing. Our net worth isn’t 100% accurate this month because I don’t have access to a few accounts (well, I have the log in and password, but it requires either text or email verification to get logged in, and Mr. ODA holds those and isn’t available – annoying!). I also have a $1500+ insurance payment to make, but I’m purposely holding off until this credit card statement cycle ends so that I can feel like one month isn’t a crazy high balance.

To update our net worth, I have spreadsheets set up that I overwrite from last year. Last year’s August update had our net worth at $3.78 million. So even though this month is over $27k less than last month, we’re still up over $500k from a year ago without any drastic changes in investment portfolio.

5% Rent Cap

August 8, 2024August 2, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

The President issued a statement calling on Congress to cap rent increases at 5%, specifically for corporate landlords. The statement appears to define corporate landlords as those owning over 50 units in their portfolio. This was not an executive action that is implemented. And while my numbers are different than the numbers of a “corporate landlord,” I do think it’s worth hearing a landlord’s side. I feel that there’s a lot of spite against landlords without a lot of knowledge about their actual financials.

I admit that there is a possibility that some of these companies with large complexes could be raking in on the fees or “utilities” that are in the unit, without actually providing a properly maintained building, but that’s not the case for everyone that’s labeled as a landlord. No one seems to step back and see that this is a business model for landlords, and while everything else around us is increasing in costs, rent needs to as well.

No one predicted such a significant rise in product costs or housing costs in such a short period of time, but here we are. And landlords aren’t in the business to graciously eat the costs of homeownership for renters.

LANDLORD COST INCREASES

The Presidential statement released refers to a press release that starts with, “Today’s U.S. Labor Department Consumer Price Index (CPI) report revealed costs remained largely unchanged in May, with overall inflation cooling faster than economists expected as the Fed considers finally reducing interest rates below a 23-year high.” Is there a comparison to costs that landlords had to take on because the costs of everything increased faster than expected back in 2020-2022? Increases have been seen on small things like a maintenance call for a technician, but also big things like property taxes and insurance.

That same article goes on to state, “Since 2019, the cost of rent has risen 31.4%, with wages only increasing 23%, as tenants on average need to earn nearly $80,000 to not spend 30% or more of their income on rent.” In 2019, on one of my properties, the taxable assessment was $95,000, which equated to about $1,200 per year in taxes. In 2024, the taxable assessment was $242,000, which equates to about $3,000 per year in taxes. That’s a 61% increase in just my taxes over that same period of time where they’re complaining that the cost of rent increased by 31.4%. If rent had been set based on the 1% rule in 2019, rent would have been $950 per month. Had I increased 5% each year from 2019, it would be $1,212 in 2024. If I set rent based on the 1% rule now, it would be $2,420. However, the rent on the property is $1,750. So while it’s more than 5% each year since 2019 (the baseline the government is using), it’s set at an amount where I capture my expenses for owning the house, while also turning a small profit.

It’s taboo for a landlord to turn a profit, but that’s why we’re here. It’s an income stream that we’re establishing for profit. I don’t get to pay myself an hourly rate for managing the property. So this “profit” can actually be looked at like a salary. Every time I need to show the property to a prospective tenant, the lease signing, the walk through, every call or text you make, every trade that I need to schedule and coordinate with the tenant on, any fixes or improvements that I do myself. All of these minutes in a day add up, and I’m not directly paid for any of them.

On the particular house that I’m using for the example, we are assuming $300 per month in profit, which comes to $3,600 per year. Would you work as a manager of a company (e.g., hiring trades to fix things, performing maintenance, making sure all bills are paid timely, general management of having liabilities), for only $3,600 per year?

I wrote a post last Fall about the changes in my rental fixed costs from a year prior. I plan on doing the same this fall when more tax information comes due. The house I’m referring to has been at $1,750 for the past two years. However, between 2022 and 2023, my taxes and insurance have increased by $255 per year. That’s a cost that I’ve “eaten” from my “profits.” I could have said that equates to $22 per month increase, and I could have projected a similar increase for the year coming. I could change their monthly rent to be $1,790-$1,800 to keep my profits on a similar path. However, I didn’t, because they’re good tenants that haven’t had many maintenance calls.

However, if I don’t increase every year, then I could find myself in a sudden deficit like I did during the pandemic because costs increased faster than projected. A 5% cap could actually incentivize annual increases because I wouldn’t want to be caught behind and not able to catch up down the road.

LEASE TERMS

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced protections for renters in multifamily properties that are financed with loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The protections include: (a) requiring 30 day notice before rent increases; (b) requiring 30 day notice on lease expirations; and (c) providing a 5 day grace period before imposing late fees on rentals. I know for a fact that every single lease I’ve executed personally already has all of these requirements in it, at a minimum. In many cases, there’s a clause for 60 day notice of a potential rate increase, with negotiations being completed before 30 days from lease expiration.

Some states already have this codified. Other jurisdictions have landlord/tenant agreements that give the tenants rights (and awareness of rights) that can be lobbied against if the landlord is noncompliant.

There’s a clause that I’ve seen that requires expired leases to auto-renew on a month-to-month basis instead of for another year. I would argue that a requirement to renew a lease month-to-month instead of annually actually hurts a tenant. A landlord then only needs to give 30 days notice of a rent increase, and they could technically increase it month after month.

SUMMARY

If the ‘cap’ were to apply to me, then I’d be more inclined to increase rent every year. As a general rule, I increase rent for long term renters by $50 every two years. When we turnover a property, we will evaluate market rent in the area and set the monthly rent at what we see (which could be more than $50). In some cases, the evaluation ends up being too high, and we set the rent at something we think more people can afford. For example, there were comparable houses renting at $2,200 near a house we had listed. We’d rather get the property rented than shoot for top dollar, so we listed it at $1,600. While lower than “market value” probably called for, it was $400 higher than what we had it previously rented at, which covered cost increases that weren’t previously covered.

In the post that I previously linked, I highlight that our standard for increases barely offsets our increase in expenses. While we manage each house individually on setting the rates (asking ourselves: do we think the tenant can absorb the increase, do we have to increase to cover actual costs now), our monthly income among all houses was increased by $475. If you add up the cost increases for taxes, insurance, and property management (increased rent means increased fees because fees are based on the rent price), our costs went up $415 (and that’s before any service calls). On a whole, we’ve offset the ‘fixed cost’ increases. We’re taking ‘losses’ on houses where our routine for increases is slower. Therefore, having 13 properties affords us the ability to be more lenient with tenants and to keep good tenants in the house instead of forcing them out with hgher rent increases.

I support having protections in place for tenants. I’m sure there are landlords out there that aren’t interested in playing ‘by the book’ and just being decent human beings like I intend to. However, landlords are people too, and they’re running a business. Creating boundaries without fully understanding both sides of the situation and focusing on data points that only support your theory is unfair. I’ve joined the Landlord/Tenant Advisory Committee in my city. I hope to bring more awareness to the landlord side of things and bridge the gap between landlords and tenants when it comes to responsibilities.

Rental Property Work

July 18, 2024July 9, 2024mrsonedollarallowance2 Comments

We have several rental properties in Richmond, VA. However, we moved away from the area in September 2020, leaving the properties under a property manager’s oversight. My goal was to make it back to the houses annually to do walk throughs of properties. It’s surprising how many people don’t tell landlords about issues timely. Since most of our properties keep long term tenants in them, we don’t get eyes on the condition of the house regularly like we would if we were turning over the house between tenants.

Generally, I check to make sure their HVAC filters are changed out, that they don’t have any piles of garbage or old food (or the gigantic pile of laundry that was blocking one tenant’s second form of egress), that the yard is maintained, and simple things like that. I also take this as an opportunity to fix or improve things that I know need attention, but weren’t necessarily worth the up-charges of hiring the action out to a contractor.

We did a walk through of the Richmond houses in July 2022. At that time, nearly all our properties had long term tenants in them. A few small items came out of those walk throughs (e.g., change out filter, re-caulk the tub). While we hoped to get there last summer, it just wasn’t in the cards with our 3rd baby.

Based on the rest of our summer schedule (and soon to be constriction of school schedules), we were only able to get there for 2 full days. None of the work that I wanted to get done is a high priority; it’s mostly work that would improve the aesthetic of the house or help the longevity of an investment (like a new porch).

PROPERTY 7

This house recently turned over. The house was flipped when we purchased it 7 years ago, and we knew that everything that was done before we owned it would just be a bandaid. We had a couple of long term tenants in the house, and we even had quick turnovers because people needed a place to live, so we didn’t have time to do major renovations. It was time. We put a lot of effort into fixing up the place (e.g., all new paint, new flooring and fixing of subflooring). The front porch and front door were red, and it just made the house look dingy. I wanted to make it look better. See: not a priority, but something worth looking into eventually.

I arrived on the evening of the 4th to pressure wash the porch so it would dry by morning when I would paint it. I did not account for how bad the condition of the paint was. It appears someone just painted over peeling paint years ago. There were several layers of gray, purple, and red colored paint. The latest paint job had several places where that was the only layer of paint on the concrete. Very odd, but that meant that I had to scrape as much flaking paint away as I could. I spent over 10 hours on this. Not exactly what I had in mind. I scraped and scraped and scraped. I then put two coats on. I’m nervous how long it will hold up though. I did this during an extreme heat advisory so it likely didn’t cure correctly by drying in mere minutes.

I also did 3 coats of black over the red door. I don’t think it’s going to hold up against her animals, but at least it looks better from the street.

This house still needs the back deck pressure washed and painted. However, this is something I’ll do either with tenant turnover or if we sell it. It’s really worn down and places are missing paint because we removed the covered portion of it. The porch railing had also been painted at some point and is peeling, but I hadn’t budgeted time for that. I did a few touch up areas with black paint to cover where previous owners had painted it red.

PROPERTY 3

The tenant here reached out to me a couple of months ago to tell me that a salesman broke their doorbell. Fascinating. They claimed “well, it’s old.” My thought was “well, it’s meant to be outside, and the house next door was built the same time without any doorbell breakage now.” But instead of sending someone out to fix that, I put it on our to do list. It took Mr. ODA about 2 minutes worth of work, and the new doorbell cost $10.

While there, we cleaned out the gutters. That’s been a known issue throughout the life of this house because there are a lot of trees around the perimeter. We also cleaned the mildew growing on the house.

PROPERTY 2

This house is a mirror image of Property 3, but the trees in the backyard are much closer to the house. The back of this house had significant mold growth on the siding. We got all the siding cleaned up there too. Mr. ODA got on the roof to clean out the gutters. While up there, he also cut some trees off the roof.

The first picture is a ‘during’ picture because I didn’t get a ‘before.’ The part at the top that is dark is actually better than what was there, and it was over the entire back of the house. We soft washed with a mold and mildew cleaner and got it looking almost brand new.

PROPERTY 9

During the last turnover period of this house, we had the front porch jacked up (it was sinking), had the front stairs redone (they were sinking too), and had the back decking replaced. I had intended to stain the new wood for this house, but it being well over 90 degrees precluded that action. Instead, Mr. ODA got the siding on this house all cleaned up, and he cut/pulled several large weeds that were growing.

DRIVE BYS

We did drive by the other Richmond properties that we have. I didn’t have the time (or energy) to schedule walk throughs of everything. Once you do a walkthrough, you inevitably end up with a list of things to do to the house. I already had a lengthy list of things to do, so I didn’t want to manage that right now. Just by driving by, I did add to my to do list that one house needs its gutter replaced (how does a gutter, with no trees around, twist away from the house), and that their back deck really needs to be replaced (just the deck boards and railing; the substructure is fine).

I’ll need to make it back there to walk through the properties. If nothing else, it gets the tenants to clean things up once a year. One of our property managers offered a filter check quarterly, which was really used as a way to get into a house and make sure things were being kept clean and orderly. While a filter should be changed that often, I think that’s too much time being in someone’s place they call home. However, once per year is worth it to keep things moving in the right direction and to make sure there aren’t any maintenance issues that hadn’t been reported.

July Financial Update

July 11, 2024July 11, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

RENTAL EXPENSES

We took a trip to Richmond, VA to work on rental properties. It was fairly last minute. I had a schedule of work at each house that I planned. However, I didn’t plan on the heat index being 113 and 112 for the two main days we were there. I was able to get everything on my list done except for staining the new deck at one of the houses. I didn’t want to risk it not applying or curing correctly because it was too hot and in direct sun. Plus, the tenant didn’t even clear it off so I could work on it.

I had multiple houses pay rent late this month. I was surprised. One let us know on the 5th that they had an emergency, so they wouldn’t be able to pay until the 17th. I had someone pay half their rent early in June, but then haven’t received an answer as to why the rest of her balance ($345) hasn’t been paid yet. Another tenant misunderstood her maternity leave pay, so she asked for more time to pay rent. She paid $800 on the 7th. I told her not to worry about it, and just pay when she can, without the late fee; she only has $150 remaining.

I’m currently working through two roof replacements. One of them will be covered by insurance, but then I’ll be paying to have vents added, the chimney torn off and capped, and the soffits repaired on top of what insurance can do. Then the other one we’re paying out of pocket for. It’s original to the house, which was built 24 years ago. There has been storm damage to it over the last year, and it’s just generally time to address the age even though it hasn’t caused any problems yet.

PERSONAL EXPENSES

Our medical insurance company had some glitches in their claim processing through the first half of the year. Now they’ve caught up, meaning I’m paying large sums of medical bills. Mr. ODA took on booking lodging for his guys trip later this month, which meant that the second half of AirBnB payments were applied to the credit card.

Mr. ODA increased each kid’s UTMA from $75 to $100 per month. That means we’re investing $3,300 each month into accounts, on top of maxing Mr. ODA’s TSP contributions and both of our Roth IRA contributions for the year.

Our contractor has ghosted us on our own deck build. We bought some new furniture for the main deck area. Once it’s not 100 degrees outside, we’ll work on doing the waterproofing of the deck ourselves so that we can start living on the patio under the deck and get that hot tub ordered this fall.

NET WORTH

I updated the valuation of the houses this month. I typically only do that 3 or 4 times per year. I try to account for the big increases we see at the beginning of the spring, and then adjust slightly around this time of year once the comparable houses have closed and sold. This update added $140k worth of equity into the equation. All of our liabilities decreased since last month, and all our assets increased since last month. That has equated to an increase of over $200k in our net worth.

Risk Taking

June 29, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

We’ve hit some pretty big milestones financially. Mr. ODA casually mentioned a certain number by a certain age, but our goals were more associated with quitting our full time jobs. I quit my job in May 2019. We’re in a situation for a couple of years where we’ve been ready for Mr. ODA to quit, but we keep pushing the date back because his job isn’t preventing us from doing the things we want to do.

How did we get to the point where we replaced my income and I could quit working without scaling back anything financially? We took risks. Some of them were big ones. Some of them weren’t so big, but they felt big at the time. Most risks worked in our favor, but some did not.

RETIREMENT ACCOUNT LOAN

Mr. ODA and I both worked for the Federal government. Their version of a ‘401k’ is the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). There were two loan options that were available: a primary residence loan or a general purpose loan. You then repay the loan back to your account with interest (the interest is paid into your account as well). When we took our loans, the rate was just over 2%. According to tsp.gov, the rate is currently 4.75%. There’s a fee of $50 to take a primary residence loan and a fee of $100 to take a general purpose loan.

While you’re missing out on the compound interest of your account when you take the loan, the ability to buy our own house, create that equity, and be at the beginning of our careers made the decision easy for us. We made extra payments during the repayment period, and we were able to adjust the regular payments up and down based on our financial needs each month. We have no regrets in our decision.

ADJUSTABLE RATE MORTGAGE

An adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) sounds scary. A variable rate. Most people are used to locking in a 30-year mortgage. I’d venture to say that most people also think they know what an ARM entails, so they don’t even consider it. We considered it. We looked into it in great detail. We couldn’t see why more people didn’t use it. We actually were very hesitant over this decision the first time because an ARM’s reputation is very negative. However, we took our time to lay out the numbers and see what would work best for us.

The first time we used an ARM, we knew we had no intention of being in the DC area for more than 5 years. By using an ARM, we saved thousands worth of interest in our mortgage payments over the three years we owned it.

There are several “fail safe” parameters in an ARM. For one, you do lock in a rate for some period of time. We considered 5 year, 7 year, and 15 year options. Then after that period of time, your rate can only adjust within the contractual terms. For example, we have one rate that can adjust 2% in either direction at the 5 year mark, and then 1% for each of the following 4 years after that, with a cap of paying a maximum interest rate of 7% (this is an old loan, clearly). The rate adjustments aren’t a given, and they’re adjusted based on the prime rate at that time, not based on the whim of the bank or the maximum it could increase.

We also ran the numbers based on the interest rates. An ARM’s incentive was that the interest rate is lower than the 30-year conventional loan rate. I don’t have the details since this post is more of an overview, but the ARM saved us money we paid towards interest. Interest is a higher percentage of those earlier payments in an amortization schedule. We either sold the house or paid the loan off early, so the ARM adjustment never came into play, and we saved all that interest cost.

BUSINESS/COMMERCIAL LOAN

A series of events had us asking a local credit union about loan options. They offered us a commercial loan. This one has a big catch though: there’s a balloon payment. Our loan is amortized over 30 years, which is how our payments are calculated. However, the balance of the loan is due at the 5 year mark. That balance is going to be about $175k. We have no plans to pay that off by that time (we aren’t even making extra payments towards it). We will refinance it. The pro here was that our interest rate for a loan closed on in 2022 was 3.625% (when mortgage rates were in the 5% range). Hopefully by 2027, interest rates are lower than they are today; this is a gamble at the moment.

PARTNER

There’s a cap in the “Fannie/Freddie” world of the number of mortgages a person can hold. That cap is 10. There was a point where we had completely leveraged ourselves and ran out of room. We had a Realtor friend interested in more rental properties, and he agreed to front our down payments, which we’d pay back with interest, and have a 50% share in the houses.

We signed an agreement with him that outlined our payments to him for the down payment he covered (which we paid off in about 3 months), and it established our 50% shares in the two houses purchased via this method. We purchased the houses in April 2018 and February 2019, and put them in a limited liability corporation (LLC). Each month, I collect rent from the houses and pay out our partner’s share. These houses don’t ask for much (one has been rented since before we owned the house and one has a tenant that has been there a few years), but if they need something, I handle coordinating the maintenance request. We should have set up a schedule where I’m paid for my time since Mr. ODA and our partner really don’t do anything for these houses, but luckily the requests are few and far between. We split all costs 50/50.

RENTERS WITH COMPENSATING FACTORS

I have several examples of entering into lease agreements with tenants that don’t have a perfect record. In these instances, we typically request some sort of compensating factor (e.g., a cosigner, an additional security deposit). We give everyone the chance to tell us about their financial and rental history before we run a background check on them (telling us doesn’t cost anything, but a background check does).

We had a prospective tenant not disclose a bankruptcy on her record. I could have immediately disqualified her and her husband, but I gave them a chance. They lived in that house for a year. They only moved because his job after grad school took them out of the area, but they set us up with a new tenant at their departure, and she stayed there for several years. Then they moved back to the area, and they requested a house of ours. We had one available, so we happily had them move into it. There’s one success story from giving someone a second chance.

I also have a couple that doesn’t have a happy ending. We had purchased a house without vetting the area. I had fully vetted a house two blocks away, but I learned my lesson that the crime of an area doesn’t need more than one block to change its ways. This house was in a bad area. The house itself was adorable. It attracted wonderful people to come see it, but they’d check the crime history of the area and decline applying (understandably). Someone came forward with a 448 credit score. That’s pretty bad. She wrote a really nice letter though. She disclosed everything up front and said she just wanted a roof over her and her son’s heads. I believed it. We then spent months and months struggling to get her to pay her rent, even offering her a payment plan several times and changing her lease structure to allow her to pay twice per month (hopefully eliminating the constant late fees she was accruing). We eventually gave her 30 days notice to vacate the premises due to lack of payment. She didn’t even make it a year. Instead of listing the property for rent, we ended up selling it. That was a whole other debacle where we entered into a contract to close by September of that year, but we didn’t close until the following January due to the lack of financial qualifications on the buyer’s end.

PAID OFF LOANS/MORTGAGES

This doesn’t appear to be a big risk. What could go wrong with paying off your mortgages? Well, if we didn’t have a cash reserve, and there was an emergency, then we paid off these loans with the cash on hand, leaving nothing to cover that emergency. However, those dooms-day concerns rarely come to life, and we had continued cash flow that replenished our accounts.

The positive here is that we freed up cash flow. Instead of having mortgage payments to make every month, we now have the cash to go into savings or towards any higher-than-expected bills. Besides the house we sold, we’ve also paid off 6 mortgages. That means that we’ve paid less interest to the banks, and that’s more money in our pockets.

We haven’t paid off any other loans because they’re all below 5% interest (they’re actually all below 4% except for 1 with our partner, and we would need his buy in the pay that off, which he hasn’t wanted to do). After payments to mortgages, our property manager, our partner, and utility payments, we have over $8,000 in cash flow per month. I will note that this doesn’t include things that I need to save up for each year to be able to afford (e.g., taxes and insurance), and it doesn’t include maintenance needs that crop up. Cash flow is important for us because if Mr. ODA quits his job, that’s less income to offset our regular personal expenses.

FINANCIAL AWARENESS

On any given day, we’re weighing several financial decisions fluidly. There are the givens that we have to pay the bills that are out there. I have to pay all the mortgages and utility bills. I weigh the best time of the month to pay each bill, which means that I may not pay them as soon as the statement arrives, but may wait until closer to the statement due date (but never carrying a balance unless it’s 0% interest). Then there are the options such as paying additional payments towards a credit card with a 0% interest rate, additional principal payments to a mortgage, or additional investment plans. We’re not looking to apply for any loans, so the $9k balance on a 0% interest credit card doesn’t have any attention of mine except the $500 I pay each month. I have it marked on my calendar when that 0% introductory rate expires, and I’ll have to pay the balance in full.

Our money is handled by a full, big picture, approach. Each day, there’s a chance that we come to a fork in the road and make a different decision because the variables changed slightly. We don’t put our money into “buckets” or “envelopes.” In my experience, people who handle their money like this end up overspending.

We hit our goal to replace my income well before our son was born, but then I kept working until he was 9 months old. While I was still working, we could have easily said, “we hit our goal, but since you’re still working, let’s put all that money into a slush fund of some kind.” When people see any “extra” money, they then look for their next splurge. They feel they deserve something for saving money instead of putting that extra money to work for you and your future.

There are those “autopilot” moments in our finances, but when it comes to making a big change, we put pen to paper and check the details. We aren’t going to take $100,000 out of our investment accounts to pay off a 2.5% mortgage. But one day, we will have to consider what to do with our loan that has a balloon payment, which shows it’s not a hard and fast rule that we won’t pay off anymore loans early (because if interest rates are still at 7.5% in 2027, it may not be worth refinancing that balance).

LIVE SMART WITH INFORMED DECISIONS

Take the time to make informed decisions and research the data for yourself. Run models with the projection of money to see for yourself if it works in your situation. Don’t spend your days listening to other people’s opinions on actions. If we had listened to opinions, we wouldn’t have taken a TSP loan or taken out ARMs.

We’re at over $4 million net worth, have a solid cash flow (which is important because if our net worth of $4 million was tied up in a retirement account, that wouldn’t give us the ability to live comfortably now), and have plenty of money going into accounts for the future (for both us and the kids). Our spending is managed regularly with an ingrained thought process. Take the small, first step for yourself without other people’s opinions weighing you down.

If you want to live differently from everyone else, you have to take action and think for yourself.

June Financial Update

June 15, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

Welcome to summer, where we’re traveling and I’m not posting on time. This time it was because I had to figure out a few things with bills and health before I had the time to get to the update. I can schedule content in advance, but not this post where I need the most up to date numbers when talking about our net worth.

We’ve been busy with baseball and activities around the house, so our spending was lower than it had been. However, this time of year is typically where we see a lot of our rental property expenses come through. We purchased many houses around this time, which puts their insurance payments due now. Then the City of Richmond’s tax payments are due in June and December also. The City of Richmond doesn’t post our escrow payments timely, and it drives me crazy. Every 6 months, I get notification that I have unpaid taxes and it’s the due date. I have then go through every escrow and prove to myself that they were in fact paid out over 3 weeks ago, and then I have to go back and check that Richmond posts them eventually. I stopped sending checks into them for the accounts that aren’t escrowed because it took too long to monitor, so I pay the $0.95 fee to pay via their ACH option online.

Mr. ODA had been in a relationship with a financial advisor, which was $35 per month. Over the last 3 months, Mr. ODA has been working to become his ‘apprentice.’ He passed his Series 65 exam and will begin working on this guy’s team. Not that $35 is a huge amount, but that’s one less ‘subscription’ that we’re paying monthly.

Speaking of subscriptions, we did something that I’d venture to guess other people wouldn’t put the effort into. One of our credit cards (that we rarely use) had a promotion for a $15 statement credit if we had at least $100 worth of subscription and/or utility payments go through. Most of our utilities can’t be paid with a credit card without paying a fee. The fee for our internet service was low enough that we went ahead and switched that one over for one month. Then I went into our Y membership and switched the credit card on file for that payment. With a few button clicks in May and then later this month to switch everything back, we made $15. It doesn’t seem huge, but it’s the compound of that thought process and awareness that makes a difference in your finances.

The ‘bigger’ expenses of the month were one kid’s school registration fee ($175), purchased baseball tickets (the Oriole’s don’t charge for 2 kids per paying adult!), got an oil change ($65 ugh), paid two homeowners insurance policies that aren’t escrowed ($1,371), paid for pet sitting for a coming trip ($155), paid car insurances ($567), and built a few steps in a new walkway ($275). Our deck isn’t complete because the waterproofing isn’t waterproofed. We haven’t paid out the last $3,500 on that, but we also haven’t heard from our contractor in several weeks.

We initiated a homeowners insurance claim for one of our properties. The tenant wasn’t complaining about the house/roof, but we knew the roof and soffit were in rough shape. I was hesitant to contact a roofer because I wanted the job done right. I expected the house is really old, and there would be decking problems to fix. I dragged my feet on finding someone, but I did click with someone finally. He went out and actually suggested we go for a claim to cover the replacement. We’re in the process of that now. An adjuster has been out to see the damage, and now we wait for the estimate. In the meantime, another property had water spots on the ceiling show up. I had the roofer go out there to check it out, but he didn’t see anything glaring. That roof also needs replaced, but I’m going to get at least one more quote on that job since it’s not through insurance.

All the good things (assets) went up and all the bad things (liabilities) went down! Our net worth increased by $60k over the last month.

House 4 Turnover

June 7, 2024June 3, 2024mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

We had a long term tenant in this house, who moved out last Spring. We luckily had someone lined up looking for a place to live. There were a few red flags from the beginning, but I went with him because he was a friend of an old tenant of ours. Rent was always paid on time, and everything went fine. Unfortunately, there was a public incident at work in the Fall and he was let go. He asked if he could be released from the lease so he could move back home.

I wasn’t interested in making anything more difficult for them. I didn’t ask for a lease break fee; I just asked that they continue to pay rent until we found someone who could take over the property. It was winter and holiday time, which is least favorable time of year to be finding a renter. They gave notice at the end of November and we listed to house right away. We did our due diligence to get someone in there as best we could, considering it was Christmas time and the middle of winter. The tenant paid January rent on the 1st, as required. Luckily, we were able to get someone moved in on January 5th. The tenant didn’t do anything wrong to the property, so I gave back his security deposit and the January rent they had paid.

TURNOVER

The original tenant had essentially vacated the property, so we were able to get in and do some work to it. The entire place was painted and had extensive maintenance needs met over last summer (after the long term tenant), so this was an easy task to get it ready for a new tenant.

We received a notice from the city that the yard needed to be cleaned up, so we had the tenant go over there and do the work. There was a tree limb that had fallen (and wasn’t reported), so we had someone go clean that up and the rest of the yard for $100.

Several years ago, we had replaced most of the windows in the house. There were 3 windows that were either fine or oddly shaped, so we didn’t replace them. That was a mistake. We ended up spending the same amount on 3 windows this year that we did several years ago for 6 windows.

The front porch of the house is seldom used. The driveway is in the back of the house and leads straight to the kitchen door. The entire front of the house is fenced in too (the house has a huge front yard and small back yard). Due to the age of the house, that it’s a rental, and that the front porch is rarely used, it wasn’t in great condition. It was finally time to replace it. We had our handyman rip out the stairs, banisters, and floorboards to replace it all; it cost us $1,640.

The kitchen faucet wasn’t working right, so we had our plumber replace it. He also tried to flush the water heater to extend the life, but it was broken enough to replace it. We needed a special size because it fits under the counter in the kitchen, so that was $1500.

Other than a clean from our cleaner, that was all that we needed to do.

TENANT SCREENING

We had 4 sets of people show interest in the property. One withdrew her interest form after checking the sex offender registry (understandable, but it is a city home, so that’s not surprising). I was interested in another guy who was retired and seemed handy, but as time wore on, there were several red flags. Another person tried to convince us that his day-trading of stocks qualified him to pay us rent each month, so he was disqualified for not meeting income requirements. Finally, a couple showed interest, and my property manager said they seemed like a decent option in person, so we went with them. At the time, I didn’t really comprehend that one of the tenants was only 20 years old. That comes into play when he shows his age and inability to handle a mature conversation about rent payments a couple of months later.

Due to the unexpected timing of turning over this house, we ended up with an 18 month lease. We didn’t want a 12 month lease, leaving us with another winter turnover. Even though their lease started January 5th, I counted the full month and ended the lease on June 30, 2025. I like a May 31 or June 30 lease ending the best because it seems to be when the most people are looking to move. Once you get to July 31st, most people (in the southern states, at least) are looking to have already been settled in the school district they wanted.

TENANTS THUS FAR

Well, since I had plenty of posts teed up, I’m only getting to post this now, months since they’ve moved in. That means I have a sample size of their tenancy to share, and it’s not good. They’ve had a lot of complaints, which is interesting to me since the previous tenants didn’t seem to have many issues with the house. It’s a 1943 house. It’s not perfect. It’s not spacious. But I assure you, the house is exactly what you see when you first tour it. It’s a cute, little, old house.

The tenants used Venmo to send the first sets of payments when moving in. For some reason, they decided to switch to Zelle; in doing so, they didn’t follow the instructions I gave them, and are sending them to an account I’d prefer them not to, but oh well. In March, rent arrived on the 6th. I was bothered by it, but I let it go. Then for May’s payment, we hadn’t received it by the 5th in the evening. Our property manager reached out to them to ask if they planned on paying that night. They said they had already paid on the 2nd. We explained that we hadn’t received it, and we still see no indication of it arriving electronically. He sent a screenshot of his bank’s information, which did confirm a payment on the 2nd. We said ok, thanks, and we’ll check in the morning.

He then went off the deep end. He attacked us, as if we just sit around pretending we don’t receive money so they’ll send more money. At no point did he stop, think, logically read our messages, and respond politely. He continued to berate us and the property manager over this, where we carefully explained that sometimes there’s an additional verification step required so that this 3-5 day hold doesn’t affect when rent is due. He kept saying he was completely verified and that it’s our bank not accepting the money. That’s not how banks work, but ok.

He eventually agreed to use Venmo. I went back to his January payments, liked them, and ‘friended’ him on the platform so that he’d have the right account in front of him. He did pay June’s rent on time and via Venmo.

In his berating of the house, he talked about how the house was awful. The house that they walked through and agreed to rent. The house that is very small and very old, but is clean and operational. The house is nothing special, but it’s a house with rent under $1000 in 2024 and decent access to the activities in the city.

They complained that the light in the oven was stuck on. They didn’t want to pay to run that electricity in a house that already had a high electric bill. It’s an 800 sf house; if you’re paying $350 per month for electricity, I’d say you’re doing something wrong. All systems in the house have been serviced and/or replaced recently. All the windows in the house are no more than 5 years old. We had our plumber lined up to handle this for us (he’s a good guy!), but they figured out what to do differently to get the light to turn off. What frustrated me the most about this complaint was that they acted like I purposely broke their oven 3 months after they moved in (and I live in a different state), and yet I’ve been very responsive to all their requests for maintenance.

SUMMARY

Overall, everything is fine. They have a lot of growing up to do. I hope at some point they learn that you catch more bees with honey. For now, they’re there until the end of April. We’ll see how the next several months go, but at this point, I’m interested in finding someone else. Based on their hatred of the house, I expect they’ll move out on their own accord regardless.