LVP

House 7 Turnover

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Our turnover this year has been higher than usual. However, it’s been for good reasons, and not just because someone is looking to rent from a different landlord, so I’ll take that win. In this case, the tenant was house hunting. We knew that a year ago, and we had set up our lease to allow them to break it. Since April was their last month in this current lease term, there was no “lease break fee” associated with their notice. They gave us notice at the end of February, which requires 30 days worth of payment. March rent was paid.

They had moved out of the house early though, which ended up being very helpful. The house needed a lot of work. There was a lot of deferred maintenance on this house. We bought the house as a flip. It looked fine on the surface, but we knew it wasn’t going to hold up. Our last couple of turnovers happened really quickly, so we didn’t put much effort into the turnover process. With the extra time, we knew we needed to address some issues.

PAINT: $2,750

First, we finally got the flat roof addition fixed on this house last summer. The flippers before us had added a laundry room to the back of the house. They used the existing covered deck infrastructure, and it was horrible. They didn’t tie it into the house correctly, so we endured several leaks into the laundry room. We struggled for years to get a roofer who would address it for us. We even hired a roofer, highlighted the flat roof issue, and missed that his contract didn’t do anything except replace the shingles on the main house roof. There was plenty of saga once we finally found someone to rebuild it, but it’s done. We hadn’t fixed the drywall from the leaks, so that needed to be done now (a.k.a. deferred maintenance).

We found a painter who repaired the drywall, repainted the ceiling, and painted the walls. He also painted most of the trim in the house to white (there was some damage on the baseboards that needed fixed) and all the walls Green Tint by Benjamin Moore.

Two tenants ago, we had given an offer that if she wanted to paint any of the rooms, we’d offer a rent concession. That was part of the deferred maintenance; most of the house was dingy white that took a beating over the years, but we never had the time between tenants already lined up to paint everything. She took us up on that offer. She even painted the bathroom vanity and medicine cabinet. It was a beautiful robins egg blue, but we didn’t have the paint to do a few touchups on the side of the vanity that were needed. Our painter added that to the work at no cost. He absolutely didn’t need to do that! But everything has a fresh coat of paint now, and I’m so happy at the facelift it gave.

FLOORING: $6,613

When we first bought this house, the bedrooms on the first floor had dingy carpet in it. The prospective tenant we had requested we replace the carpet. I can’t remember the series of events, but we determined it was better to refinish the hardwoods underneath the carpet than to continuously replace the carpets every 3-6 years. They’ve held up pretty well, but they are starting to show wear at 7 years in.

Regardless, we didn’t touch the carpet on the stairs or on the second floor of the house. It’s blue indoor/outdoor carpet. I truly can’t believe we’ve been able to house renters in this place with this carpet still in place. We’ve put it off because re-carpeting stairs is just so expensive relative to doing a whole room. One of the bedrooms on the second floor even has wood paneling, which just made it even more amazing that anybody wanted this house. It was not the most aesthetically pleasing place.

We replaced all the carpet. With the fresh carpet and fresh paint, it’s looking so much more inviting.

Then we move on to the kitchens and bathrooms. The first floor bathroom and kitchen floor were clearly just lipstick-on-a-pig situations by the flippers. The subfloor was clearly bowing and making all the cheap tile crack. The humidity issues in the bathroom (I’ll touch more on in a moment) weren’t helping matters in there.

Here you can see the kitchen (and its pink knobs!) with the tile floor. The tile had all cracked by this time.

The upstairs bathroom was original 1970s linoleum. Here’s a snip of it in its glory.

Trying to match/add the hardwood was not an option. We considered ‘luxury vinyl tile,’ but that was more expensive than I wanted to put in a rental property. I didn’t want to retile it because I just personally don’t find tile floors to be warm and cozy for a house. The only reasonable option left is ‘luxury vinyl plank.’

We requested a quote from Home Depot. Their quote was cheaper than the one we ended up going with, but we didn’t use them for good reason. We had a subfloor issue in another house. Home Depot was extremely difficult to work with. Not only were they doing questionable work, they also just threw their hands up at the subfloor issue. Luckily, we had a friend that was able to help us repair it (because we didn’t live there). We know for a fact that there’s subfloor issues here (we can see the bow in the floor at the sliding door), so we wanted to go with a contractor who could handle everything.

We picked a local company. They did both the carpet and the LVP. They were so easy to work with. I didn’t love that they wanted me to pay for the entire job up front, but it ended up being great. They had to come back to finish a few tasks, and they did it all perfectly. I’m really happy with the process and their product.

Another miscellaneous flooring issue was that the vent covers were rotting. The finish on them were peeling. This could be explained by humidity in the bathroom, but that doesn’t really explain the issues in the kitchen and living room also. Our handyman was able to pop those out and get new, clean looking ones in for us.

RANDOM WORK

We had to call on our handyman for random jobs. He had to tighten the front porch banister. It’s likely the original banister and has just corroded at the connections. He also had to tighten up the screen door (which, if it were to break would be removed; having to maintain non-essential pieces of a rental is no fun). Some light fixtures needed major TLC. We replaced the light fixtures in both second floor bedrooms, the sconce type light fixture in the half bath upstairs, and the main bathroom’s vanity light (it was all corroded and looked bad).

The upstairs half bathroom had a brown accordion door. The pieces were falling off and it just generally looked bad. The space is tight, and an accordion door style was definitely the best solution for the area, so we had a white one put in. It’s still less than ideal, but it looks much better.

The previous tenant didn’t clean up the yard as they were supposed to, so we had to hire out that work. We also asked him to clear the gutters, which was very necessary because it looked like trees were growing out of them with how many twigs were stuck. He charged me $250 to rake the leaves from the yard and flower beds, mow the yard, and trim the bushes. Then he added on $50 for the gutter clean out. We also did a final mowing before the new tenants moved in, and he charged me $60 for that.

I’m not exactly sure what the issue is, but for some reason we had water damage in the main bathroom. It wasn’t water damage in the sense of standing water. It was just too much moisture. The mirror was corroded; the tub faucet handles were corroded; the caulk was all moldy (and we knew it was fine a year ago); the walls had water streaks on it. I don’t know how it was fine for years and now it’s not, but I’m guessing the only answer is that last tenant just liked really hot showers and didn’t use the vent or window. The tub knobs were so corroded that they had to be sawed off and new valves and such installed. Luckily our plumber was able to handle it timely and it looks better now, but that was a minor inconvenience.

The back sliding door had always been questionable. No one ever pushed us on it though, so we didn’t know just how bad it was. I don’t know that the door ever fully locked. There was a block used to hold it shut for security measures (although I feel like everyone who has a sliding door uses something like that). I finally wanted it replaced. It was likely the original door (think nickel type finish), and it was overdue. We did this through Home Depot because I knew their prices were reasonable and it should be an in/out job. It was $1063.

NEW TENANT

Our property manager showed the property to several candidates. Only two provided their interest form timely. An interest form is a way to gather background documentation on the potential tenant without the tenant having to spend any money. It’s a way for the prospect to divulge any negative remarks on their credit or background check. It’s a good gesture that we allow them to fill this out before spending money on an application fee that will identify disqualifying information. We have found that some people don’t tell us anything, and then they’ve spend $43 for us to say they don’t qualify.

Both prospects submitted their interest forms on April 18. Unfortunately, both of them were interested in a mid-May lease start date. They both offered to do a 2 year lease as a compensating factor though, which was a nice gesture. I also appreciated that both of them were well spoken and up front with a lot of information.

We chose someone and ran her background check. Several “unlawful detainers” (a.k.a. evictions) came through, which hadn’t been disclosed. We told her that her credit score was slightly below 600 and the unlawful detainers would disqualify her. She then wrote back a very nice note explaining all the data that we found and asked us to reconsider. We agreed to rent to her and to take a higher security deposit as a compensating factor. She agreed to the 1.5 times a month’s rent as a security deposit.

Unfortunately, the house was vacant for a month and a half. Luckily, during that time we were able to get a lot of work done in the house. I hope that this tenant takes good care of the home and that we’re pleasantly surprised with her tenancy regardless of her history of late payments and court filings.

Property 2 Turnover

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BACKGROUND

Unlike the other property we turned over this year, we knew this one was coming. The tenant living at this house moved in back in 2017. A few years ago, there was a domestic violence incident that led to a restraining order against one tenant from the other. Legally, we had to let the one tenant out of the lease. At the time, we didn’t have an immediate reason to release the second tenant from the lease, so we offered her a new lease in just her name. That was our downfall.

Since January 1, 2020, she paid rent on time in only 3 instances. I can think of only one instance where she told us up front that rent would be late. Every single month, I was stuck chasing her down. She’d say she would pay on the 17th, and then on the 18th, I’m asking where rent is again with another lie coming my way. She had quite the array of excuses. They were always elaborate. After getting stuck in Costa Rica for half a month in September because of a positive c-19 test, she didn’t even bother letting us know when she was back in the states or when we’d see rent. She applied for rent assistance. They paid 3 months of her rent for her (which was of course was significantly late from the state), and yet the month she had to pay, she still couldn’t.

Her lease was expiring June 30th this year. We provided her notice that we would not be continuing the lease and she was to vacate by 5 pm on the 30th and no later. Since we live 500 miles away, and I don’t trust her one bit, I hired my property manager that we use on other properties to take this one over. I wanted her to be the one to check that the tenant turns over keys and has the house empty before I drove 8 hours out there to find out the tenant is squatting.

THE LAST DAY

Sure enough, the tenant had a few more games to play. At 3 pm on the last day, she texted my property manager that she needed a bit more time, and asked if they could meet at 5:30 instead of 5. At 5:15, my property manager texted her saying she hit unexpected traffic, so she wouldn’t be there until about 5:35. My property manager pulled up to no people at the house, but there was at least one dog (not on the lease). The tenant didn’t show up until 6:50 pm.

My property manager means well, but she always seems to be advocating for the tenant while I’m the one paying her for services. The tenant asked if she could stay for a little while longer and remove the rest of her stuff. Well, based on the pictures, this wasn’t a “one more load” type situation; there were hours and hours of removing clothes and crap. All her furniture was out, but there was still garbage, dog feces, clothes, and some decor items left behind. My property manager was trying to say that she should be allowed to stay to remove her things and then she’d lock up on her way out. Nope. She absolutely didn’t have a place to stay that night, and it wasn’t my responsibility to keep catering to her. There was nothing that showed me allowing her access any longer was going to leave me in a position that was any different than I was currently in (meaning, hiring a junk removal company and having to pay someone for extra cleaning services).

Burned counter top
All of the cabinets still had things in them.
Just one of the rooms
Carpet eaten and ripped through the pad and to the subfloor.
Just part of the post destruction.

Oh, let’s not forget that she didn’t pay a dime of June rent. She claimed it was to be able to secure another place to live. However, she left her mail as garbage laying in the living room where we found she had been rejected due to her record. Sometimes I wish I could say, “we were giving you a chance; perhaps you should have paid your rent and communicated issues timely so you still had a place to live.”

I stuck to my guns and said get the keys. My husband was more compassionate and said that she could come back over the weekend to get her stuff while someone was there working on the house and supervising her actions.

TURNOVER WEEKEND

Her last day was a Thursday. She couldn’t come back on Friday because she was working the whole day. She said she’d be there first thing Saturday morning. At 9:20 am, nothing. She said she couldn’t get her trailer until 10:30 or something like that. At lunch time, still nothing. When questioned on her whereabouts, she made a list of things that she wanted us to put outside for her so she could grab on her own time. HAHAHA. She showed up at 1:10 claiming her dad was right behind her. Mr. ODA let her in the house, she grabbed a handful of things, and then left. That’s the last we’ve communicated with her.

TURNOVER ACTIONS

Mr. ODA and his dad went to Virginia to handle the turnover. I was going to go by myself, but being pregnant and alone inched out over my desire to make sure things were handled correctly. They arrived Friday evening and left Sunday evening. I was quite impressed with how much they got done.

All the stuff left behind had to be moved out of the way to get to work. Mr. ODA and his dad put it all in the living room so they could start painting. We paid a junk removal company $625 to get rid of her stuff and the old carpet.

The front porch post had been torn off the brick porch. Our untrained assessment seemed like someone had backed into the post. Mr. ODA was able to raise the porch roof back up to get the post back in place. He replaced the post tops and it looked good as new, surprisingly. There are still broken bricks, but that’s not a structural concern like the post itself was.

The entire interior of the house got a new coat of paint.

Mr. ODA had to replace missing and broken nuts in the bathroom faucet (how does this happen?!).

Blinds had to be replaced, as usual.

All the carpet had to be replaced. We didn’t have time to lay luxury vinyl planks (LVP) like we’d have preferred, so we settled on new carpet. While we were telling our handyman this, he said he’d lay the LVP for us, so we jumped on that. It’s more expensive up front, but we won’t have to do a full floor replacement in 3-5 years like we’d have to do with carpet or have to replace everything for a section damaged beyond repair. Mr. ODA and his dad pulled up the carpet, pad, and most tack strips.

We paid a cleaning company to clean the kitchen and bathrooms. She was supposedly there for 5 hours. That was $250.

We had to pay our handyman $100 to “paint” our countertops because there was a huge burn mark in the counter. They paired nicely in the multiple burn holes in the kitchen floor vinyl, which got covered by LVP.

We also had to pay someone $45 to mow the lawn. That seemed like an astronomical price, but we don’t have a lawn mower there, and it was easier to just let this guy do it when he asked.

After the new tenant moved in, they let us know the washer and dryer weren’t working. A diagnostic test of the washer seemed to say it wasn’t a user error and just coincidental timing, but then finding out that the dryer didn’t work right after that was interesting. The new tenant had their own washer in storage. We offered them the ability to buy their own dryer for $20 per month off the rent, which they accepted.

After we subtract out her security deposit, we’ll go to court for just under $10k worth of expenses. About $2,250 of that is unpaid late fees, so I don’t expect that to actually go anywhere once it gets to court. The first step is to send her a letter outlining all these details. Since the balance owed is so high, I preemptively offered a payment plan over 6 months. While $1650 per month is high for someone who couldn’t pay me $1150 each month, I don’t want to drag this out for a whole year. She’s not reliable, and I don’t want to be tracking and fighting her for a year to come. I also expect no response or resolution via this letter, and that we’ll have to go to court eventually anyway. Once it goes to court, she becomes responsible for court filing fees, and the judge will award interest on the balance, which adds up quickly.

SILVER LININGS

We bought the house with renters at $1050. We had worked on raising it $50 every two years (approximately), but rent was only at $1150. We recently refinanced the house, and the rental appraisal on it came in at $1600! If we don’t count that the tenant never actually paid June rent, we only dealt with a vacant house for 21 days and got it rented at $1,450. We probably could have pushed higher, but we were happy to get movement on it as soon as it was listed. To only be vacant for 21 days with the extensive damage and work to get it turned over is impressive to me.

While it was $6,000, the whole house got new flooring. Instead of trying to patch the vinyl in the kitchen and get new carpet installed for it to only last a few years, we were able to get LVP throughout the house. LVP will last much longer, and if there are damaged boards, they can be replaced individually instead of having to replace rooms and rooms worth of carpet.

CONCLUSION

This could be a horror story. However, we have 13 houses that help float expenses on the one or two where someone doesn’t pay rent timely or we have higher expenses. While we had to manage her month-to-month to track down rent, she did eventually pay all but that last month. In the end, for it to be a few things to address and it to take less than 21 days is great. This doesn’t go down as a reason to not hold rentals!

Laying LVP

mrsonedollarallowance1 Comment

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

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

WHAT IS LVP?

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

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

INSTALLATION TIPS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COST & TIME

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

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

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

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

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