I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to set up our financial updates in this year. I didn’t like the format last year. I think I’m going to focus more on how spending changed month-to-month. Since my posts are late this month, this is written as of January 20, but didn’t post until today. I want to do several detailed posts about last year’s activity, this is going to be a shell of a look at our finances, and more of a “what have we been up to” type post. As a reminder, I usually post this around the 15th of the month because I can capture the mortgage payments made in the month (we pay our mortgages around the 10th, after all our rent is presumably collected).
RENTAL PROPERTIES
We left off last month with 3 refinances in which we took cash out. We paid off 2 mortgages with some of that money and have been looking at houses to purchase this month. We made an offer on one recently, but lost to another bid that was $5,000 more. We were about to make an offer on another one, but the HOA was $100 per month, and that really ate into our monthly cash flow. In this market, we’re not even close to our 1% Rule that we strive for (rent is at least 1% of the purchase price). Today’s deal I considered was going to be $240k purchase price with $1500 (maybe) in rent. We would have lost money every month with the HOA costs and such a low rent.
I’ve spent a lot of time managing these properties over the last month, which I’ll detail in another post.
One of our houses finally had the rental assistance check cut, so that’s 3 months worth of rent, going back to September 2021, that’s on its way to us. We’re waiting to receive a check for another property’s rental assistance approval, so that has us one month behind on that house. And the original house that applied for assistance applied again for January, so we’re waiting on 65% of that house’s January rent. We had to do pest control for mice on one house, and a toilet needed fixed on another.
One property’s HOA went up $10/quarter. I had already paid the $240 bill in December to count it as a 2021 expense, so I had to add $10 to that in January after I was notified of the increase.
EXPENSES
We had fraudulent activity on our main credit card, so that had to be closed and reissued.
Our swim lessons that were scheduled last March/April were finally rescheduled. That’s been $88 sitting in suspense – we paid for the lessons, they cancelled them, and then they kept our payment as a credit until they rescheduled.
We were sick the first week of January. Between our travel to NY in December and being sick for over a week, our expenses were pretty low this month. Our gas usage was higher than usual since we drove to/from NY. We hardly ate at restaurants, and our grocery runs were more focused on meals than just randomly buying things and hoping it makes a meal later.
Our electric bill was about half of what we expected it to be, so that was a pleasant surprise. It’s been colder this month, so I expect it to be back up to the $300.
NET WORTH
Our net worth increased by about $15k since mid-December. Our taxable investment accounts increased a good amount over the last month, but our retirement accounts took a hit. Our cash balance increased, and our credit card balances are lower than usual. Our investment property mortgages didn’t decrease the usual amount because we didn’t have to pay 3 mortgages this month due to the refinance; they only decreased by $671 worth of total principal.
There’s a company in Virginia that offers $0 closing costs for refinances. That applies to personal residences being refinanced. They still cover most of the closing costs associated with investment properties, but there’s an investment property fee that we need to pay. They also have a fee associated with taking cash out as part of the refinance. Another stipulation is that the new loan has to be at least $100,000 after the refinance. I spoke of the initial details in a post last month, and now I can discuss the details and results of the refinance.
We first talked about taking $50,000 out for each Property2 and Property3. Then we added Property8 into the refinance. The opportunity to use this company to refinance a loan is only available in Virginia. We decided it was best to pay off both Winchester, KY houses instead of just one. The appraisals came back higher than anticipated, so we decided to increase each loan to the max amount of 60% loan to value ratio.
Note the change in value on these houses. We’ve owned 2 and 3 for 5.5 years, and we’ve owned 8 for just over 4 years. The value of these houses have more than doubled in that time, with minimal effort on our part, all the while having a tenant cover the mortgage and maintenance costs.
CASH FLOW
At first, the thought of going from $60-70k to $123k-138k worth of loan payments is an overwhelming sight. I’m a visual person, so I broke it down to a place where I felt comfortable with this move. That comfort is in the cash flow.
With the $190k cashed out, we paid off two loans. Due to a huge issue with our insurance payments, our escrow accounts were substantially negative. Therefore, the payoff required making the escrow accounts whole. Our bank that held these loans used to have such a great online system. Through the course of 3 updates, they killed it. They took away loan history in an easy-to-view format, they took away options to make principal-only payments same day, and they removed the payoff request concept (they had made it difficult in the last update by making it a request that you would have emailed to you, and then in this update, they took it away all together, forcing me to call an automated system that just kept telling me about covid-relief options….. I’m not bitter).
After these two loans were paid off, we were left with just under $50k in cash. This will be used for a downpayment and closing costs on a new rental property, which is a search underway.
To the cash flow part – the removal of those two loan payments was worth $1,184.62. The three properties refinanced had their mortgage payments increase by $1,117.70. The change in my monthly cash flow is now $67 more than I had been netting. I’ll note that the cash flow also involves one of the houses going from a 20 year mortgage to a 15 year mortgage, which increases the monthly payment disproportionately to just an interest rate change.
That’s the black and white, month-to-month change; there are some caveats though. Previously, Property2 hadn’t been escrowed, so I was paying that on my own. Now, with the two houses paid off, I’ll need to pay those previously-escrowed costs on my own. When I factor those details in, my annual cash flow actually decreases, and my out of pocket costs for the year increase by about $700.
While the monthly cash flow increase of $67 isn’t a drastic difference, the fact that we have cash left over and $50k of the new loan balance will be used to create more cash flow with the purchase of a new rental-producing property benefits our portfolio.
MANAGING BILLS IMPLICATION
With the payoff of the two houses in Winchester, KY, I now am responsible for paying the taxes and insurance on the properties (instead of escrow). In October, Kentucky sends the owner as of January 1 of that year the tax bills (meaning, if you own the property on January 1, 2020, then you receive the tax bill on October 15, 2020). It’s frustrating. It’s on the old owner to forward to the new owner if there was a sale during that year. They also send it to the owner even if there’s a mortgage with escrow. So every year, I need to call the mortgage company and make sure they received the bill themselves. Even though I need to stay on top of paying the taxes and insurances now that there’s no escrow, it’ll actually save me time because I won’t have to call these companies to make sure they received the current tax bill. Oh! They also give an incentive for paying early, so I’m always worried that the escrow payment won’t be released to give me that incentive and that they’ll focus on the due date.
Property2 had not been escrowed. There was a screw up in the paperwork that I capitalized on because I don’t like that escrow keeps my money tied up without any incentive to me. Well, Mr. ODA thought I had said I preferred things to be escrowed, but I don’t remember ever definitively saying that. I may have said a comment like “gosh, it’s nice to not have to remember to pay this bill,” but not that I’d prefer to see my monthly payment go up each year because of an escrow reanalysis (I feel like I wrote a post about this……). Property 2 is now escrowed through the refinance.
I removed two tax payments to Virginia and one insurance payment, but then I added back 4 tax payments and 1 insurance payment for each year. The one insurance payment for two properties is what caused me to have an escrow fiasco, so now we’ll avoid that mess by paying it ourselves. Plus, when we pay the insurance ourselves, it can go on a credit card where we earn cash rewards.
SUMMARY
In 4-5 years, we’ve more than doubled the value of these houses that we purchased. While that isn’t immediate cash in our pockets, that’s a substantial increase in our portfolio’s net worth. That increase in value costs us more in taxes in each year, but it also provided us with this opportunity to refinance and take cash out to purchase another property. With two houses paid off, we have also increased our monthly cash flow by about $67. On top of all the near-term gains for this transaction, there’s also the interest payment gains we received. All 3 loans dropped their interest rate, and one loan transitioned to a 15 year loan from a 20 year loan, which decreases the interest owed as well.
Our 11th purchase was a 4 bedroom and 2 bathroom house, which we were excited about. We only had one other 4 bedroom, and it only had 1.5 baths, so this was a new demographic we could meet. We again needed a mortgage, but we were tapped out (max of 10 mortgages allowed per Fannie Mae), so we went to our partner. I went through the process of establishing the partnership in the House 10 post.
The house had been listed for sale in July 2018, dropped the price in October 2018, and we went under contract on it on December 1, 2018. We went under contract at $129,000, which meant, according to the 1% Rule, we would look to rent it for at least $1290.
The house required a lot of cosmetic work (relative to our usual purchases) before we could rent it. The biggest hold up was the carpet replacement, but we had to do a lot of cleaning and painting also. We closed on February 4, 2019; got to work on the house on the 6th; and then had it rented on March 3, 2019. That’s a longer turnaround time than we’d like, but we thought the long-term benefits of a 4/2 house would be worth it. Plus, with our goal being $1290 based on the 1% Rule, we were happy that we rented it at $1300 and through March 31, 2020.
LOAN TERMS
We were given two options from the loan officer. Both options required 25% down. We could do a 15 year mortgage at 5.05% or a 30 year mortgage at 5.375%. The 15 year mortgage payment was $865, while the 30 year was $640. Since both options required 25% down and we aren’t concerned with our monthly cash flow (as in, we’re not living off of every dollar that comes out of these houses right now), we chose the 15 year. Escrow changes over the last few years have increased the mortgage to $941, unfortunately. However, we’ve been paying off this loan with pretty substantial chunks of money thrown at it. The loan started at $96,750, and the current balance is $21,350. We would have liked to have this paid off a few months ago, but we need to time our payments with our partner, who recently paid for a wedding, renovations to a new house, and a new tear-down property adjacent to his personal residence that he’s going to build a garage-type thing (city living = street parking for him).
We went under contract at $129,000, and the house appraised at $140,000, so that was a nice surprise. The current city assessment is at $148k, but it would likely sell for more than that.
PARTNERSHIP
Since the LLC was already under way when we purchased House 10, we needed to add this one to the LLC. We contacted our attorney. He processed all the paperwork, and we showed up just to sign everything in a quick meeting. At this time, we also requested an EIN be established for the LLC. To process adding this to an established LLC, it cost us $168 (which we paid half of since we’re split 50/50 with our partner).
PREPARING TO RENT
This house was probably the second most effort we had to put in to prepare it for renting. We had to replace quite a few blinds that were broken, do a deep clean of everything, install smoke alarms, paint, replace the carpet, and do some subfloor work.
We had to paint nearly every room (one room we even painted the ceiling the same color as the walls because the ceiling was in rough shape, and it wasn’t worth the time for precision of the edges).
The floor at the front door was rotted by termites. The guys had to cut out the floor and replace the wood before the new carpet could be ordered. We needed the house treated for termites at that point since there was an active infestation that we found. Depending on time and price, I’d rather replace carpeted areas with hard surface flooring for easier maintenance. Since we were already losing time with all the maintenance on this house to get it ready to rent and it was a small area, we just went the easy way out and put new carpet in. The carpet was only in the living room and hallway; all the bedrooms have hardwood flooring.
FIRST TENANTS
We were able to get a family in the house fairly quickly after we finished our work. We rented it at $1300. They signed it on March 3rd, and I had set the terms until March 31, 2020 (this comes into play later). The family had been renting with a roommate (and the husband’s boss!), and that guy had wanted to leave the house. In January 2020, the tenant said, “we signed the lease on March 3rd, so we want to be out at the end of February.” That’s not how leases work. The lease signed said until March 31, 2020. Some time between us telling him that he was in our lease until the end of March, not February, and the end of February actually coming, they decided they wanted to renew their lease. They signed a new lease with us on March 11 to cover 4/1/2020 through 3/31/2021.
In April 2020, the tenant received a job offer in Texas. He asked about a lease break, and we offered an option. All the communication was done via text message, so it was technically in writing, but there was never a “wrap up” text that identified all the agreed upon terms to allow for the lease break. I used this as a teaching opportunity for the 3 of us in the LLC that clearly documenting agreements in writing (preferably with signatures) is important.
The tenant offered to pay May rent without prompting, so we thought that was covered. The part that needed to be detailed was what was considered a “lease break” fee. We had agreed to 60 days worth of rent, and the security deposit couldn’t be used to pay that. Mr. ODA tried to contact the husband on multiple occasions to get rent paid at the beginning of May, but there was no response. I finally sent an email, detailing that they agreed to pay May’s rent, and that technically, they were on the hook for the entire year’s worth of the lease (quick aside: while that’s what the lease says, I think a caveat in the law actually means they’re not really liable for the whole amount because once the house is vacant for 7 days, it defaults back to our ownership, and then we have to show due diligence to re-rent it, leaving them liable for only the gap period). Well, as usual, the landlord gives us a guilt trip (their daughter was in the hospital in TX) instead of separating that from the concept of “pay your debts owed.” As a person, I feel for you on this; as a business owner, it’s not my responsibility to manage your finances and personal life.
The tenant called Mr. ODA and yelled at him. A few hours later, presumably with a more clear head, we received a fair response via text. He even apologized for yelling on the phone. He paid the last few hundreds that were owed, and we all moved on.
SECOND TENANTS
After our first tenants vacated the house, we had to get the house turned over. There was a good bit of work that needed to be done for just a year of someone living there. They had also left stuff behind that became our responsibility to get out of the house. We listed the house for rent. Our partner showed it to 3 younger people who would rent it together. They seemed great until we ran their background and credit check. They had evictions they didn’t disclose (claimed they didn’t know), so we shared the report with them and continued showing it.
We ended up showing it to a couple, and they liked it. After we accepted their application, we were able to get the lease signed on May 7, 2020. Since this was at the very beginning of the pandemic, we had to get creative. I signed this lease on a street corner (hadn’t realized that the place I had selected with outdoor seating was closed!), and they paid their first month’s rent, security deposit, and pet fee in cash that he handed to me in a sock (with a warning that told me this wasn’t the first time he handed someone cash like this haha). They’ve been great tenants, and they renewed their lease.
MAINTENANCE
The new carpeting when we first bought the house cost us $700. Between the termite treatments and other general pest control, we’ve spent $950.
Once the first tenant moved in, we learned of some other issues that weren’t apparent by us just working there and not living there. We had the plumber come out to fix several issues with the hot water that cost us $1450! Then we found out that the master bathroom shower wasn’t installed properly, and it was missing a p-trap; that cost us $325.
Our insurance carrier didn’t like that there wasn’t a handrail for the front steps of the property, so in March 2020, we had to have one installed at $190.
We had to replace the washing machine in April 2020 for about $500. As I’ve shared, we try to not include any ‘extra’ appliances because then maintenance and replacement are our responsibility. This was a fun one – we replaced it just to make the tenants happy and not deal with maintaining it, and then those tenants left right after that, and our new tenants brought their own appliances (so they just have two washers and two dryers in their kitchen).
We had an electrical issue with the master bathroom that cost us $150.
Luckily, I did the inspection over the summer, and nothing came of that initially. We did end up replacing a fan in the master bedroom because the light part of it stopped working with the switch. Since we don’t live near the house anymore, and our partner was in the middle of getting married, we went through Home Depot to have it installed, so all together (fan/light and install) it was about $175.
SUMMARY
This has been a good house. We didn’t realize that the house is located outside the city limits, so we needed to figure out trash pick up in the county (not included in the taxes). Other than a few maintenance hiccups, things have been smooth sailing. We’re happy with the tenants who are there, that they’re maintaining and cleaning the house, and we’re getting our desired rent amount (that they pay on time every month). The street is in a decently nice neighborhood with a lot of original owners, which helps it keep (and increase) its value.
There’s a company in Virginia that advertises no-closing-cost-refinances. If it’s your personal residence, then this holds true. For investment properties, there are some closing costs, but it’s cheaper than the usual refinance. We used them for two other loans – one at the beginning of the pandemic when we signed the paperwork in a tent in the parking lot, and another where we signed the paperwork at our kitchen table in Kentucky with a traveling notary (that’s a thing!).
There was a threshold requirement in order to qualify for this refinance, and that was the new loan had to be at least $100,000. Only 2 of our houses had a loan originated for over $100k originally, so that limited our abilities.
Mr. ODA came to me and said he wanted to do a cash-out-refinance. This company had changed their policy, and they’d allow a cash-out-refinance to get us to the 100k threshold. The first two Virginia houses we purchased (2016) had balances of about 70k and 60k. We had enough equity in these houses that we could take a substantial amount out in the refinance, but Mr. ODA chose $50k each.
Here’s a run through of the thought process on how to do this and why it’s a benefit. I personally like seeing the details behind other’s decisions, so hopefully this will help someone or help make the concept click and open up an opportunity. This process was only just initiated, so I’ll do an update after we execute the plan to see how it changed.
The original goal was to use that money to pay off another loan. We’ve made our decision on which loan to pay off based on the highest interest rate. Right now, our highest interest rate is a loan with our partner at 5.1%, but this is also the loan that we’re actively paying off (leaving a balance right now of 26k, which we’re responsible for half). Since we need to time our principal payments to be matched with our partner, we can’t just dump money into this loan without really complicating things. So our second-highest interest rate is 4.625%. This loan originally was $89k in 2017 and has a balance of $62k. If we paid this off, that would leave about $35k in cash (based on the other two loan refinances that we’d take $50k out of each) that we could use to pay towards another loan or earmark for another purchase. As this discussion happened, Mr. ODA pivoted.
This company is only available to refinance loans in Virginia. Instead of paying off that $62k loan for a Virginia property, what if we also refinanced that loan and paid off one of two loans remaining on our Kentucky houses? I’m a visual person and needed to see how this would actually play out.
The terms were that if we picked a 15 year loan, that brings the interest rate down to 2.5%. With a 30 year loan, it’s 3.125%. I compared the current amortization schedule to the proposed amortization schedule, and here they are. Note that the interest isn’t a one-to-one comparison because we’ve already paid 4-5 years of interest on these loans.
HOUSE 2
The original loan terms were a 20 year at 3.875%.
The new terms would create a new 15 year loan, reduce the rate to 2.5%, and increase the loan to about $123k (pay off old loan, fees for closing, and $50k cashed out). This decreases our monthly cash flow, on this property, by $294.38.
HOUSE 3
The original loan terms were a 15 year at 3.25%.
The new terms would create a new 15 year loan, reduce the rate to 2.5%, and increase the loan to about $113k (pay off old loan, fees for closing, and $50k cashed out). This decreases our monthly cash flow, on this property, by $155.89.
HOUSE 8
The original loan terms were a 30 year at 4.625%.
The new terms would create a new 30 year loan, reduce the rate to 3.125%, and increase the loan to about $ (pay off old loan, fees for closing, and $35k cashed out). This is slightly off because the new loan isn’t showing at exactly $100k, but for all these the final numbers will be slightly different. This decreases our monthly cash flow, on this property, by $84.87.
In these projections, we’ll receive $135,000 cash in hand. With that, we’ll pay off the higher loan in Kentucky, which has a balance of about $81k. That mortgage has a monthly payment of $615.34. These three loans have increased their monthly mortgage payments by $535.14 in total. Since we’ve eliminated a monthly mortgage with the cash from these new loans, our total monthly cash flow actually has a net increase of $80.20. In addition to this net positive cash flow, we also have over $53k in cash in our account.
Now, if you know us, cash in our account isn’t a preference by any means. In my last monthly update, you can see that we have almost 20k in cash and that’s abnormal. Add $53 to that, and that’s just too much money sitting in a checking account. At this point, the goal is to buy another house. With the way the market is, we’re probably not going to hit the 1% Rule we strive for (the expected monthly rent will be at least 1% of the purchase price – $1000 rent for $100,000 purchase), and we’re not going to see the margins that we’re used to. It’s going to take a lot of effort to get our psychology right for this next purchase. We’ll have to hold strong in knowing that our other houses have great margins, and at least it won’t be negative cash flow.
At this point, we’ve started the refinance process by signing our initial disclosures and providing all the many, many documents needed to originate a loan.
Last month, I mentioned that there would be a lot of rental property expenses and bills being paid this month. Well, they will hit in November, but they don’t hit until the end of the month. I scheduled all the payments to be made right after our current credit card cycle closes, which is around the 20th of the month for most of our credit cards.
I had to update our 401k numbers with more recent data (usually the data I’m using is a couple of weeks old since updating those accounts involves an unnecessary amount verifications). I also updated one of the balances on our mortgages (one with a partner that I don’t have access to the account to see regular updates).
I’ve been working the second half of October and a few days in November, which has kept our spending low. This month I have the last of my Christmas shopping to do (hopeful for deals on Black Friday for items already in my cart!) and several insurance payments that will cause our credit cards to increase more than usual, but we’ll stay on top of paying them off.
We have yet to receive September, October, and November rent from one of our tenants (more information in the next post in a few days). Otherwise, everyone is paid up on rent, and we even had a tenant pay part of December’s rent!
We had several reimbursements come through this month that increased our cash on hand. Mr. ODA purchased things for our HOA on his credit card, so that was reimbursed. We had issues with our escrows and insurance payments, so the overages were reimbursed to us. I also worked, serving beer, in October, which increased our cash balance more than usual.
There are a few line items that were changed significantly because I wasn’t working with clear data the past few months. We may have hit $3 million net worth before this update, but I know that it’s official now! At 35 and 34, that’s a fun accomplishment. It doesn’t feel like we have money to throw around, and we certainly don’t live lavishly. You can see that $2 million of this is tied up in the appraisal value of homes we own, and most of the other parts of this is tied up in accounts that we can’t access until retirement. We still make decisions for the longevity of our net worth because, well let’s face it, we’re only in our mid-30s and there’s a lot of life to live.
We’ve been busy, which has kept our expenses down in our personal life. I’ve been working a few days at our local racetrack, which has been for my entertainment and a good way to bring in some money for our household. While our busy schedule has kept us from eating at restaurants and spending money on activities, the last quarter of the year brings big expenses on the rental front for insurance and taxes.
I still haven’t decided how to format these financial updates, but I did work on categorizing all the expenses for our year. I’d like to see how our spending changes through the year, and if I keep a running tally of the information, I’ll be able to consistently categorize expenses. At this point, I’ll just report for the whole year later in January, but it feels good to have that process started since there are a lot of transactions (already at 786 line items!).
RENTALS
We paid an extra $2000 towards the mortgage that we’re trying to pay off (we paid $1000 and our partner paid the other thousand). That mortgage balance is about $26k, which we’re responsible for half.
Kentucky taxes are due in October. Well, they’re actually due in November, but they give you a 2% discount if you pay before 11/1, so we of course do that. Two of our houses are still escrowed, so I don’t need to worry about that, but I had to pay one of the houses, which was about $1300. As an aside, I put it in the mail on 10/6 and it was taken out of our account on 10/8; I’ve never seen the mail and processing of taxes happen so quickly!
We had someone do the work on a house (fix bedroom doors and replace a missing section of fence) that was left over from my July walk throughs, and that was $490 (split with our partner). This house has been notoriously late on payments with very little communication, but they’ve turned a corner. They’re still late with payments, but they pay the late fee without prompting and give us advanced notice, which is all we ask for! They say they’ll be back on track with on time payments next month.
We’ve had issues with another rental, which I shared in my last post. They were approved for state assistance, so I’m expecting September, October, and November rent from the state here soon. Since there’s no timeframe for when that will come in, I’ve told her that she has to keep paying on the payment schedule we agreed to, and anything she pays will just go to December rent at this point.
PERSONAL EXPENSES
We had all the drywall for the basement delivered in September for $788. Several pieces arrived damaged from the strap that held them down. Mr. ODA called Home Depot since the delivery fee was $75 for this convenience, and they were super nice. She refunded us for the broken sheets and the delivery fee ($125!).
Only $130 spent in gas (that will probably go up next month since I’m driving to/from Lexington 3 times per week for work, plus a few more personal trips there). Only $92 spent in restaurants!
SUMMARY
While some of the expenses for rentals have trickled in, the next month is when most of them are going to hit. We’ll also have an annual medical bill come due in November.
Our net worth increased by $21k from last month. Our credit card balances are low, and then our cash balance is higher than usual because we used to just put any extra cash towards mortgages, but right now we’re trying to pay off that mortgage we have with a partner and rethink our approach (do we want to save for another down payment.. type question).
We have one house that seems to always have a story. Well, we have two that are consistently late, but the one just says, “it’ll be late,” while this other one has a crazy story. While trying to gather my information on how we’ve worked with her so much, I thought I’d share some of these stories. Perhaps if you’re a tenant, you can see the landlord’s perspective on how this just doesn’t add up and there’s eventually an end to the rope. So just for fun, it’s story time.
This person has a history of fraud. She also had domestic abuse and restraining orders against her that caused us to lose one of the tenants at the beginning of 2020. There are the typical excuses like car maintenance issues, and then there are interesting ones.
March 2020
We started the pandemic off with a “furlough” letter. Knowing the history we have with this tenant, I didn’t take it at face value. I struggled to find a contact for the company that the letter was from, and then I eventually found a way to get in touch with a local office (as in… where she works and not the one in Florida where this letter seemed to come from). I asked for an employment verification for the tenant’s name and whether she was furloughed. The woman on the other end did a laugh/sigh thing and said, “She’s not furloughed. We’ve been over this several times. Her hours were reduced, but she is still employed and expected to show up to work.” I let her know that I received a letter from the company stating a furlough, which she said she was unaware of.
January 2021
Virginia has a Rent Relief Program for tenants that were affected by the virus and lost income. The program is for unpaid, past due rent. I pretended to be a tenant and went through the application process; it very clearly only let me input unpaid rent that’s past due (i.e., I couldn’t claim that I wouldn’t be able to pay a future rent owed). I even went through the trainings available on the system. I was very thorough. The tenant paid January rent, and then I received notification that the tenant applied for assistance. I can’t remember how I knew it was for this tenant (because in the future, I’ll get emails from the system that I can’t tie to any tenant), but I knew. I called the hotline and asked what month was being claimed as unpaid and was told January. I sent the tenant an email letting her know that she was not eligible and that I had done my due diligence acknowledging the information. I had actually also called because I didn’t appreciate that the documentation on file required my social security number to be on paperwork that the tenant had access to. For some reason, this didn’t bother any other landlords, but it’s not something I want this person having! When I told her she was ineligible for the assistance, she said it was because she expected February’s rent to be late, which she then paid without the assistance.
August 2021
She paid August’s rent on August 31. Why? She was in a car accident. When? On April 24, 2021. How is this related to August rent? I don’t know.
This doesn’t exactly explain why she doesn’t have income or what happened to her job. She said in passing that she would start a new job on August 30th, but we don’t know what happened to her last job or how long she had been unemployed.
It’s now October 6, and she hasn’t paid September or October rent yet. Why? Because she went to Costa Rica on September 1 (or 3rd?) and tested positive for COVID, so she had to quarantine. She shared several pieces of correspondence related to the car accident, which told us that she received over $5,000 in the insurance settlement. Questions that I have, which have not been asked and/or gone unanswered: 1) If you don’t have any money to pay rent until a car accident settlement check arrives, how are you affording to go on a trip? 2) If you received the settlement check in time to pay August rent on 8/31, why didn’t you pay rent with the rest of that check on 9/1? 3) Why didn’t you pay rent before you left town? 4) If you were unemployed for a while, and were starting a job on August 30, how and why did you leave the country (during a pandemic)? 5) Through communication with her girlfriend, we learned that she went to Costa Rica on 9/1, but she tested positive on 9/3. How did you get into the country and not get tested for 2 days? 6) I received an email on 9/6 stating she couldn’t get the payment to go through. What were you doing between 9/1 and 9/5 that I’m receiving this email on 9/6? 7) I responded to that email and gave other electronic options for payment. I received no answer or acknowledgement. Why couldn’t you respond to this email or attempt to pay rent again? 8) Assuming internet issues, I let it go for two days before sending a follow up email. No response to that email. Why? 9) At this point, I got stern. I very rarely get stern with people.
10) I received a response from someone stating they were her girlfriend and monitoring her email. If you’re monitoring her email, did you not find it urgent to address the lack of rent payment emails you’ve been seeing? 11) This person says she’s working with the family to get rent paid timely. I receive no rent nor do I receive an update. 12) Even though I had said I’d give until the 13th for an update, I ended up being responsible for my household while my husband traveled and didn’t get to the follow up until the 15th. I sent an email asking for an update. No response. 13) I don’t handle the text communication, so I waited until Mr. ODA was unoccupied with his work tasks, and asked him to text her on Friday. She responds! She says she’s been back for several days. Really? Why didn’t you get in touch with us? Why didn’t you let us know your status? 14) She says she can’t pay rent until Wednesday (the 22nd) because she had to pay for the extra costs for staying in Costa Rica for longer than anticipated. What if you had paid rent before you left? How would you have been able to pay for that hotel stay and getting out of the country? Why is it on me to float this financially? 15) Mr. ODA texted and asked about payment on the 22nd, we got no response, and I sent a notice of default. She suddenly was able to share that the person she was going to get the money from didn’t have it, and she couldn’t pay rent. Then she responded to my email and said she wanted a payment plan (Virginia requires me to offer a payment plan once every 12 month cycle). 16) I put together a payment plan to start payment on 10/1. She responded that she wouldn’t be paid until 10/8 because of the start date after she returned to the country. So she can’t pay anything towards TWO MONTHS worth of rent until it’s late for both months.
PAYMENT PLAN
I front-loaded the payments in the plan. First, I need to pay my mortgage, which I’ve now paid twice without offset from a tenant living in my house. Second, I’m not offering a payment plan for the next six months worth of rent, so come November 1st, she needs to pay rent in full. She can’t have evenly spaced payments while also paying full rent in future months. I put the due dates as every other Friday, starting 10/8, as she claimed she had no money until then.
I stated several times that the money is due on the date that we have agreed upon, and there is no five-day grace period like there is in the lease. Too many people think rent is due on the 5th because there’s a grace period. It’s due on the 1st, but there’s a grace period to allow for payment without penalty. October 1st was a Friday, and I still received rent on the 4th and 5th. Since this is overdue rent, I wasn’t going to play the follow up game that I’ve already had to play far too much in the last two months, so it was due that day, and that’s it.
During this process, she applied for assistance from the State for COVID relief. I also included the following: Any monies received from the State’s program will eliminate the last payments first. If and when I receive money from the State, I will let you know, and I will update the schedule accordingly. Do not assume any payments received; adhere to this schedule until told otherwise. If you can pay more than the amount throughout this timeframe, please do. Any and all payments received will work to eliminate the latest payments due first.
Since I didn’t find any requirements on the how the payment plan was to be set up, I didn’t extend it very long. The final payment is scheduled for 12/17, so that’s just 6 payments. As I mentioned, I front-loaded the payments, so the first two are $550. Then they taper to $350. The payments to be made also include the two months worth of late fees.
If she doesn’t adhere to the payment plan that she had to agree to, then I can seek possession from the court for default on the lease. Hopefully we’ll have some money here by the end of the week!
There’s really no point to this except to share in our experiences. The excuses are creative and entertaining. We’re lucky that we have the ability to float one house under the payments of all the other houses, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating to be two months behind on income.
Cooler weather is here! We have a full calendar these days with pre-school and sports. I’ve been managing that by setting a lot of alarms giving me a half hour warning that we need to leave the house for something. We also celebrated our son’s 3rd birthday with both sides of our family, which was so much fun. He knew all about a birthday and the traditions, did a great job at being grateful for his gifts, and hasn’t stopped playing with all those new toys. This month, his birthday party and a long weekend trip to Virginia were our big expenses, while the sports and activities kept us home and not eating at restaurants in between those things! On top of all this craziness, Mr. ODA went on a work trip, then I picked up a few shifts at the race track to help them out. And so, here we are, two-and-a-half weeks since my last post.
NET WORTH
About once a month, we have a meeting with our financial advisor. During last month’s meeting, his software system said that we hit $3 million net worth! Unfortunately, my numbers last month didn’t say that, and they still don’t, but we’re right there. I didn’t think it worth it to line up my information against how the software is reporting the number because a lot of our net worth is based on the current market value of our real estate, which isn’t necessarily an exact amount. I know Mr. ODA had a goal for the first million in net worth, but I wouldn’t say that we had a goal to hit this particular number. With the financial advisor, we’re working on our mentality. We’re basically trying to figure out what’s our true goal (instead of just this number), and if we had (and did) everything we wanted, what would that cost difference be? I’m working on two other posts about our mentality, and I’ll have to include this side of the thought process as well.
DETAILS
One of our credit cards has a balance of over $2,200 in this net worth update. That includes almost $1,000 of a hotel that Mr. ODA had for a work trip, the hotel for Richmond at $450, and an AirBnB charge for an upcoming trip of $424. It also includes Mr. ODA’s food purchases while on travel, which amount to about $180, and an Uber trip of $10. The work expenses will be reimbursed, but that’s not yet accounted for in the math since the payment hasn’t hit our checking account yet.
With the child tax credits coming in, our investments have gone up each month. We’re putting some of that into the kids’ investment accounts. We’ve also had other unexpected income, which led to another $500 transfer into Mr. ODA’s investment account. Usually, we see an automatic contribution of $1100 between our Roth accounts and the kids’ accounts. This month, we had $1,900.
All of our housing expenses were about the same. This coming month has a trip planned, a day to hang drywall in the basement, and me working at the race track nearly every weekend.
This house was purchased in 2018, and it was actually purchased by our Realtor and friend, under the plan that we would formalize the partnership after closing. Mr. ODA had been searching for another investment property, but we had 10 mortgages already (9 investment properties and our personal home), which is a Fannie Mae cap (see the Selling Guide, section B2-2-03). One of our loans was a commercial loan, and we had hoped that it didn’t count against the 10 mortgage limit, but it did. Fannie says that the cap is the number of properties being financed, regardless of type, when looking to originate a new loan. Our Realtor had one rental property on his own and had mentioned how he wanted to purchase more properties to create an income stream through that option.
Mr. ODA and our partner went to see the house without me in March 2018. After the initial visit to see the house, they requested the information for the tenant that was living there. We received their applications, current lease, move in check list, and rent roll. They had started living there October 1, 2015, and while they had been late, they had always eventually paid rent with the late fee. During some of our initial searches, we had someone tell us that rent on the 6th was more profitable because they’re pay with a late fee. While we don’t encourage late payments (and we’re actually really lenient with late fees in general), this eased our tension when we saw late payments.
The house is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, with a fully finished basement. The condition of the house was probably slightly lower than what I would have accepted based on the pictures, but I hadn’t seen the house in person. I actually had only seen one room of this house before our walkthroughs this past July. Our partner and Mr. ODA said that the pictures didn’t do the house justice, and it was worth purchasing.
After our partner purchased the house in April 2018, we established a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). My last post goes through the details of why we established an LLC for joint ownership, but we don’t use LLCs for our personally owned properties at this point.
LOAN TERMS
We requested three different options for the mortgage numbers: A) 20 year fixed with 20% down was 5.125%; B) 20 year fixed with 25% down was 4.75%; or C) 30 year fixed with 25% down was 4.875%.
All of the options included ‘points’ without us being told upfront or requesting it. We questioned the reason for the quotes having these points and were given a half-hearted response that sounded sketchy. We ended up with a 30 year fixed, no points, and a rate of 4.875%. There wasn’t an incentive to go with a shorter loan (and therefore a higher payment each month) at a higher rate just to put 20% down. We went for the 30 year instead of the 20 year to increase our cash flow opportunity since we have a partner on the house and are only getting 50% of the income and taxable expenses.
PARTNERSHIP
Our partnership actually started with a loan for the down payment of this house. Mr. ODA and our partner agreed to allow us to pay him back over time for our 50% of the closing costs. We didn’t have the amount needed liquid, but we knew we could make up the amount owed over a short period of time instead of liquidating money from our investment accounts. We were able to pay most of what was needed for his closing, but we “took” a loan from him for $8,000. I used a loan agreement template that I found online and manipulated it for our purposes.
We established the loan terms to be the same as the mortgage he was entering into (4.875%). Most personal loans are for five years, so we chose that timeframe, even though we knew we’d pay it off much earlier than that. We could have just agreed to the terms and not documented it based on our relationship, but I’ve always felt better having things overly documented. I was basically an auditor in my career, and I’ve seen how “gentlemen’s agreements” over rental-related things haven’t worked out. I formalized the process through this contract and had all of us sign it. While the contract was mostly for our partner’s benefit (to make sure we paid him and he received interest), this was the only documentation we had that once he closed on the house, he then had to give us 50% share of the property ownership.
I established a simple amortization schedule through Excel’s templates. We established the loan terms as 5 years (60 months) at 4.875% (same as the mortgage being executed). When I made extra payments to him, I logged them in the spreadsheet. We only made two payments to him, but he made $44 for not having to do anything except accept our money. 🙂
We had to establish an LLC to be able to claim the tax benefits on this house for our 50% share. The attorney required us to have the tenants acknowledge the transfer of ownership to the LLC since we hadn’t executed a new lease in our names. The attorney then took care of the establishment of the LLC with the State and transferring the deed of this house to the LLC.
RENT COLLECTION
We’ve had the same tenants since we purchased the house. We inherited the tenants, who had moved in 2.5 years before we purchased it, and had rent established at $1300.
As a reminder, we purchased the house in April 2018. They paid that July’s rent late, and despite reminders about the late fee, they didn’t pay it. And so began this constant story with them. The main frustration was that they wouldn’t tell us to expect rent to be late, so we kept having to follow up with them. After two months in a row of it being late at the beginning of 2019, Mr. ODA actually explicitly said: In the future, it’s better to communicate issues with rent payment up front to see if there’s an opportunity for us to work with you. We had been lenient and informally requesting the status of rent, but this was their warning that we’d be sending notices of default going forward.
In January 2021, we hit a wall with rent payment. I sent the notice of default on the 6th of the month like usual. However, because of the pandemic, I had to adjust my verbiage to highlight all the rent relief options available and remove the late fee requirement. My understanding is that a late fee can still be collected in Virginia, but I can’t proceed with eviction just because they don’t pay the late fee portion (which isn’t something we’ve ever held any tenant to regardless). While the rent payment is typically due within 5 days from notice, Virginia now required me to give them 14 days to request a payment plan or pay rent owed. We then had to text and email them several times and never got a response. I finally sent an email with the following at the beginning:
We are very flexible landlords and willing to work with all our tenants. However, we are unable to work with anyone who does not preemptively share possible rent payment delays nor respond to requests for information. Please respond to this email by noon Sunday January 24, 2021 or pay the rent owed by that deadline to prevent proceedings for eviction filing with the court.
Virginia was very lenient with rent payment throughout the pandemic, but they were also fair. The lack of response from a tenant or the tenant not working with the landlord didn’t protect them from eviction. I finally got a response that the rent would be paid that week.
Since then, we’ve been told that rent will be late. We’re simply sent an email that says “you’ll receive rent on 2/12. Sorry for the inconvenience.” It’s as if they feel they have the upper hand and control. We hadn’t received any late fees until I finally sent an email in response to their “you’ll receive rent when we get to it” email for August’s rent that there’s a late fee due.
In 3 years, they’ve been late 14 times. When I put it in that perspective, it doesn’t seem that bad. In the moment, it seems like it’s a constant battle with this house. That’s probably because a majority of our houses pay rent without making it a painful process!
RENT INCREASE
We hadn’t raised rent in the 3 years we owned the house, and they had been paying $1300 since they moved in on October 1, 2015. That’s a great deal for them! Depending on our ownership costs, we would typically look at raising rent every 2 years, and likely around $50. We’ve raised the rent on only 2 tenant-occupied houses we have (meaning, raised the rent on people who continued living there, versus raising it between tenants); both were rented under market value when we inherited the house, and both have received a $50 increase every two years. We typically raise the rent during vacancy times, which has worked out pretty well for most of our other properties.
For a 4 bedroom and 2 bath house, $1300 is low. We mulled over our options. The house is currently on an October 1st renewal, which is a poor time to be looking for new tenants. I wanted to get the house on a spring lease moving forward. My original proposal to our partner and Mr. ODA was to offer them a 6 month lease (ending 3/31/22) at $1400. Our partner said we should include our expectation that we’ll be raising the rent to $1500 for a year long renewal as of 4/1/22. I struggled for weeks on the verbiage for this double proposal. Eventually, Mr. ODA said we should just risk it. We should lay out an 18 month lease at $1450 to split the difference, and if they don’t want it, they can leave or attempt to negotiate.
We offered them just that, and they accepted. Of course, true to form, they were a week late in meeting the deadline to sign the selection that they want to continue living there at the increased amount. Now the rent will be $1450 as of October 1, 2021, and their lease will run through March 31, 2023.
MAINTENANCE
We started with a clogged drain right off the bat. We had our partner go over there and try to unclog it with store-bought items, but it didn’t work. We ended up hiring a plumber for $300 to work on it. We’ve had several plumbing issues in this house, including a clogged sink that backed up and flooded the kitchen and basement. We ended up needing to have the line jet blasted and a camera put through it for $550! This plumber’s quote for the ‘fix’ was $6k. Mr. ODA sent the video footage to another plumber, and that guy said he didn’t see that anything was needed, so we didn’t proceed with the ‘fix.’ The jet blasting appears to have worked, and we haven’t had any damage reported. The other plumbing issues included fixing leaks in the basement bathroom and replacing that toilet.
The inspection didn’t identify active leaking on the roof, but our insurance company was hounding us over the condition of it. We ended up sending our roofer out there to do the items that came up on the inspection report. This was $350.
We then had several more issues with the roof that cost us $125 before we just decided to replace it. The replacement was quoted at $5,500 and surprisingly that’s what we paid. We expected to have additional costs for plywood replacement due to all the damage we had seen.
Interestingly, while not communicating about rent nor paying rent, they felt the need to tell us the washing machine wasn’t working. We ended up replacing the washing machine for them. We try to not supply any non-required appliances because then it’s on us to fix them or replace them, but since the tenants already lived there when we bought the house, we inherited that the washer and dryer are our responsibility. More interestingly, as I was writing this post and going through my receipts, it dawned on me that the washing machine that was in the house when I did my walkthrough last month isn’t the one that we just sent them in February.
While collecting rent has been frustrating with this house, and we’ve had a lot of plumbing and roof expenses, the house is still profitable and worth our investment. The house is in an area of Richmond that’s being revitalized, yet at the same time it’s in its own pocket of the city that’s also protected from big changes and is mostly original owners. Appreciation has really taken off, so even though our maintenance issues have eaten big chunks out of our cash flow, this house will be well worth it when we eventually sell it and move on to a new investment.
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.
One Dollar Allowance 