painting – One Dollar Allowance

Property 2 Turnover

August 10, 2022August 17, 2022mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

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).

All of the cabinets still had things in them.

Carpet eaten and ripped through the pad and to the subfloor.

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!

Prepping a New House

April 21, 2022April 14, 2022mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

I put more effort into this house than I usually do between the time that we bought it and the time that we got it rented. The house was almost double what we’ve bought any other house for, and I wanted to be sure we could get the rent we wanted for it. Looking back, I probably didn’t need to make it as good as I did, and it’s definitely not perfect. If I were listing it for sale, I should have painted baseboards and taken doors off hinges and sprayed them instead of cleaning them.

In the past, I’ve had to paint a room or two. We may have needed to replace an appliance. But typically, we’re buying houses that have recently been flipped at 50% effort and are good enough for a renter. Two houses have been in poor shape that needed more TLC. One we had to replace the carpet, clean heavily, and paint nearly everything. Another house needed an easy wipe down, but required everything to be painted, down to the trim. And truly, had the owner paid a few thousand to get the place painted, they probably could have gotten 10k more on the house (but the owner didn’t even pay their electric bill, so that’s not surprising).

NEW HOUSE

The house we just purchased wasn’t prepped for sale. It was an off-market deal. We came to an agreement that they wouldn’t need to come back to town to clean, refinish a floor that the dogs ruined, or paint. As such, we got at least 10k off the price. They were going to list at $250k, and probably would have gotten competitive offers and going higher than list, and we got it for a net $240k. I then put 14 hours of effort into the house.

The owners had a bedroom dedicated to the dogs. They didn’t do significant damage, but they did enough. The closet doors needed to be repainted, the baseboards and windowsills needed to be sanded, cleaned, and repainted. The floor was damaged and we thought needed to be refinished. The walls were covered in slobber, dirt, and scuffs. That was the worst room of the house. The kitchen was covered in grossness, and I put a lot of elbow grease into that. I was going to hire a cleaner, but the bathrooms ended up not being so dirty, so I figured I could glove-up and get it done.

PAINT

The whole house needed to be painted. I picked my battles and painted all of the 2100 sf except for the kitchen (which is covered by cabinets and I didn’t want to cut into all that or move the fridge), one bedroom that had the least amount of scuffed walls, and the upstairs bathroom. I chose painting over cleaning the walls because I didn’t see the benefit of cleaning. I would have eliminated some dog slobber and a few scuffs, but it wouldn’t have gotten the two years worth of dirt and rubbing and splatter of whatever off the walls. So I kept a rag with me and wiped the dust off where I could see it, but I just painted over everything else because I thought that would be the most efficient use of my time.

I repainted the closet doors in the dog bedroom. In the hallway, I repainted the attic door and the floor molding. Most of the other floor molding needed to be wiped down, and in some rooms, I painted the wall paint along the top of the molding instead of getting the white paint out or cleaning it. All of the closets needed to be painted, but I wasn’t going to put that effort in just for it to likely get scuffed again.

REFINISHING THE FLOOR

Mr. ODA handled this and did awesome. We thought the floor needed refinishing in this one bedroom. We researched how to do it and everything. Then my mom mentioned “Rejuvenate” floor product. Mr. ODA looked at the floor and concluded it was the top coat that was roughed up, and that the stain and coloring was still there. He saw such a difference, that he actually used it on the rest of the hardwood flooring! It’s not perfect, but it was the most bang for our buck in the process to address something that definitely needed to be addressed.

CLEANING

I was going to hire a cleaner, but I ended up needing a break from the hand position of holding a brush one day. I started using some degreaser to get through the dirt. The kitchen was disgusting. It’s one thing to leave some debris behind because you didn’t do a final clean as you got out the door, but this was two years of food splatter caked onto the cabinets and backsplash. The refrigerator had been cleaned, but the freezer still had food and left over explosion remnants.

I’ve never cleaned an oven. I may have wiped a couple of things out after the initial mess got made, but have never had a dirty enough oven to need to really clean it. This was horrendous. I put 45 minutes worth of effort into. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. In the first picture, I had already cleaned two layers off the door and scrubbed half the bottom of the oven. Then the second picture is where I left it. I’m sad I didn’t get a true before picture to show just how awful it was. The right side of the first picture is actually the dirt that was in there and not the cleaner yet.

The bathrooms were pretty clean and just needed a wipe down. I swept the whole house and mopped the floors. I cleaned multiple windows because they were bad enough that I didn’t even want to look at them anymore.

YARD WORK

I don’t know if the people who flipped the house in 2019 didn’t fix up the yard, or if this mess was really just 2 years worth. The driveway was covered in mud and leaves. I swept it all up to be sure that there wasn’t any broken glass (there was glass in the yard) and to give the new people a fresh start of clean. I didn’t take a before picture, but you can tell where there had been piles of ick sitting in this picture. I filled the yard waste container with everything that was built up on the long driveway.

Before I could mow the yard, I had to pick up a lot of twigs that had dropped. There were a few big branches that I need to come back to, but I filled the fire pit with all the twigs that I got out of my way. The grass in the backyard is in good shape, and I was able to get it looking good with the mower. The front yard is lacking on grass. I laid some seed and hoped for the best, but hopefully it will be in good shape one day.

RANDOMS

The front bedroom light wouldn’t turn on. I went to replace the light bulb, and it’s all one unit, as in you can’t get to the light bulb! We had replaced some flush mount lights with fans in the kids’ bedrooms here, so I brought one of the lights to the house. Turns out, mounting brackets aren’t all created equal, and I couldn’t install the new/old light fixture. I bought a new light to install and got that done on my first attempt.

I had to wipe down the shiplap wall that goes down into the basement. It’s a pretty feature, but it was covered in more yuck. A few trim pieces weren’t painted well by the people who flipped the house, but I didn’t want to break out my different color white paint and fix it. Hopefully it’s small enough of an issue that you don’t notice too much. If it were me living there, it would drive me crazy.

The pantry had two shelves that were stained by cans. Instead of cleaning it or trying to repaint it white (over caked on debris with white paint that always requires 3 coats), I put contact paper over them. Is it necessary? No. Does it give a little extra step to make your tenants appreciate the house and want to take care of it? Yes.

The kitchen flip wasn’t done perfectly, and the caulking was cracked everywhere. I recaulked everything along the backsplash in the kitchen. Then I also caulked the bathroom tub, which really made a difference in making a clean, fresh look. There were a few pieces of shoe molding that came apart from the baseboard, so I caulked a few of those areas too.

SUMMARY

We spent under $300 and 14 hours worth of time. Two of those hours were spent showing the house to about 10 prospective tenants during an open house. The house looked in good shape when I handed it over to the new tenants. I’m hoping that they’ll love it like a home and take good care of it, since they saw the effort I put into it. It was definitely worth putting that effort in to save the 10k+ on the cost and to avoid anymore bidding wars in today’s crazy market.