Any landlords out there?

[Transient]

I bought a little cottage last October and I've been fixing it up for the last few months. I'm finally at the point where I can start showing the place to prospective tenants, and I'm hoping to have someone in by March if I'm lucky. It's been quite a trip, this last half-year, with a lot of new experiences. My first mortgage, my first time doing any major utility work of any sort, I've had to learn about local landlord/tenant laws, and just this weekend I finalized a lease form after consulting with a lawyer. Tomorrow I'll be meeting with a locksmith, and next Thursday an electrician is going to fix a wiring issue I'm not competent enough to do on my own, but after that the house should be good to go. Phase 1 of my Slumlord Empire nears completion.... >:D

In all seriousness, though, I think I can pull this landlord side gig thing off. I've met with enough landlords through work to have figured a few things out by now. I know the major pitfalls and traps to avoid. For every person I meet with a nightmare tenant story, I meet 10 who have great tenants and see the rent as nearly effortless extra income. I want in on that shit. :tard:

So, any Q3W landlords out there?

[Whiskey 7]

Yes, and for many years over 3 different periods and locations but all in high-rise residential apartment complexes. All had onsite management so there was less risk of calamity but still, my advice since you ask, get what we call 'land lord protection insurance'. It is worth every penny in my experience and I'll quote two. This insurance and all associated costs in setting up and maintaining a 'rental property' is tax deductible here, is it for you?

First was a sub penthouse in the city. Building under construction so it was purchased 'off the plan'. The selling point was a rental guarantee and a guaranteed ROI, some 15% PA all backed by the complex being managed by an international hotel chain. Sounded too good to be true

Problem was, builder went bankrupt in the days around/after settlement/contract signing but we'd bought off the plan so no recourse. The hotelier withdrew within 6 months and we (residents committee) were left trying to find another hotel group to take the building onboard... That didn't happen..

I remember attending one of those owner meetings and getting up before the crowd saying I had insurance against 'loss of income' through my insurance policy. Seems we were the only apartment owner who thought to get 'land lord protection insurance' that actually paid something like 80% of the expected rental return, others lost heavily. Eventually we had a real estate company lease the unit for something like 2 or 3 years but we still kept that insurance policy.

Second, 'land lord protection insurance' helped out when a tap blew in a wall cavity and flooded the 3rd unit. Tenants say the water was ankle deep when they got up. Imagine water that deep in an apartment and where it ends up... The 'land lord protection insurance' paid out for all water removal and restoration, even a builder for skirting board/plaster repairs/re fixing.

Years later and you might recall my mention of that tile explosion calamity we suffered, well we are still fighting the insurance company for the $22K we are out of pocket. Cross you fingers for us. We are advised that policy should still pay out even though the company decline, we fight on!

Instances like this is why anyone should have insurance. My advice again, cover your investment and yourself against the unexpected. Be sure to have adequate and the correct insurance.

[Doombrain]

Me, I’m a landlord but I pay some other fucker to manage that shit.

[Transient]

Whiskey, insurance was the first thing I thought about. I definitely got property and liability coverage, I even had to get flood insurance because of how close to a river the house is.

I live too close to the property to justify paying a management company to do everything for me, and my profit margin is too slim. Maybe a few years down the line when I pick up a 2nd property, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

[scared?]

I'm a landlord... Ur over thinking it... Calm down bro...

[xer0s]

^^^slumlord

[scared?]

^^^madlord...

[xer0s]

^^^madlad

[Transient]

I only put the ad on craigslist a few days ago, and already my whole weekend is booked with viewings. It's definitely a landlord's market around here. Either that, or I priced it way lower than I should have. :paranoid:

[Eraser]

When people see a house offered by Transient, they just can't resist that sexy motherfucker.

[shaft]

I hated being a landlord. Hire a management company and get Home Service Plus for the appliances or whatever you have in your area. Also never ever give them your direct number.

Good Luck.

[xer0s]

Yeah, I think a management company will do it for around 10% of the rent. Just up the rent by 10% to cover that cost. It’ll be worth it...

[Transient]

I coordinate with a lot of management companies for work, I may consider using one in the future if doing it myself becomes too much of a hassle. I have a service plan for my own appliances, so maybe I'll just add on a few more. These little costs here and there are really starting to add up, though.

[phantasmagoria]

I only put the ad on craigslist a few days ago, and already my whole weekend is booked with viewings. It's definitely a landlord's market around here. Either that, or I priced it way lower than I should have. :paranoid:

I think slightly under pricing it and giving yourself a pool of prospective tenants from which to choose someone who'll look after it properly is probably a far better strategy.

[Transient]

That ended up being the case, I found a tenant with good references and they'll likely be signing a lease by the end of the month. On another note, I got a letter in the mail from the town about a grant program where they'll match up to a certain amount toward renovations for rental houses. Apparently the rental stock in town is in below average condition, and the town wants to increase the rental values and bring in more people from outside town. I think I may apply. :paranoid:

[seremtan]

^ socialism for the rich in the service of rentier capitalism

sounds great :rolleyes:

[Transient]

Lease signed, keys handed over, security/1st month check deposited. I'm a landlord now.

I've seen the old Victorian style buildings some people rent out in town, many are shitholes compared to my place. If the town can incentivise some of these landlords to actually renovate crumbling plaster walls and ancient plumbing, that's good for everybody. Better-maintained buildings create a better (safer) living environment for tenants and attract more people to live in town and boost the local economy. Rent will go up, which leads to more tax revenue for the town, which in turn leads to potholes getting filled and parks being better maintained. That grant, by the way, was also to encourage landlords to bring places into HUD compliance, so they were looking for projects like building ramps instead of steps at entryways, or installing light switches closer to the ground so people in wheelchairs can reach them.

[Eraser]

If the town can incentivise some of these landlords to actually renovate crumbling plaster walls and ancient plumbing, that's good for everybody. Better-maintained buildings create a better (safer) living environment for tenants and attract more people to live in town and boost the local economy. Rent will go up, which leads to more tax revenue for the town, which in turn leads to potholes getting filled and parks being better maintained.

This guy Sim-City's

[Captain]

Better-maintained buildings create a better (safer) living environment for tenants and attract more people to live in town and boost the local economy. Rent will go up, which leads to more tax revenue for the town, which in turn leads to potholes getting filled and parks being better maintained.

This is true, but not in corrupt shithole countries where most towns' income gets distributed to officials and their wealthy friends and barely anything trickles down to pay for services and maintenance.

[MKJ]

If the town can incentivise some of these landlords to actually renovate crumbling plaster walls and ancient plumbing, that's good for everybody. Better-maintained buildings create a better (safer) living environment for tenants and attract more people to live in town and boost the local economy. Rent will go up, which leads to more tax revenue for the town, which in turn leads to potholes getting filled and parks being better maintained.

This guy Sim-City's

Its all about Skylines now

[Transient]

I'll be honest, I thought of those games a few times while looking at the property from Google Maps.

[Transient]

I just bought another one. This place is going to need a little more work than the last, but it's bigger than the cottage I bought last year and it should rent out for a fair bit more. It's a 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with 2 kitchens, and at one point it was separated into 2 units with separate meters. For now I'm going to leave it as a single family dwelling and see it I can rent it to an extended family. The 1st floor is handicap accessible and has grab bars in the bathroom and bedroom, plus a walk-in shower with a bench.

I got a good deal on it, I think the peeling paint outside scared away a lot of prospective buyers. It also didn't hurt that I paid cash. I think I'm going to have to sink a good $25k into repairs, especially the siding, but it's got solid bones and a lot of the work inside I can do myself. Most of the work to be done is on the outside, so I should be able to get tenants in before October.

[xer0s]

Cool house. Got a lot of potential...

[Transient]

It's been a bit since I updated this thread, and a bunch has changed as you can imagine. I put a lot of this in the Discord channel, but I figured I'd update my thread for posterity. I finished the renovations last November. Well, most of them. It turned out that I was going to need to install a fire escape stairway from the 3rd floor all the way down to the ground, and it was going to cost $15k that I hadn't planned on. Rather than keep it as a single family rental, I decided to flip the house instead. This was right as lumber prices were skyrocketing and the housing market was going bananas, so my timing couldn't have been better to change course.

I got a few short-term tenants in and put it on the market, and sold it back in May for a tidy profit. Not before I had to deal with a plumbing crisis, however. The tenants I had in there were a few traveling nurses from Louisiana, and one weekend they went out of town and turned the thermostat all the way down before they left. Well, this was in February, so the plumbing froze in the baseboard heating system and split a pipe. They came home to water pouring through the ceiling from the 2nd floor. They called me and I drove over and was greeted by a distaster in the kitchen. I had to rip out a chunk of drywall, redo all the new flooring I had just put in, replace areas of the ceiling and sort out the ceiling fan fixture.



The water made its way down to the basement. Luckily I had put down a vapor barrier when I had the walls spray-foamed, so it collected all the water like a pool. I sucked it all out with a shop vac in about an hour. There were at last 100 gallons down there. It could have been worse; I estimate the pipe burst only an hour or so before the tenants got home, so the damage was limited and I didn't have to deal with mold at all. Insurance paid for it all (then promptly dropped me) and I got everything looking like new aqgain just in time to find a buyer. Here's what part of the basement looked like when I first went down there:



So I used the proceeds from the sale to get a mortgage for another project. I found 2 houses next door to each other in town which are being sold by the same person and I negotiated him down to what I think is a reasonable price for them both. Assuming the final approval goes through alright, I will be closing on two 3-unit apartment buildings on the 30th. They're both fully occupied and neither building needs any major work. Just a few things here and there, maybe $10-15k in preventative work that I want to get done so nothing deteriorates too much in the next few years.

The current owner is a landlord and he's retiring, so he's selling all 60-odd of his units around Vermont. He has another few places in town and I may be able to work out an agreement with him to buy them with an owner-financed mortgage. But one thing at a time, I have to close on these two places first and see where I'm at after repairs.

[seremtan]

it's great that it all worked out for you but you're still getting the bullet when the revolution comes :dts: