Michael Rossi's Landlording Blog

The storm damage continues to increase, even though the big ice storm has been over for a couple of days. Last evening, I received a call from a neighbor of one of my other properties to report that one of my trees had fallen on his shed and was pulling down his electric line (and his lights were flickering). Obviously, if the tree was pulling down the electric line, I wasn't going to touch it! Therefore, I told him that I would stop over today to see if there was anything I could do.

When I got up this morning, the temperature was ZERO DEGREES! Therefore, I decided that I would stay home until about noon to allow the temperature to warm up. Just before noon, I went to the bank to deposit a couple of rents that I collected yesterday (early). Next, I stopped at my last available apartment to show it to an applicant. As it turned out, I recognized this woman as a druggie and I won't be renting to her!

Attempting to remove the ice from the sidewalks at the Pink Elephant was my next effort. I made some progress on that, but it's still a mess as the ice is over 1 inch thick. The temperature here tomorrow is expected to be in the 40's and I'm hoping that will help get rid of the rest of it.

My final project today was to go check out the damage that the neighbor had called me about last night. As it turned out, the tree was severely leaning but had not fallen. Limbs were touching his shed but had not fallen on it or damaged it. The lines that were being stretched were the phone and cable lines. The power line was untouched and his flickering lights were probably a product of his imagination. While I was there, I did remove a bunch of limbs to lighten the leaning tree and that was that.

I almost made it home when I received a call from a tenant at one of my triplexes. He reported that he heard a loud bang and that the rain gutter on the front of the building had collapsed and was hanging just above the front door. I turned the truck around and went directly to the triplex. Sure enough, a section of gutter about 15 feet long was hanging vertically. This is a very tall building and the bottom part of the gutter was still at least 10 feet from the ground. This is a continuous gutter and the other 30 feet of the gutter was still attached to the building and looked to be firmly attached. The hanging section of the gutter was completely filled with ice as were all the other gutters on the house. With the sidewalk and the roof covered with more than an inch of ice, there was absolutely nothing I could do about the hanging gutter, so I went home. On the way home, I contacted a local contractor that I use to do all the high work on my buildings. I don't like to work that high and this is one of the few things I use contractors for.

I arrived home from my trip last evening. All in all, it was a nice trip. My wife had a good time at her conference and we had some fun time also. My wife and I ended up seeing Gran Torino on Wednesday night. It was a good movie, but I would have enjoyed it more if Clint Eastwood would have done more shooting!

One of readers of this blog, Robin, suggested that I see Defiance. I saw it yesterday afternoon while my wife was at the conference and it was an excellent movie. It is the true story of the Russian resistance during WWII. Lots of action and a great story! I highly recommend it.

I spent today catching up from the days I was gone. I spent the morning paying bills and this afternoon, I cut up one of the many trees that fell due to the ice storm. Today's project was cutting up and removing my tree limbs that fell in a neighbor's yard at one of my duplexes. Fortunately, the limbs didn't do too much damage, although they did knock down all her utility lines and damaged a couple of boards in her privacy fence. I spent about an hour and a half cutting up the limbs and removing them. I'll pick up a couple of fence boards tomorrow to fix her fence.

After I finished with the fence, I worked on the ice covered sidewalks at the Pink Elephant. Fortunately, the ice is very rough (and about 1 1/2 inches thick) and not very slippery. I've treated them three times with ice melt and was able to get part of the ice broken up and shoveled.

Tomorrow, I've got another tree to cut up and some more ice to work on. I also need to decide which unit I will rehab next. With only one rental available, I need to get moving on the last couple of un-rehabbed units I have left to do.

I'm still on the road with my wife at her conference. Today, I would just like to provide an update on my long distance landlording experience. As anyone knows that has watched TV the past few days, we had a significant (once a year) winter storm go through the area. The storm dumped a few inches of snow, followed by an inch of solid ice, followed by another 4 inches of snow. The roads yesterday were a disaster with parts of the interstate shut down and accidents just about everywhere. Electricity was out in many areas; power lines were down; trees and limbs fell due to the weight of the ice; and businesses were closed. It was a mess.

I received two calls from people yesterday regarding the storm, both to report downed tree limbs. One of these calls was from a tenant at one of my apartment buildings, where several large tree limbs were down. No one was injured and no damage occurred at that building. The other call I received was from a neighbor of one of my duplexes. She reported that a large part of one of my trees had fallen, pulling down her phone and cable lines and damaging her privacy fence. I told her that I was out of town, but would clean up the tree on Friday and replace the damaged section of the fence. As I've said before, I don't like trees on rental properties and will work again this summer to have as many cut down as possible.

I'm practicing my long distance landlording skills while I'm on the road this week with my wife. She has a business conference for her business and I'm taking a little mini-vacation just to relax as she attends her conference. Unfortunately, the weather in the midwest is HORRIBLE! Today started with about 5 inches of snow and now we're receiving freezing rain. That's cutting down on my fun a little, but I'll still have a very relaxing few days.

Just for fun, I thought I would provide a running commentary of my long distance landlording experience as the week progresses. My trip essentially started on Sunday as I left to attend the Ohio State vs. Michigan State basketball game at the Ohio State University in Columbus. I didn't receive a single call from a tenant on Sunday, so my little adventure started uneventfully. My wife and I actually left for her conference yesterday and just like Sunday, I didn't receive a single call from a tenant.

My first long distance landlording call came this afternoon when I received a call from one of my tenants, who lives in half of a duplex. The tenant was calling to report that her water heater wasn't working. This is a gas water heater and they don't fail very often. As I started questioning her about the water heater, she asked if I would look at the gas furnace while I was there. She said that there was something wrong with the furnace. Now that could be a serious problem that would warrant me calling a HVAC company for an emergency repair, especially with the current lows in the single digits! However, I was now getting very suspicious. It might be possible for a water heater to go bad or a gas furnace to go bad, but for both to happen simultaneously sounds mighty fishy. I asked if the temperature in the apartment was like 15 degrees, as that's the outside air temperature today. She said no, that she had been using electric heaters for a while. I can tell you for a fact that when the furnace fails, tenants do NOT go out and buy electric heaters and use them for "a while" before calling the landlord. GOTTCHA! At that point, the puzzle was solved. I asked her if her gas had been shut off. She admitted that she was behind on her gas bill, but denied but that it was shut off. OF COURSE IT WAS! I told the tenant that I would look at it Friday when I get home. Stupidity on the part of the tenant does not constitute an emergency on my part! All that I'm going to find on Friday is that the gas is shut off, but then again, she already knows that. If I had a dollar for everytime a tenant has pulled this crap...

That's the extent of my long distance landlording experience to date. However, there are still two more full days that I'll be gone until I return home. I'll keep you posted on any further incidents. With Ohio getting freezing rain today, there could easily be more problems!

Due to the weather today, I didn't do much. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a new book to read. My choice was "The Great Contraction, 1929-1933" and is obviously about the great depression. I'll let you know what I think of it.

In addition, as I was out scouting the area, I found a Batteries Plus and bought a new laptop battery. I'm hoping this one will charge. I bought the last one off the internet and it wouldn't charge.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to go to the movies while my wife is at her conference. I'm thinking of seeing Gran Torino - have you seen it? What did you think?

I am happy to report that all of our houses are now rented! In addition, all of our two and three bedroom apartments are rented and the only thing I have left is a single one-bedroom apartment! That doesn't happen very often, but just shows the growing demand for rentals, due in large part to the poor economy and high number of foreclosures.

I'm currently working on rehabbing the few remaining units that I bypassed during our rapid expansion of the past 5 years. I've just about finished the rehab on a one-bedroom apartment and will be working on another one-bedroom after that. The next one is an apartment that I was using for storage prior to setting up the storefront at the pink elephant as my centralized storage facility.

I will consider my business to be stabilized once these few remaining units are complete. At that point, I'll take a look at the numbers I'm achieving and the hours I'm working and decide if purchasing any further units are warranted. My goal is to reach a balance between generating the money that allows me to live the lifestyle I desire and work few enough hours each week to be semi-retired.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished! I know that, and yet I did a good deed for one of my tenants today anyway. I'm now awaiting the inevitable punishment.

This tenant has been quite ill and has been in the hospital and nursing home for nearly 2 months. She nearly died from a severe bout of pneumonia and the complications that occurred as a result of that. She is now so weak and has so much lung damage, that she is barely able to walk and can't even climb a single step safely. There is one step at her apartment and I built a ramp to allow her to be mobile with a walker. In addition, she needed her couch elevated to make it easier for her to get up from the couch, so I built some platforms to elevate each leg of the couch several inches.

I also received a call from one of my tenants today about a leaking sink. This should have been a 5 minute repair, but ended up being a 45 minute pain in the butt. The sink was leaking from the top of the tail piece just under the sink. I tried tightening up the washer that holds the rubber gasket against the bottom of the sink. That SHOULD have fixed it, but didn't. I took it completely apart; put new plumber's putty under the lip of the drain piece; and reinstalled the tailpiece - all to no avail. In fact, after I did all that, it was leaking worse than before.

So, I went to my storeroom and picked up an entirely new tailpiece. Back at the apartment, I had it installed in a few minutes and it was finally right - NO LEAKS!

Finally, I did a little painting at one of my one bedroom apartments. That was it for today!

I caught a druggie on my security cameras slinking around my property a couple of days ago. This guy is the same homeless druggie that stole a bicycle from one of my tenants several months ago. When I saw him, he was on the sidewalk by my apartment building with his grocery cart full of his belongings. He has been barred from my property and I will have him arrested for criminal tresspass if I seem him actually on the property. The problem was that he left his shopping cart full of clothes in front of my building, which was an eyesore and certainly not the image I'm trying to project.

I took his cart to the edge of my property and put it with the trash cans. The next day, he took his belongings out of the cart and put it on the porch of a house a couple of doors down, leaving me the cart. I am simply not going to put up with riff-raff hanging around my property. I've spent a lot of time and effort cleaning up the area and I'm not going to allow it to be taken over by losers.

As I was at the building to pick up supplies today, I saw this druggie walking down the sidewalk. I told him in no uncertain terms that I will not permit him to be on the property and that I will aggressively have him prosecuted if I see any evidence of illegal activity from him in the area. I advised him to go elsewhere and avoid the area. As part of my efforts, I also had a lengthy conversation with a local police officer about the issue and he agreed to keep an eye on the area and on this particular criminal.

My projects today started with re-connecting the water lines in the two bedroom house that I rented a couple of days ago. As each house goes vacant, I've been installing a Sharkbite quick disconnect fitting in the main water line just after the water line enters the house. That allows me to quickly disconnect the water line if the house becomes vacant during the winter. That permits draining all the water from the lines and allows me to leave the heat off without fear of having frozen water lines.

My next project was fixing several small maintenance issues at a two-bedroom house that I recently rented. The repairs included installing a new shower head; fixing a sink stopper; installing two new faucets for the clothes washer; fixing a leaking sink; and repairing a loose window pane. This all went uncharacteristically smoothly and I finished all of these items in about an hour.

My final project of the day was to visit one of my tenants in a nursing home where she is finishing a long rehab after having nearly died from a very serious pneumonia. She needs a ramp installed and she needs the couch elevated about 4 inches. She is still extremely weak and will have a difficult time getting up the step and getting out of the low-sitting couch. So, I met her at the nursing home to discuss installing the ramp and elevating the couch for her. A member of the rehab staff met with us to discuss the dimensions of the ramp. I'm planning to build the ramp tomorrow.

That was it for the day and I was home by 3pm. I also played my new James Bond Quantum of Solace game some more this afternoon and evening and made it through the Science Center level. I really like that game and highly recommend it.

I'm hoping to get a few more things done this week, because I'm planning to be gone on a little trip with my wife for 5 days starting Sunday.

Things are definitely picking up, despite it being the middle of winter and extremely cold here in Ohio. Today, I signed the lease and received the money for my last available 3-bedroom house. I also have a Section 8 tenant approved for my last 2-bedroom house and hope that he will be moving in later this week. I have been out of one bedroom houses for a couple of months. So, hopefully, by the end of the week, I won't have a single house available for rent.

I still have a little more work to do on the apartment front. While I've been out of 3-bedroom apartments for months, I currently have one 2-bedroom apartment and two 1-bedroom apartments available.

On the maintenance side, I repaired a bathtub faucet in a 3-bedroom apartment and installed a gas heater in one of my 1-bedroom apartments.

That was enough for today. I got home early (about 2:30 pm) and spent some time with my new James Bond game (Quantum of Solace) on the Wii. I have one of those Zappers which makes the game really cool!

Yesterday, I had a Section 8 tenant fill out an application and give me his "Request for Tenancy". I screened the applicant this morning (all ok) and took his paperwork to the local Section 8 office. Late this afternoon, I received a call from the local Section 8 director asking if they could do the inspection tomorrow. That's great, because it will allow me to start getting paid for the property. However, the house needs a new water heater and I'll have to do that tomorrow morning before the inspection. It currently has a gas water heater, but I'll be replacing it with an electric one. I also have a ceiling light to install.

Today, I showed a couple of rentals to prospective tenants and continued my waterline replacement project in one of my 3 bedroom duplexes. I have now completed my work on the cold water portion of the waterlines. Sometime in the next few days, I'll do the hot water side. As usual, I'm replacing the old copper and galvanized water lines with PEX. The PEX offers many advantages in that it won't corrode and won't break when frozen.

The temperature here tonight will be below zero, and I'm hoping that I won't have any frozen water lines to fix tomorrow (or worse yet, tonight)!