All Forum Posts by: Alan Pederson

Better to spend a little extra now and never having to deal with it again is my motto.

I just tore out the shower in my master bathroom. The shower was made of green board and no shower pan at all. It had a sloped floor and drained just fine but it was over 30 years old and looked pretty bad. It had the same 4x4 tile I see in your photos. We are expanding our shower from a 30x30 to a 30x55. There is a linen closet that is being taken out. I'm doing the work myself and estimate that it will cost me around $3k. Using a pro would probably cost me double this amount.

In your case I would take the entire shower out and redo it. If you want to go cheap. You could get one of those plastic shower enclosures. I would still take out all the sheetrock and replace it with hardyboard or green rock and waterproof everything (redguard) before installing new shower and texturing walls. When I replaced the shower in one of my rentals I even tiled the ceiling above the shower and ran the tile on the walls all the way up to the ceiling just so water and moisture would never be a problem.

If the house was empty and she gave you the keys why would she want you to leave? Did she need to retrieve her stash?

One of my tenants wanted to add an electrical outlet half way up a wall so he could mount his TV and not have the cords showing. I told him no. He could mount the TV but do not cut any holes in my walls. I explained that at some point I may have new tenants and they may not want to mount their TV in the same spot and I'm not going to let them cut another hole in a wall so their cords don't show. My wall would end up looking like Swiss cheese.

I think Joe Splitrock has the right idea. Most people are probably going to need a lot more money than they think they will when they retire. If things continue to go as planned, me and my wife will make 50% more in retirement than we make now and that number will continue to grow every year. For me it not just about making money, it's a way to keep active as well. I enjoy working on houses so that way I won't get bored once I quit my regular job.

Auctions?

Welcome to the DFW area.

It took me and my wife years to save up the money to buy the first rental but it can be done.

1. Look at the down payment and interest % when you look at houses on Realtor.com

2. A $100,000 house after you put 20% down might have a payment of $800 a month. You rent it out for $1,300 or $1,400 a month. If you can only rent it out for $1,000, you need to find a different house or different area to invest in.

3. You may own $1 million in assets but your net worth wouldn't be that much. Assets - Liabilities = Net worth

The nice part about real-estate is that you can borrow the banks money at less than 5% and buy a property that makes you 10-15% or higher return on that money. Plus the property will be getting paid off 3% a year by your tenants and hopefully the property value will increase at 3% or more a year.

I could protest but the house in question is still appraised by them to be $152k market value and a house like this one has been selling for $165-170k.