All Forum Posts by: Ryan B.

I use plasticjungle.com to buy discounted gift cards or merchandise cards (5% to 10% off face value). Couple this with a Lowe's 10% off coupon and you can get 15% to 20% off your materials. Most competitors will accept the Lowe's coupon. Also call your local pawn shop as they will sometimes buy gift/merchandise cards.

Looks like Ed beat me to the pawn shop suggestion.

Outskirts of Springfield.

Copper coated lead is my metal of choice. Out here in the sticks, we learn to shoot about the same time we learn to walk :)

Sand down the floors, throw down three coats of poly and move on.

I rented a rug doctor once and it worked awesome. Just bought a new house and was doing some painting when I knocked over an entire gallon of paint on the carpet. Screamed like a girl scout as I pictured my wife beating me to death with the paint can. Ran and rented a rug doctor and prevented a homicide. I owe my life to that machine.

Nick that is funny, he is the first thing that popped in my head when I read the title of the thread.

I agree with Mark, my lease has the tenants taking responsibility for the same things.

I would probably have felt a lot more worried about the situation except that events from the prior few months really changed my perspective on life.

My wife had spent about three months in the hospital battling an illness that nearly took her and our unborn child. She had to have a surgery on her abdomen and the specialists did not expect our child to live through it. They did an ultra sound so that we would have at least known the sex of our child. They said it was a boy and we both started crying because he would have completed our family perfectly going along with our 17 month old daughter.

After the surgery they were unable to hear his heartbeat through all the bandages, so we would have to wait until the next morning before we knew anything. That was the longest night of my life. The next morning all the doctors and nurses waited around after their shifts and were as happy as us when they found a heartbeat. Three days later my wife became septic and they gave us the bad news that they would have to reopen her to figure out what was wrong. The doctors would not even look me in the eyes when I asked about the danger of going back in again.

A miracle happened and they both pulled through. After recovering for a couple months my wife had complications and our son was born two months premature. I spent every night after work going to the NICU at the childrens hospital to see our son in his incubator. After a little over a month he was able to come home. He is now your average hell on wheels little boy.

Sorry for the long post, but like I said, after that I stopped worrying about a lot of things in life. I just figured no matter what, the sun was still gonna come up tomorrow so it was a good day.

I do a little of both, as Jeff mentioned. I have a couple C class rentals that cashflow very good. I plan on them only having marginal appreciation, hence they were bought for the cashflow. They are a little more management intensive, but the cashflow is worth it.

On the other hand I have our former personal residence that we turned into a rental when we moved. If you apply the 50% "rule" to this property, it is a loser. It rents for $915 and PITI is $745. The good part is this property is in a great position for appreciation and in a high class suburb. I get great tenants, very easy for me to manage, and extremely easy to get rented. Since I am not a full time investor, this house is nice because tenants are paying it off for me and I should hopefully make a bundle in appreciation.

I like both types of properties, cashflow for now and appreciation along with mortgage paydown for later.

Couldn't have been put any better.

The last property I purchased I did all the rehab myself and spent every weekend there. When my 5 year old daughter asked me early one Saturday morning "Daddy do you have to go work on the rental house again? I wanted you to sit and watch cartoons with me". It literally broke my heart having to go and work on the house.

I learned my lesson and things are different with the current house we just purchased. I did the demo myself which took 1 weekend, have a contractor doing all the remodeling and I will finish doing the painting. The next house I plan on trying to stay completely hands off, only checking in on the contractor.

My kids are only this little once and I will never get this time back. So what if I have to work a few more years when I am older. At least my kids will have great memories of me when they were little, not memories of daddy always being gone or too busy.