All Forum Posts by: Deborah Burian

Up til this year, I've always poured the cash into buying more properties, with the intent of kissing and making up with the houses (re: deferred maintenance) when done buying. Now I'm done buying and the very first thing I did when that happened was to start to set liquid cash aside for maintenance and emergency funds. I also am focusing on paying off my one high interest debt - a Home Depot credit card. Once the emergency fund is at some kind of reasonable, say 5 digit number, the plan is to pay off houses.

Michael Siekerka - not sure where you're coming from on this, we hold a ton of conventional financed properties in two LLCs, one of which is almost exclusively multi-family.

Dennis Nemitz - everyone is going to have a different opinion but if you intend to grow, I would do an LLC up front. Pain in the butt to change mortgages and title insurance downstream.

Congratulations. You'll have to keep us posted on how the out-of-state thing works out.

Go to the public library, read everything you can get your hands on, save some money and buy a house. You'll learn what you need along the way with considerable support from BP.

J Scott. You make a valid point and I did think about getting an additional bid but 1) we have a good long history with this guy and he's always been very fair, 2) the hole in the kitchen floor constituted an emergency in my book and 3) with the tornadoes, finding new contractors is a real problem right now. This was more than the floor, we took off siding, replaced 8-10 feet of plate, rebuilt the sill, etc. I emphasize the floor joist because it annoyed me. As a complete aside, I am LOVING your books. Thank you for what you have done and no doubt will continue to do here.

Yiv L. - not likely but thanks for the thought.

Scott W. - I spent $500 to have a structural engineer tell me that several times when I was looking at a purchase recently. Until then, I have to say, I had failed to fully understand just how damaging water is.

John Knappmann - strangely, it is somewhat customary to not have gutters here, which made it easier to defer but still stupid.

Phil Damjanovic - I can but they don't lend out of the area. Was just suggesting that you may need to find a more flexible lender and they are out there.

This would make a great blog post but the blog is for my multi-unit.

I get a call from a tenant, thinks there is termite damage because her brother fell through the back step. It's been very, unusually, wet here so I'm thinking more likely water rotted out the wood back step I've been meaning to replace.

Go to house. Brother fell through the KITCHEN FLOOR near the back step. As it turns out, and probably for longer than our recent wet spell, water has been funneling out of a roof valley and into a spot by the back step where it has rotted out a portion of the plate and the sill. To add the bonus event, the house evidently never had a floor joist on that end of the kitchen so when the sill went, the pressed wood subfloor, hardiplank and tile went with it. Structural repair, including putting in a damn floor joist - $4200. Another few hundred for the cosmetic repair, re-install tile in damaged area, etc.

Now, I've sort of vaguely had guttering this house on my "when I'm done buying properties" list for a long time. An embarrassingly long time. A long enough time to rot out a plate/sill/subfloor. I'm thinking $4000.00 would have guttered it with dollars to spare.