All Forum Posts by: David O

Great thread. I'm going to post this in here since it is semi relevant. I had a tenant who just moved out. She was late for rent the last four months. I had to send two pay or quit notices. She wanted to break her lease and leave early, so I let her because she has been a nightmare to deal with. She paid her prorated last month rent on the day before she moved out. I replaced two washers, two dryers, and a stove in eight months. I didn't charge her a penalty for leaving early. I go to check the place out and she ripped the carpet up, didn't clean the place, pet stains all over the carpet, and hasn't paid the water in a few months. Luckily I have a security deposit what will cover all of this. Sounds fine right?

Well, she asks me one day after leaving if she can meet me at the place to get the deposit. I say no, I'll mail a letter within the 30 day period. She then starts to harass me. She is calling me, texting me, and e-mailing me wanting to know where the deposit is. I ignore her as I already told her what's going to go on. Then she tells me she has been checking the mail. I then respond and tell her to stop checking the mail as you don't live there anymore. Then she posts on Facebook about it in a local community group that I am a member of (excellent screening tool ;)). She claims she is worried because it's been ten days and she is worried I don't have the money so I am trying to rent it out to pay her deposit back LOL. She talked about how it's probably going to have to go to court, etc, etc. People are so crazy. I sent her a very stern e-mail and she deletes the Facebook post (I didn't even tell her I saw it). I luckily haven't heard from her since and will be mailing a letter of damages right before the 30 day mark.

I do not and would not do this, but I respect it if you do. I don't know when my tenants birthdays are either though.

I wouldn't worry about it. People move all the time. It may be a little harder, but like someone said above, no one likes to leave in winter either. I've rented a house out in December before. I didn't really seem to get less interest. I still got 100 calls and a bunch of weird questions.

 Same here. Looks great though, I've been inspired to do something like this for my next bathroom remodel.

Sounds like it's in pretty good shape, I would leave as is. Most of the crawls in my area are very nasty which is why I usually have to do the above.

Awesome work. I love the tiles in the 1st bathroom photo.

Depends. How long do you think is left on the furnace? I think it would be beneficial not only for the furnace, but I'm a fan of tidying up the crawl space as most in my area are quite nasty. What is the condition of the crawl space now - is it a tall crawl with easy access or is it pretty small? Is it nasty down there? I have done this to every crawl I've had to prevent nasty oders, seal the space up, and make it easier if we ever have to do work down there (plumbing, etc).

My solution to insulate is to level it out, lay a thick plastic barrier on the ground, tape up all the seams, tape/chalk it to the foundation walls/piers to seal, and then insulate the foundation walls themselves. It's hard work, I've done it myself on one property and I have a buddy who does this for a living who did it for me on another. Any crawl I get I do this. 

Oh I missed the ARV part. Yeah I would flip this then and you'd have quite a nice flip if you can get the ARV above. Use the gains to rinse and repeat. That would be a pretty solid flip and turn this decision right around.

This isn't horrible, but it's definitely not ideal. Rates are low right now and you can get rates on something like this in the low 4s easy, which would save you a LOAD of money. This rate makes me cringe. It's a shame you couldn't have waited for six months of title seasoning and did the deal in your name. I would never do this deal as you are running extremely thin and there isn't much room for error here. You are basically banking on the fact this property appreciates and there will be no market correction.

On the bright side, you have 52k, so if you can turn this into something that cash flows nicely you will be okay.

This sounds sketchy to me as well.