All Forum Posts by: JD Martin

PS: Someone not wanting to pay the fee is a good tenant screening tool. 

I just had a tenant do one and it is $35 for credit & criminal check. 

Once you have it under contract be sure to check the utilities. I had to walk away from a deal last month because the electricity had been off for more than a year and the city would not reconnect without a full electrical panel upgrade and whole-house rewiring. The seller couldn't come down far enough to make the numbers work.

Short of discriminating against a protected class (race, religion, national origin, etc), you can pick anyone you want. You don't have to pick your first applicant, or any applicant for that matter. I wouldn't put anyone in one of my rentals that I was uncomfortable with for any reason. I would rather have a vacant place than trouble. 

 This is what I do as well. Anyone who lives in the house is listed on the lease; this way, there can be no ambivalence such as "Oh, I thought it would be OK if my nephew came to live here". Only the person that wants to be financially responsible for the lease has to sign. I wouldn't care if someone living there had been evicted, so long as they weren't one of the financial guarantors of the lease. And I agree re: credit score. A very high credit score reflects a level of personal responsibility that makes it unlikely they would stiff you on payment. 

That's a good deal on the addition of sod - for the extra $300 I would do the sod. 

I agree with all sentiments. If you don't believe that most people are genuinely decent people, this is probably the wrong business to be in. In my "other" job, I deal with a very large customer base. 90% of the customers, I don't even know who they are - they pay their bills, on time, every month, and have no complaints. Another 5% pay but are late, or have the occasional issue. The last 5% are trouble, and have a litany of complaints. We, too often, tend to focus on that last 5% without considering that about 95% of our customers are decent people. 

Beware if this is in a kitchen. Even on top of a solid plywood subfloor and concrete cement board, porcelain tile will crack if something heavy is dropped on it, like a can of food. If you are still going to do it in the kitchen anyway, use a patterned tile wherein cracks will not be very noticeable. 

If this is in a bathroom, definitely porcelain over travertine. The maintenance of it will drive you crazy, as mentioned above. 

18x18 (that is what I put in my kitchen) goes down fast but is not easy to work with around obstructions. I wouldn't go with a tile that big unless you have a nice square room with few obstacles. Big tiles go down fast but errors stick out like a sore thumb, as does less than flat floors or out-of-square walls. Tiles that big also have a tendency to be slippery, especially porcelain, so there's that as well. 

What you want to do sounds more appropriate for a flip than a rental. In my opinion, rental tile should be small with lots of grout lines for texture to make the floor less slick, and make repairs easier. 

 Coming from what pipes? If it is sewer gas, I would first check that all P-traps are filled with water - sometimes poor venting can cause a P-trap to get sucked dry little by little, especially if the fixture is hardly used. Run some water at every fixture, make sure nothing visible is leaking, and see if that fixes the problem. If it doesn't, you may have a cracked pipe or a leaking P-trap; sometimes that comes from a cleanout plug, so that's another thing to check. I wouldn't smoke test until exhausting other options first; sewer pipes rarely crack inside a house unless someone has damaged it, because they're not under pressure. Outside is a different story, as tree roots or shifts in the earth can crack a sewer line.

If the smell is coming from the water lines, first thing to do is have the water tested for chlorine level. High levels, and low levels, of chlorine will both produce strong odors. 

Based on the fact that your plumber wants to do a smoke test, it sounds like they are complaining about sewer gas. 

 Personally I think they are not worth the paper they're printed on. Worst case scenario is probably changing out the entire compressor/outside unit, so it is not like you have to run a complete install in the house. I realize you use AC more in Houston than we do here, but for comparison purposes I am still on the original AC unit (Rheem) in my central heat/air house, and I've owned this house for 21 years and the house was 2 years old when I bought it. It is not at all unusual for a unit to last 20 years or more with maintenance.