All Forum Posts by: James DeRoest

You can talk yourself into circles on this. As all the responses you're getting shows this. It's very easy just to say No, like Greg does to most people. It's too easy to find reasons not to rent to someone.

Everyone has a reason to be renting and not buying. I'll not knock someone for making bad desicions as we all do it. Show me someone who hasn't and I'll show you a liar.

Personally, you can see this in two ways. Either they are being upfront with you about their problems, so just work on 3x rent or whatever you do, and check their employment ; or, there isn't enough story here and it just doesn't sound right and your spidey sense is tingling. 

Foreclosure doesn't always mean bankruptcy so if there is a risk of bankruptcy, check your local laws.

I do believe you can follow this further with the potential tenant as they will be having this same problem with any half decent landlord they are talking to right now.

Credit scores are meaningless much of the time.

I don't believe it's the sellers job to disclose anything, it's your job to make sure you find problems and know what your buying, hence inspections fees at closing are paid by the buyer, not the seller; the inspector worked for you and your mortgage company.

I would certainly ask the inspector about the water heater, that does sound odd, but don't suddenly believe the plumber who said it was all wrong either, they will happily make things up.

In fact, the gas backing up into unit doesn't sound right at all. Why hadn't this been reported by previous tenants? Gas smell in a unit is ALWAYS a big matter.

However, on both these issues I wouldn't get too bent out of shape. You would have to be naive to think that any property you will buy will be perfect. There will always be things that are missed and need addressing. Do what we all do - learn, listen, and when you buy your next property use your new knowledge and not rely on inspections.

If someone is trying to evade paying taxes, you're helping them, and then taking a profit by immediately selling the property, where do you think you stand in this venture?

Ok, so you're gonna wire money around so that someone can defraud the Federal government both for their SSI payments, and income tax.

The bit I especially like is posting your idea on a public forum!

Bravo! Bravo!

 Depends what your favorite color is.

If you like yellow and black, then Dewalt, red and black Milwaukee, blue Kobalt, green Ryobi, and so forth. They are all made by a $2 per hour Chinese person. 

Personally I prefer Milwaukee and I'm building a full kit of M18 stuff. Nice thing about Milwaukee is they just released their brad and finish M18 nailers! (I think Rigid already do them). So that'll be my compressor finish nailer retired soon then.

I don't know about the other manufacturers, but a few months ago I bought one of the newer Milwaukee Fuel impact driver - OMG - how powerful is that? (correct use of OMG). It wasn't like the other one was bad, but the Fuel tools really are a league up.

 Yes. I don't know you, I've never met you, and you have zero track record as an investor.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to kick you, but when hard money needs to be put down, these are the questions you will be faced with.

I can't school you on hvac, I have every intention in the next year of buying a s/h inside and outside unit, and putting them together in my workshop and working out how it all fits together. Having seen the below average intelligence installers that turn up at our properties, it really shouldn't be that difficult. 

I would have done this already, but I'm only just getting a 200A service to my workshop.

But you are correct, most hvac people are difficult to trust, we've gone through enough, but here's the thing - 

Whilst you are sounding out the companies you want to go with, you will find the company you like. When you find them, you keep them onside, every time you have a problem, go with the same company, if they don't remember you then remind them "hey you did my xyz last year" - they won't remember but they will appreciate your repeat business.

Another thing, when your chosen hvac company says $75 for a summer service (maybe $50), you say "yes", not because you need it, but because you stay a valued customer.

The pay off of this loyalty is the day you have a real problem.

In the height of summer, our chosen hvac company will be onsite to repair any unit within 3 hours. They will push other work aside for us, not because we have a lot of units (we do), but because good paying landlords are their bread and butter business.

One of our tenants last year, his unit packed up overnight, none too please he called in the morning. No problems, we made a call, our hvac company was busy so it'd be after lunch. Tenant was PISSED. So we said "fine, call round and we'll pay the bill" knowing full well what the next phone call would be.

25 minutes later my wife takes a call from a very apologetic tenant. I mean, he was tripping over himself. His ac was repaired that afternoon. When we collected rent a week later he again was apologetic about his behavior, he genuinely thought we were unreasonable at the time, and he'd had a rough night with the house at just over 90F, which was understandable. The earliest he could get another company was just over a week away. He realized "landlord from hell" was actually "best landlord ever".

Coolant leak is nothing to do with the tenant. Although the filter really hasn't helped as the thing is beating itself to death.

What you can do if you know a friendly AC man is get a 'new' inside unit (if it's the inside coils).

What AC guys will not tell you is that you can easily match inside units to outside units as long as they are same tonnage, same type, and same gas. We've moved around outside units before, no big deal.

(As for the gas, when they do the job, they just put the gas in the outside unit, put a newer inside unit in the house, connect them up, release the gas through the two systems and you're good to go again).

8 years is nothing.

AC companies live in a land where all the customers are mushrooms; keep them in the dark.

(Still not entirely sure what the difference is between the outside units for different gases.)

New AC system (inside and out) should be around $3000-3300 for 2.5 tons. They buy them new for less than $2k and they take less than a day to install.

 Buy the $99 toilet from Lowes and get on with your life.

Once you've got the guts out, faffed around for a while, and then a year later you're having problems with something else on the toilet - seriously, take it out back, shoot it several times, and put a new toilet in it's place.

And yes, it's what we do now as a matter of course whenever we rehab. Old toilets are a pain in the ***.

 It's not about how well a toilet is screwed to the floor, it's about 300-500lbs of leveraging force.

Here's a web page that describes the power of leveraging. Worth a read for anyone who didn't do physics at school. Like yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever

A quick calculation would seem to indicate that a 350lb person, sitting 18" above the fulcrum and the action being 1" above the ground, rocking on a toilet would produce around 6,300lbs of force on the toilet.