All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

I've never done this, but heard of it. It's a lot more work to paint over.  How much should I keep if a tenant painted 3 rooms bright colors?  Problem is this was an inherited tenant and I don't have a copy of her original lease.

There's lots of pages out there about how easy it is to defeat a smartkey lock, but I can't find any anecdotes of anyone actually getting robbed by a thief doing so. They're a very attractive idea, and and I have a few, but I'm hesitant to go all in. And it's not clear they're any more vulnerable than regular low end locksets which can be picked and bumped, unlike Smartkeys.

Does anyone have any actual info related to this? 

Has anyone ever had a Smartkey forced as in the videos? It seems easy, and I have  a few of them around, but if it was common you think it there would be an outcry?

I just took a Smartkey cylinder apart, because I couldn't find what key fit it but I could find a video on how to rekey it without the current key. You can see why they can be forced: it depends on one tiny gear tooth for each tumbler. Unless they make the gears out something utterly unbreakable they're vulnerable.

This is a different sort of  "hardening", but today in a unit I'm renovating I changed the ugly Segal vertical deadbolt to a standard cylindrical deadbolt, but with the addition of a steel plate "anti-kick-in" plate buried under the inside casing with 4" screws into the jamb.  The problem with the Segal's is they require massive hacking into lovely old door casings. I restore them with Bondo.

tomorrow I start on the granite tile counter.  Not only is it 1/3 the price of slab, but it's repairable, important in a buy and hold.

@Mike H, technically you're right on all counts, but they're not lowlife's pulling a fast one.  They just misunderstood the law, since it's not their area. Besides, they moved out because they got married in the church on the corner and bought a place 2 blocks away. They're neighbors now, maybe they'll hire my kids to babysit.

 I think you're right on all counts. We need to make clear in the lease that the "month to month" that we're fine with after the 1st year means calendar month, not any 30 days you like.  We're going to let this one go. my wife pointed out I made an arithmetic error on our rent raise, it was $250, so we basically make it back in 2 months.

They gave 30 day plus notice, and said they wanted the half month taken out of their security. Normally I make clear that's not what security is for, but I'd been in the unit recently and it was in fine shape. We are talking about $590, it's not chicken feed, but the ease of re-renting does count for something.  Not everyone is capable of looking at a unit that is a mess with boxes everywhere and imagining what it looks like with their own stuff as easily as with a vacant clean space. And we rented it for $150 more!

Very good tenants left on 15th during month to month after 2 years, leaving the place immaculate. I easily re-rented the vacant unit immediately for the 1st, without having to show it with them in the process of moving out.  Technically a month to month is by the calendar month and legally I can charge them. But should I? A half month vacancy for 26 months is not a bad vacancy rate. Oh, and they're both lawyers!

 You've been generation gapped!  A lot of our young tenants have no landline, and that's a huge trend nationally.

Wow, I didn't think my topic would generate so much commentary!  I would like to clarify, my email was going out to people who had already responded to a CL ad, and was telling them all the exact time and address. It wasn't a "cold" message, it was one they were waiting for, so all the esoterica about open rates and such didn't apply, but it's interesting stuff I never thought much about. Not relevant in my buy & hold business model.