All Forum Posts by: Jill Kaminski

I would be more than happy to tell you exactly what is tested. I normally tested up to 3 rooms, window sill and floor beneath for a total of 6 areas spaces. The Window sill (approx 12”x4”)and the floor below (approximately a 12x12 section of floor).  Doesn’t matter if it’s hard surface floor or carpet. 
Although carpet does hold onto particles more than a hard surface, sweep twice with a heap filter sweeper. I always recommended using 409 on the window sill and floor just before I arrived. 
We used what was called a ghost wipe. Looked like a wet wipe. 
For my own properties I painted the window sill, inside and out with an encapsulating paint, cleaned everything before the inspection and my properties passed without an issue. In a year, I only had 1 property not pass, but that happened right after the city shut down the testing. 

@Michael Temple I just read your posts. Very informative. I live in the Toledo area and not only have I been involved in the investment property/landlord business, I was also a Lead Clearance Technician.  I can tell you exactly why tLucas County doesn’t have enough technicians to get the job done. When they started this in 2016, there was a large pool of certified technicians, ready and eager to complete the lead clearance testing for Toledo rental properties. I recall seeing over 12 pages of certified lead clearance technicians. The county definitely didn’t make easy for us. We had to find the lab, negotiate pricing, with each lab having completely different test kits. Communication from the County was non-existent and very unorganized. Although I got busy quickly it was very short lived.  Since I was a landlord as well, I was one of the few not trying to get rich from the testing. I know for a fact costs for lead certification was ranging from $95 - $450 a unit. There is no reason for such a big price difference among technicians - except for lack of guidance from the County.  Fast forward to present, my license expired well over a year ago, as well as just about everyone else who got their license at the same time. There was no reason to spend another $250-$350 for a license renewal since the lead certification program in the county came to a stop.  

My own personal thoughts on this is if the County was serious about the lead program, they would have the a set process, training dates, approved labs, and maybe at least 1 or 2 County employees to run the program. They had a long list of certified technicians at one time and they know how to contact every single one of us. 

I've used Tenant cloud for the last few years. It does a great job of keeping track of transactions I enter as well as ACH/Credit card payments from tenants. The only downside is the bank sync. Unfortunately that has not been added yet. They are adding new features all the time but now the bank account sync as of now. I pay $9/month for the ACH payment capability which covers the tenants ACH payments to me. It looks like they have a $35/mo plan which syncs with quickbooks but not sure how good that it.  I've tried a few others like cozy and rentecdirect, but I prefer the most simple method possible.  Hope this helps.

My husband and I are new to real estate investing and have completed the purchased of our 1st property, a triplex. We hope this to be our first of many properties that we purchase which will help to better prepare us for our future.  We are interested in purchasing properties to renovate and rent and flipping.