All Forum Posts by: Louis W.

 That is a great strategy. Listen to this man.

An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure

How do you tell who fence is it? Is it on the property line? 

How did the neighbor landlord response to your offer? Did they refuse or just ignore you?

In one of my property, the fence is share ownership even though it is off the property line a bit. 

I work out a deal to fix the fence that got damaged by his dog. Sometimes, you can pay a bit extra for the cost to get done quicker and fewer headaches. 

College students are wild. Look on the bright side, at least no one got hurt. There are many incidents of college students wild party causes structural collapse and subsequence injury and death. 

You can sue them if it is worth it.

If not, I hope your insurance can cover it. 

Best of luck.

Forgot to mention, my property is at San Francisco, probably the most tenant-friendly city in US. Lease or not, it almost doesn't matter. My tenants try to prevent me from raising rent by refusing to sign a new lease. Their strategy is basically trying to block me from raising rent with a huge list of maintenances. Long story... The detail is in my other post.  

Thanks for the continued advice and support, everyone! 

Currently, I had to return management back to my family. They said to keep thing as it like before with the tenants because they think the tenants will just move out eventually on their own.

Of course, I let my family know everyone's advice to hire proper PM and lawyers, but they want to avoid these conflict due to other complication with my family dispute over ownership of the house. Another whole can of worms that I won't get into. (Another lesson: Write a dam clear legal Will with a lawyer. Verbal is useless. Greedy People will fight over your stuff when you passed.) 

I will pass this headache back to them and focus on my own properties. I will apply everyone's teaching to better manage my own properties. Thank you, everybody. 

That's why my PM is worth every penny. They know what is constitute a repair and not an upgrade. They do it at a reasonable price without using my time and energy. 

I made a mistake recently trying to manage a property myself. The angry tenants bring out hundred of repair and complain in the email to threaten me from signing a new lease with them. They demand lower rent and 10 year lock rate. A professional PM would know exactly how to handle all those repair requests and take proper steps toward working out that new lease in a legal manner. 

My lease agreement allows me to inspect twice a year. Ideally, you want to be able to inspect frequently as you can as long as the law allows and the tenant agree to sign that lease agreement.

Boston sounds like a very tenant friendly city. I won't try to evict these tenant myself. I made the mistake of saying too much to a tenant, who was smart enough to document my every words. Definitely hire an attorney for your first eviction in the city. 

Craigslist or other local selling apps to sell those appliances for cheap.

Do it if it is worth your time to sell them, recycle, or give them out for free.

If you got no time, I will just let the new appliance's shipping companies take care of it at a small price.

I made a mistake of trying to sell an old appliance. Not only did no one buy it, but I also had to pay extra to remove it because I don't have time to show the recycling company employees why I put the appliances, (they refuse to enter my property without my presence). I could have gotten the appliance removed for lot less when the shipping company came to deliver my new appliances. 

 The law is very unfair to the landlord. However, investors who are familiar with the laws are able to make great cash flow. One of my mentors has a portfolio of single-family homes in the bay area. Because of Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act, he is able to raise the rent to market rate most of the time for his single-family homes. He manages all his property himself. I have a lot more to learn from him.