All Forum Posts by: Mike F.

If you let tenants install them:

1) You open yourself up to all sorts of repairs everytime they move out

2) You open yourself up to all sorts of crazy that tenants will come up with

3) You're on a never ending treadmill, every time the place turns over you are dealing with the blinds turnover

4) Everytime the place turns over you have a place that doesn't show as well when the previous tenant takes his blinds or leaves the broken ones

Put your own it and the blinds become part of the property protected by the security deposit, they tenant will be paying you to replace them if damaged while they live there and paying you through their security deposit when the move out if they damaged them.

The place will show better since all the windows will still have blinds and be in good condition after the tenant moves out. 

Some of my properties the HOA has clauses about the blinds and appearance, it's easier for us to do them right once and if the tenant breaks one and we get notified by the HOA about a violation it's simple to just pass this along to the tenant since the blinds were part of the property when they moved in.

Think long and hard about consistency over the years, will what you buy today be easy to match in a year if you have to replace one? White vinyl is always replaceable with a match, will the nicer wood ones you choose be as easy to match in 5 years?

Sold automobiles for 5 years, and payment buyers out number non-payment buyers 25 to 1. 

The mindset of so many Americans was "I've got a car payment now, I will always have a car payment, as long as I can afford the car payment I don't care."

The sterotype for somebody who didn't have a car payment when they came in was someone with gray hair, they would own their car and pay cash and were sensible about the new car, or somebody who was driving a rat car that they owned for 20 years. 

Everybody else was coming in with an existing car payment on their trade in.

We used to switch these payment buyers from purchases to leases all the time in the 90's. They could get more car for their payments so they didn't care, their mentality of "I'm always going to have a car payment" meant they didn't care, my old payment is $325 a month, I can get this really nice new car for $360 on a lease, I'll take it. 

Me I was the opposite, I was always a top salesman so I qualified for a free demo car every month, most of my piers drove those demos because it was an ego thing, you got to drive a demo, you got to park it in a certain spot, it was all ego driven. They gave you the alternative of taking the demo or taking $250 a month in place of it, for 5 years I took the $250 a month. I didn't need a demo, all my cars I bought cash from either customers who wanted to sell their car and the dealership didn't want it or I cherry picked out of the trade ins before they went through the shop. I'd buy a sports car in the spring at  wholesale price, drive it through the summer and sell in the fall for retail, essentially break even and had driven it for free and do the same thing in the fall buying a truck at whole sale price and drive it through winter and sell it in the spring for retail. 

Funny thing was all this stuff just seemed natural to me, but not to anybody else around me. Even the people in the business who knew how things worked who dealt with these people with payment every day did the exact same thing when they bought cars, they all were payment buyers too. Most people are just too much like cats, distracted by the bright shiny objects dangled in front of them.

Long time ago I used to sell automobiles in a part of the city that was considered suburban heaven, soccer moms, big houses, nice yards...

90% of our business came from this area. We were leasing Ford Expeditions to these families as fast as we could get them in. They could do the $600 lease payments, but if they had to come up with some down payment money, $2000, $3000 dollars... that's where they ran into problems. Back then the average home was around $200,000, these people were all living in 400K to 500K homes, had good incomes 740 fico scores, but were spending it as fast as they made it. Blew me away. At the time I owned my home free and clear ($120,000 house but no mortgage) All these 'well off' people I was selling to who made more money than I did, were living pay check to pay  check. Was a real eye opener to me, taught me there are high income people and high networth people and the latter is what you want to be.

 ^^^^ what Ed said,

Ozone machine alone will not do it for hardcore pet odors (cat urine) Ozone machine is just one step and one tool in the process, you must chemically treat the effected areas (walls, baseboard, hardwood floors, sub-floors), remove and  replace carpets, kilz over effected areas and then treat with ozone machine for multiple days. Just one of the reasons we will allow pets, but no freak'n cats, not exceptions.

Everything cashflows eventually with enough equity. I don't purchase property based on the minimum requirements I need to get financing, I purchase based on the minimum amount of equity I need in a property to ensure I can hold it in both boom times and bust times.

1) Tile both sides of it will add a lot of strength

2) Run the glass on top without a gap, with it attached to the top of the wall and to the ceiling

3) How much is it finished on the inside? Attach a sheet of plywood to the inside will strengthen it (will be like what is called a shear wall)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_wall

4) Is this on a slab? Ramset it a few more times, or use tap cons.

5) Tripple stud the open end of the framing

The wall only looks like it maybe 48" wide at the most, doing any combination of the above should firm it up tremendously.  

I'd cut out the vertical "post" between the "window" and the door, install a frameless glass panel on top of the wall leaving a 4-6" gap at the top, do the door so the top of the door and the top of the glass are at the same height, hinge your shower door so it's a left hand door (hinged off the right side).  An ideal door is as close to 30"x 80" in frameless. Also with frameless you can have hinges that will swing both ways, if you want to air out the shower you  can push the door into the shower past the automatic detents on the hinges and the door will stay open. 

Everybody has their own reality Nick, yours might change drastically with new experiences with properly sized disposals. 3/4 hp disposals are brainless, maintenance free products. This whole worry over garbage disposals is based on people's lack of experience with the right ones. No different than somebody complaining don't ever add another bathroom to a rental because you will run out of hot water. The problem isn't the additional hot water usage, it's the undersized hot water tank. Even more similar would be saying don't add another bathroom because it's just one more toilet the tenant will clog up. Again, a properly spec'd toilet that is an anti-clog model for $300 versus a $59.00 glacier bay from home depot solves the problem, the extra bathroom isn't the problem it's the landlord who's spec sheet is based on low priced products instead of the right products for the job.

Now if your property is on a septic system I can see the issue with a disposal, not so because of the food waste issue going into the septic but because of the extra water flow of using one.

For you new tile Nick I hope you are spending a little bit more for one of the new commercial grade grouts that require no sealing, and never change color, more money up front but you'll recoup it in the very first tenant turn over.

OP specified he isn't renting C-D class properties, A & B properties garner their higher rents because of amenities, keeping it simple means you're posting on here all the time wondering why you can't rent it, these properties attract better quality tenants who take care of the properties better also you can and must put in some features to warrant the higher rents.

Nick keep the ^^^^ in mind, you dumb down your rentals due to listening to people giving advice from perspectives of properties different than yours and you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot when you have trouble renting it due to your competitors properties offering more the money.

Many landlords are cash flow investors, not equity investors, their properties are lower quality, lower quality tenants, lower expectations, lower rents, they step over dollar bills to pick up pennies, having a penny pinching mentality, don't fall into that trap. A-B rentals are products like any on the market you have to create a product that appeals to your buyer and competes. When you do you rent they out quickly and your tenants stay longer, all of which more than makes up for saving a few pennies here and there which many landlords over-look.

We never put in ice makers, however we always install garbage disposals because we can control the quality and therefore remove the problems. All garbage disposals we use are 3/4 horse power, these units cost 3x what a basic one costs but they run trouble free forever and don't need maintenance because they are so powerful.