All Forum Posts by: Michael Norris

Paying double for 6 months then not pay anything for 6 months - that is a creative way to say "pay in full".

 I'd bet someone at the agency didn't communicate this the right way or... I really can't think of another scenario where they wouldn't offer you payment terms? Some premium finance companies charge very high fees and maybe they were trying to avoid that for you.

 The carrier I use for landlord properties in Ohio offers 2 pay, 4 pay, and 12 pay options and only adds on $2 month for the 12 pay plan. Ask them again and you may get a different answer and if it's the same I'd ask someone else to quote it for you. Good luck!  

There is a whole separate conversation about bad management of resources by city government which none of us can fix.

I look at it this way - The cost of a home in Cleveland or even the nicer suburbs is very low compared to many areas of the country yet our taxes are disproportionately high.

The "why" to me is that roads still need to be fixed (a LOT!) and teachers, cops, firefighters, etc need to be paid and that costs about the same here as it does everywhere else.

You can contest the tax amount but expect to pay more it's just part of the ticket to ride.

To a larger degree most industries are having this conversation. Car sales, insurance, real estate, self checkout at the grocery store, and retail,etc. The largest taxi company in the world doesn’t own any cars (uber). The largest hotel company in the world owns no properties (AirBNB). If you can think of an industry someone in Silicon Valley is trying to move your cheese.

Yes - Alpine did a good job for us on the siding

We used Alpine Builders to do a house and garage in Lakewood - you can shop around lots of people do that kind of work

A lot of utility companies offer supplemental policies for delivery and drain lines - you could ask them along with the 3rd party carrier mentioned in the comments above.

Cleveland is more or less divided East / West once you know what side of town your property is you’ll have more options

Sorry to hear about your situation. As a Lakewood investor and Ohio insurance agent this comes up... A LOT! If it makes you feel any better - Sewer & Drain backup is probably one of the top 3 most frequent claims made and a surprisingly (to me) large number of people choose not to have it on their policy.

Not all carriers offer Sewer & Drain backup for landlords but when they do it is fairly affordable. My main company for 1-4 family properties offers a flat $5000 Sewer & Drain backup coverage with $250 deductible for +$75 per year add on to the base policy. With a finished basement you should have more coverage than $5k so another carrier would be a better match in your case.

Good luck on the prior damage disclosure - I'd love to see follow up on how that turns out.

Lakewood sits about 50’ above Lake Erie so there isn’t an issue there however the typical house in Lakewood were all built in the early 1900’s so a great many of them have basement issues and the sump pump is probably a good thing as long as it’s in good working condition. It’s just part of investing in that area. Keep an eye out on newly finished basements - I’ve seen a few recently that looked like they were more about hiding problems than about adding useable space to the home.

A lot of my insurance clients use First Federal of Lakewood for their investor properties and in communication with them they seem very reasonable to deal with