All Forum Posts by: Russ B.

You can definitely get new carpet + paint while living there.. homeowners do it every day. Nobody clears out their whole house just for that. 

I wouldn't approach the landlord by talking about "my rights" though.. It just sounds too similar to the sort of thing we hear from tenants we want rid of - it'll immediately put them in "dispute" mode, for no reason. 

Having lived there 10 years, though, they probably are pretty happy with you. Maybe just ask if they could refresh the walls + floors? 

One problem is that interest rates are already very low (I mean, I have 3% unsecured auto loans...), so there's really not much to cut. 

IMO, the economy has been artificially stimulated for a while now. Sooner or later, it has to pull back. 

Whether this will be the thing that triggers it remains to be seen. 

Properly functioning sewer lines don't need "maintenance"...

My guess is, it's either an old clay pipe with tree root problems (in which case they should replace it, or remove the tree), or it's improperly installed / runs uphill (in which case, it needs replaced). 

In either case, it sounds like they're dodging the work that really needs to be done, with regular band aid fixes. 

^This.

If a title company's email gets breached (for example), a crook could send out a bunch of these and maybe get somebody to fall for it. These tend to be smaller businesses, so they are probably easier targets than something like a bank. 

Sounds like what happened to the lady from Shark Tank is exactly what a scammer would hope for - their fake email looks just like a bunch of real ones that come in all the time, and they get lucky. 

You always want to verify that you're really talking to who you think you are - hence why you want to find their contact info some other way / not from an email. 

I guess termites are a bigger problem in some parts of the country.. but where I'm at, they're really not THAT big a deal (at least not worthy of the reaction people seem to have to them). 

Untreated, they'll trash your house.. but that takes years. In most cases, they're pretty easy to spot and they aren't hard to get rid of (finished basements and brick faces do make it more complicated). All you have to do is hose down the area they're coming in with borax, and they'll get the hint. Just like with those ant baits, if they feed that stuff to the queen it's game over. 

As for prevention, the biggest thing is to avoid any wood touching the ground. Keeping wood away from basement walls is good too, although that's not really that risky as long as it stays dry. Whenever I finish a basement, I always use pressure treated wood or metal to connect the walls to the concrete. 

The other thing to remember about the coronavirus is, the vast majority of cases are relatively mild. 

So, there's a 3% death rate among reported cases, but those are just the people that went to the doctor for it. I bet 100x that many actually had it and didn't know - or it was like a cold, so they didn't think much of it. 

Recessions might be no fun when they're happening, but they're also a huge opportunity - it's like the market is having a clearance sale. 

As for stocks, some of my personal favorites are oil companies, because there are some that have tracked really closely with the price of crude for years and years, so they're pretty predictable. IMO these are way better than the oil futures funds, which are so vulnerable to contango that I think they were actually kind of a stupid idea. 

It's relatively easy for someone unsophisticated (me) to be able to tell when oil is overpriced or underpriced relative to long term trends, not least because there are times when its price is just way off the charts. It doesn't take a mathematician to tell you what's gonna happen when it's $25 a barrel (or $150)...

In a recession, you can make money buying any company that's going to come out the other side intact and ready to go (ie, it has relatively low debt, and is healthy enough to weather the storm). 

The companies that will stay down after a recession are the ones that went in weaker, and had to lay off their core talent, give up critical assets, end up buried in debt, or didn't have the funds to develop any new products while their competitors did (ie, you should have bought those competitors instead).

The smell is easily handled using a carbon filter, and it doesn't stick around after the plants are gone (the smell from smoking it is a different story, of course). 

The humidity thing can be a concern, but only if they've got the place packed with plants. I have a whole pond's worth of tropical aquatic plants in my basement right now (in heated tanks of water even), and humidity hasn't been an issue. In fact, it's kinda nice not having the air in the house be so dry all winter 🙂

I'd personally be most worried about insurance, since there's probably an increased risk of both fire and burglary.

It's always good to call first - and of course you want to find their number on your own, rather than from an email. 

Places that often get paid by wire (like title agencies) should be used to getting these calls. The last time I called to verify one, the first person to answer the phone instantly knew what I was calling about, and what to check.

I don't know where to look for a service you can use from your end.. but really, how hard could it possibly be to go to a website and fill out a form? I'd be kinda surprised to see anyone in 2020 that can't do that.

Other than helping walk them through it, I'm not sure what you can do. 

Obviously, you can't let them skip that step - it's not uncommon for people who would fail the screening, to try and avoid it by claiming they couldn't get the website to work or some such.