All Forum Posts by: Stephen Shelton

West Chester is a university town in PA. Are you renting to (frequently drunk) college students?

In '96-'97 I rented an apartment on S. Church St. my last year at that school where I walked uphill going to the school and walking back. It was $900 a month.  I found it on Zillow recently and that place shows a Zestimate of $1645 and the write-up from 2015 shows a request for $2425!

Here in Orlando our local talk radio station has a Saturday lineup called "Ask the Experts" which (I believe) are paid local programs from various fields. One is law and specializes in real estate. The firm holds free seminars for landlords to ask any random question too, I went to one before finding my first property (I really need to go again now that I'm an actual landlord) but I had him write up a contract for my first rental that I have tweaked for the subsequent properties I bought.

I also had him add things specific to my request like forbidding the use of candles for non-emergency situations. (It's not 1850 so why risk a tenant burning down my house or putting soot on the ceiling?)

It may be wise to find someone local who knows your laws, especially in a blue state like yours, to protect you against things an impersonal online doc might not cover. Also, it will allow you to at least build the foundation of a relationship you may need in the future if you have problems.

Popcorn is ridiculously easy to remove. Spray it wet with water, give it a few minutes to soak in, and scrape off.

It's incredibly messy so only do it in an empty room, but I saw a DIYer video on YouTube where guy attached a wet vac to his scraper and solved that problem too.

Wholesalers. That's what I thought. I might be worth it to look into one, but I'd rather research a bit before approaching one especially since I can't buy another property for a few months at a minimum. I plugged a phone number into a search engine and came up with nothing.

BTW I found it odd that this website didn't alert me to the presence of these two responses.

I recommend a Dodge Dakota. Just make sure it's from 1997-2004 and not one of those bastardized eyesores that were released in 2005 when Dodge said "let's see if we can increase waning sales by making this truck unspeakably ugly". Do it. There's no law saying that you can't drive in style while being a landlord (well a permit is probably required in San Francisco or Chicago)

If you're looking for an enclosed SUV then a 1998-2003 Dodge Durango fits the bill.

I have renovated 3 houses with this truck and am a very active landlord. This weekend I strained/sealed the wooden fence on two properties with it. 220,000 and going strong. And it was built right before the explosion in popularity in computerizing EVERYTHING in a vehicle which, as we all know, brings with it the problems, unreliability, and tears that Microsoft built into the must frustrating empire in the world.

I have a Roll-n-Lock cover over the bed to protect the contents too.

In my area it's not uncommon to find little signs at intersections looking to either buy ugly homes or to sell a house to an investor to flip.  These hand-written signs are there one day, and gone the next.

What are these? My educated guess is that they are done by local house wholesalers hoping to make a profit, but are they something else? A scam perhaps? Call up and I have to attend some scammy seminar first? Anyone here ever acquire a home through something like this?

I find them tempting because if it is just a legitimate wholesaler out selling homes I never even knew existed then it could be a great connection to have, but if these have a reputation of being scams then I'd rather stay away.

For me, since I renovated my homes mainly myself, is looking back at what I didn't do.

For example, I renovated a house, rented it, and when I looked at my second house one of my first comments was "I must remove this popcorn ceiling" but in my previous house it didn't even occur to be to remove it.

I compare what I did to my houses and there's this clear evolution in my style and capabilities. While working on House #3 a Directv installer fell through the bedroom ceiling in House #1. House #1 now has a ceiling that matches the look of House #3 (i.e. I used my new texture sprayer and crown molding)

I wish I had used the big wooden baseboards I used in House #3 bought from a home supply company instead of the smaller plastic ones I bought from Home Depot for the other two.

I go into my older 2 houses and want to kick the tenants and contents out for a month so I can modify the houses to match the look and feel I have come to learn.

I had an apartment with some friends my last year of college, 1997. It was a 1 year lease which was a surprise to me because we only needed it for 9 months. I quickly learned this was the norm. I can't remember if all 4 of us were on the lease, but I later learned this is not wise because come eviction time the number of names acts as a multiplier on the complexity of the eviction process.

We each paid separately, and I remember at least 2 roommates would be late every month. 

We had an active landlord who would stop by from time to time, and we nicknamed her Mrs. Roper. (She reminded us of her for some reason) I recently tracked her down on Facebook but she hasn't responded to me.

We only stayed a year, but the guys on the upper floor planned to stay longer and I remember hearing them howl in pain when she went up to announce that next year's rent was going from $900 to $926 or something like that.

I have a pricey college about 20 minutes from me and I'm pondering the idea of getting something within walking/bicycle distance. If college students don't care about going $100K in debt on the plethora of worthless degrees that are all the rage today then they can pay a premium for rent too!

Yes. I gutted the cabinets in my second propertyand learned a lot from these 2 properties.

1) Particle Board / MDF has no business whatsoever being anywhere near water because it soaks up water like a sponge and expands when doing so. Never EVER use particle board for lower cabinet in an environment with water (kitchen / bathroom). Instead use plywood cabinets. 

In my area I have a very reasonable cabinet company that sells disassembled plywood cabinets. They are easy to assemble and will actually last.

In a related tip, if you have the opportunity to tile underneath your cabinets DO SO. Do not lane it unfinished; if you Scrooge McDuck the flooring where the lower cabinets go you create an empty pool. If there's a leak the water will sit in there and get soaked up by your MDF lower cabinets and they'll swell up and become a nice breeding ground for an ecosystem of fungi

2) The basic cabinets at Home Depot ate sturdier than those at Lowes. On my first property I used a lot of Lowe's cabinets and they were only held together with done half-a##ed staples. The base model cabinets at Home Depot were assembled with more quality from what I eventually found.

I do the jobs myself. Of course it's cheaper that way but the main reason is

I LIKE IT.

I hate my real job "working for the man every night and day". It feels so meaningless and unrewarding. When something needs done at one of my houses I'm "let me see if there's a YouTube video!" and I fix it myself myself.

I only recommend this for people who have the time to do it, are handy, and are not afraid of the possibility that a defective light switch could result in adopting a kitten or checking a fence for evil paper wasps could obligate a sibling to adopting a evil Malaysian Tokay Gecko that was not evil enough to deserve death from an unusually cold Florida winter.

Being a landlord has had a few completely unexpected consequences lol.