All Forum Posts by: Stephen Shelton

I live in Florida and ants are an utter b####. I have to share this story. I had a property with a cheesy old 1' retention wall made from decaying decades-old wood. I removed it and installed a block one, but it took me a few weeks to take the old ant-infested wood I put in my truck bed to the dump. I eventually noticed that I would occasionally see these odd-looking black ants with long legs on my dashboard or in soda cups when I forgot to throw them out. 

I eventually figured out that those ants in that wood somehow colonized my truck! I tried a few tricks like plates of boric-acid laced jelly to kill them with no luck.  I then bought a new rental property where my truck actually fit in the garage (it's just a humble Dakota) and I used bug bombs on the truck twice. That ended my ant infesting for good.

Moral: these hippy-approved "chemical free" solutions to ant problems are BS for 2 reasons: 1) EVERYTHING is a chemical. Water is a chemical. 2) Ants are evil. The baits I put in my truck of plates of sugary food with boric acid (all chemicals BTW) just didn't work because this low-tech Borg collective was evil and refused to die until I hit it with Admiral Janeway-quality chemicals.

My suggestions:

1) Go to a local "mom-n-pop" style nursery because they're going to know what works well in your area. At a Lowes, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart you may be speaking with someone who is well-intentioned, but not a "plant geek" for your specific environment.

2) Always plant things with their mature size in mind. I say this because growing up I had a moron neighbor who used to rototill his gravel driveway and planted things like Maple trees, friggin' MAPLE TREES, inches from his house. 

3) Plant low-maintenance. Some quality tenants just hate yardwork. I suggest things that grow thick and dense and block weeds. At one of my houses these pre-existing Elephant Ear plants suddenly decided to conquer the property. They were so impressively huge that neither me or my tenants wanted to remove them even though they overpowered the house and allowed weeds to flourish underneath. We eventually had a cold winter here in Florida that killed the foliage so I moved their bulbs to the backyard and put more low-maintenance and weed-blocking stuff in their place.

If the properties are occupied keep your tenants in mind. Learn if they have allergies and avoid plants that trigger them.  I have a tenant who is deeply afraid of critters. I planted things that ended up attracting bees and tree frogs (FYI I'm in Florida) so I removed them for her.

3) Consider safety: at one house I planted a vicious spiny aloe-looking plant at windows because it would make for a painful experience if you wished to break in at that window.

4) Also consider completely selfish motives. I have always fantasized buying undeveloped land and planting it with nothing but plants with that deep red leaf color (imagine a forest like that!) so at one house every plant I plant has red leaves. I even found a crape myrtle (popular in Florida) in a red-leaf version.

I also have a heavily shaded property that I would like to plant an Australian fern tree upon. I've always wanted one since moving here, but my own property is too sunny. I still haven't done this, but I will! 

I went back to the 80s on my counters and used Formica because I have the equipment to handle Formica: you need a good table saw and a router (the kind that does not do wifi lol).

I'm not sure if it's really cost effective. I did not use MDF because MDF has no business being near water. Ever. Instead I used 2 layers of quality plywood that was about $40 for a 4'x8' sheet.  The Formica cost about $50 for a 4'x8' sheet.  I think the wood, contact cement, and Formica ultimately result in around $7-$8 a square foot, but it does take time to build. 

It's a rewarding project, but I wonder if a solid maternal is better looking run. While I use plywood, wet plywood can demonstrate some of the problems MDF is known for.

One advantage Formica had is that it's not that hard to change. A neighbor of one of my priorities asked me to change her black Formica to a marble-style Formica. I used my heat gun to reactivate the glue, removed the Formica and applied the new and it worked well. Moral: Formica makes it possible to change the look relatively cheaply.

That said, on my next property I'm considering something different. Granite seems to pricey and completely not DIY, but with my new wetsaw I wonder if I could use large tiles to get a better look than Formica. Tile was common in the past but looked bad so I wonder if a large tile with minimal grout lines would minimize the problems old tile countertops had.

It appears that way if you believe politicians are sincerely interested in helping better society. When you become as jaded as me it makes complete sense!  😄

There are always going to be more tenants in the world than landlords, so politicians pander to the masses. Tenants who aren't sophisticated will fall for it, and tenants that know it's garbage will just shrug it off since the immediate target is not them (a normal human reaction). Landlords? Politicians that play this game know landlords weren't going to vote for them anyway. Win win!

Think of it this way: corporations don't really pay taxes. Corporate taxes are simply costs embedded into the price of their productor service that their consumers have to pay.  BiggerPockets users know this but the masses don't, and a decade ago the public was literally screaming at politicians to impose a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies because gasoline increased so much and so dramatically. The public was furious gas cost so much and was literally demanding Washington raise it even more. How that perfect storm of corruption and economic ignorance failed is a mystery to me, but I'm glad it did.

This is another example of politicians stealing the money from the few (landlords) to buy votes from the many (tenants) without even having the courtesy of stealing the money themselves through taxation.

I'm curious, what happens if you put the money in a 0% account? What if it sits in an account with a monthly fee? Can you CHARGE the tenant that amount?

Also do they require each property have its own security deposit account or can you at least put them all together into one account? I am thinking separate because they want to make this as difficult as possible for landlords.

Honestly I'd be hesitant just to do anything like this in Chicago with its reputation of corrupt politicians and unions that seem to act more like the mafia, but at 1/10 the ARV in your home market sounds like a great find.

I'm a small timer but I avoid homes built before 1978 because:

* January 1978 was the official end of lead paint. Of course someone may have painted a room in 1980 with paint bought in 1970, but it's a nice cutoff.

I also remember a new EPA rule that went into effect in 2009 or 2010 that requires contractors and repairmen to do cumbersome lead checks on houses built before this date. I don't know if it remains the PITA it was, but I just avoid the issue.

* Old electrical is 💩

I got weak one time and looked at a house built in the 50s and removed an outlet cover to see the wiring.  The wiring didn't even have a ground.

2 of my houses were built in the early 80s and all used aluminum wiring for the oven and clothes dryer. I don't know if that would have been grandfathered, but it's dangerous so I change it for copper (short story: copper and aluminum expand/contact differently and over time their connections can weaken and result in a fire) The house I bought from 2001 was pure copper. 

NOTE: a couple years after renting out one of my 1980s homes I decided to upgrade its light switches with the fancier Decora versions (the switch part is big instead of a little switch) and the ground wire in EVERY SINGLE SWITCH was not connected. I was p*ssed at the blatant laziness of the electrician who did it years ago and at myself for not checking this. 

Also if you redo it you can add more breakers and outlets so people aren't constantly looking for extension cords and tripping breakers.

* If the plumbing is ancient then it's probably horse-squeeze too. I haven't had to deal with that (I don't even have to worry about frozen pipes here in Florida)

But, jeeze, $13,000? Whether grandfathered or not I'd consider redoing it so I could sleep well at night knowing you have a safe house!

Don't forget asbestos! From what I understand there was never a hard-set date for the end of that little fire-resistant cancerous mineral, but the newer the house the less likely that little harbinger of death is likely to be found in your home. It can be found in insulation, ceiling popcorn, tiles, lungs, and more. Your house is definitely from that era, and while it's fun to overstate the dangers of asbestos sometimes it is recommended to just leave them alone. I'd advise you to be aware it's probably present (especially in the icebelt of Chicago) and that you'll likely need to hire a pro to advise on what to do.

I bought a great template tool from Home Depot that allows you to cut perfect notches into doors for hinges, but you will need a router (and not the ones made for wifi lol)

For done reason there doesn't seem to be a standard for the location of hinges, but the doorknobs always seem to be in the exact same spot.

If you don't like the unused part of the notch from the old hinge location, and the doors are painted doors, you can fill the unused space with Bondo and paint over.

How do insane things like this pass the 5th Amendment? Private property cannot be taken for public good without just compensation. What just compensation does a landlord receive by having $4500 taken just to practice the right of owning their property? 

At least with insane property taxes an argument can be made for police, fire, trash, and other common services. It might not justify the inflated price of the tax but it's at least a reason. Here the landlord is having their property taken without any benefit whatsoever.

i think the process goes a little like this:

Number of landlords < Number of tenants

Where < means "Vastly less than"

Corrupt politicians say "We have no legitimate reason to get involved between landlords and tenants in this situation but..."

Then they count votes and realize they can buy a hell of a lot of votes with other people's money without even directly taking it though taxation like a common ordinary thief... er... I mean politician.

It's evil but surprisingly clever for our largely useless bureaucratic class.

I believe a major problem is looming. I believe recent "event"  have postponed the problem, but with more and more uniformed millennials reaching adulthood every day the issue will not be corrected until a crash.

When that crash happens everyone will be impacted whether they prepare or not, and there's simply nothing that can get the masses of Tide-Pod eating, condom-snorting millenials to reject their pop-culture educations aside from that very same economic collapse they are hell-bent to see.

In other words, I recognize that it is inevitable and that there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Until then I plan on being smart with money, investing in real estate, and avoiding wasteful debt on items that aren't income-generating assets... expert for my truck and pets lol