I’m about to make the switch from owner-occupied duplex dweller to straight-up landlord — my boyfriend (who’s been starring in some of the latest posts as the uber-handy guy) has asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. With the current real estate climate, it’s a terrible time to sell a house. And, the plan with buying this duplex was to live in part of it for a while, but hold onto it as an investment when I eventually moved out into a single family house.
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OK, so I called the plumber to check out the toilet upstairs, after it was still malfunctioning a few weeks later. He did the “bucket test” (pour a bucket of water into the toilet, and see how well it flushes on its own), and got a good healthy flush. This would indicate that the vent system was working just fine, and nothing was clogging the drain system. However, when we flushes the toilet using the handle, it went much, much slower. The water wasn’t getting into the bowl fast enough to create a big flush. I’d never realized this before, but all around the bowl of the toilet, under the rim, are a bunch of tiny little holes that let water into the bowl. These holes can get clogged, over time, with sediments from the water and other miscellaneous gunk.
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A few weeks ago, I got a very disturbing call from my tenants. They called on a Friday afternoon, saying that their toilet wasn’t flushing at all, and hadn’t been for FOUR DAYS. They had already called a roto-rooter type drain person over, thinking that they had clogged the pipes, and a hundred dollars later, nothing was resolved. Also, the guy they called simply told them that the problem was that “the toilet was old.”
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My house is over a hundred years old. A hundred and nine, to be exact (although I suppose I don’t know exactly what month the construction was complete). So, for an old house, a person’s willing to forgive several things. The woodwork isn’t perfectly pristine anymore, how could it be after 109 years? The rooms aren’t as large as they would be in a brand-new house, but the house makes up for it in charm. Well, one thing that I’ve been forgiving since buying the house is the almost complete lack of level floors.
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Or, what happens if the tenants conveniently “forget” to set up the gas bill in their name? This happened to me during my last turnover. My new tenants, previously apartment dwellers who were only responsible for an electric bill, set up the electric bill in their names, but not the gas bill. Of course, I had told them that they were responsible for both gas and electric bills (which aren’t provided by the same company in my area), and it was stated on the lease as well. However, assuming that everyone was set up properly, I had no idea that they hadn’t set up the gas bill in their name until the first bill came. To me….
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I recently came across a blog post that detailed the ways that landlords should work at trying to keep tenants happy, and more importantly, keep them staying put. I definitely agree–it’s worth it to do little things that keep tenants happy, because finding new tenants can take a lot of time, money and effort.
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It’s been all over the news lately: rents are declining. The foreclosure crisis is creating more and more vacancies; many people who would otherwise sell their homes are forced into becoming landlords (renting out their properties in lieu of selling at a loss), and overconstruction in the condo market has caused more supply than demand. Some articles claim that falling rents are the sign of something even worse: deflation. I’m no economist, but I know enough to understand that deflation is a very, very bad thing.
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I just bought a treadmill. Sort of on impulse, actually… It’s starting to get way too cold and icy for me to want to run outdoors, and with holiday eating approaching, I’m just not feeling like now is the time to give up running. Ironically, there’s a gym just three blocks away from me, but I seriously hate going to the gym. So, after Saturday’s icy run, I came home and scoured the internet for the best deal. I found one for about half-off (Black Friday deal), and went for it.
Now the next question… where am I going to put this thing?
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When I first bought my duplex, I was aware that gutter cleaning was one of those things that responsible homeowners did every fall — to prevent ice dams on the roof, and as a measure of general maintenance. My boss, who also lived in a two-story home, told me that it was really easy, and there was no reason that I couldn’t do it myself. So, I got a friend with a van to take me to Menards to buy a 30-foot extension ladder, and talked myself out of my fear of heights. If my boss could do it, so could I.
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My duplex is a little over a hundred years old, and has those old wooden cellar doors in back, leading to the basement. Of course, there is an actual deadbolted normal exterior door in the basement, as well, for better security. I’ve been watching the wooden doors deteriorate over the past couple of years; the wood seems to have started rotting, even though I repainted them just a few years ago. I do wonder a bit if painting them a dark red may have caused more snow to melt on them? Not sure. Either way, they haven’t been looking good, and I had been thinking that I should do something about them this spring.
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Every time I’m downstairs to do my own laundry, there’s at least one dryer sheet wafting around down there. One the floor, on top of the dryer, on the ironing board, in the sink, what have you. There is a garbage can down there, and I know that at least one of them knows where it is, because they’ve put their empty laundry detergent bottles in it. This of course isn’t really any sort of valid complaint, it’s just kind of bizarre.
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It’s that time of year again. The time when the air conditioners get taken out of the windows, and the plastic film finally goes on. And I appreciate the biggest expenditure I’ve made on the duplex thus far — new storms and vinyl windows. When I first bought my duplex, the storm windows were in sorry shape. There were holes in many of the screens, and several broken glass panes too, which I got fixed immediately after I moved in. My floor had some rickety old two-track storm windows, and the upstairs had the very unruly three-track variety.
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So, remember my friend, the would-be, could-be landlord? Well, he couldn’t sell his house for what he wanted for it, so he decided to give landlording a shot, for a couple of years until the market turned around. He found a family that was interested in renting his house, did a credit report (which didn’t turn out all that well, but he figured that a family looking to rent in his part of town wasn’t likely to have perfect credit anyway). He signed them on for a year lease, and they moved in.
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My next door neighbor, who happens to be building a garage just opposite the fenceline from the old tree that fell, noticed that you could actually see through the trunk of what’s still standing of the tree…. which, naturally makes him a bit nervous for his brand new garage. I told him that I had a volunteer crew coming out to cut up what was still on the ground, and he’s been thinking of how we could get the rest of it down there.
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This last year has been very tree-centric. Last fall, I had a big chainsaw party, at which three of my closest guy friends showed up and cut down most of the “weed-trees” that had been allowed to grow along my fence line — in exchange for beer and a big pan of homemade lasagna. It opened up the yard a lot, and let a lot more light in — paving the way an actual lawn that grew actual grass (as opposed to creeping charlie). The one tree that they couldn’t handle, though, was the enormous 100-year old box elder with a definite lean to it. The tree that’s had me a bit worried since I bought the duplex. I always hoped that it would fall down slowly, in small chunks, or at least just fall directly to the ground in the direction that it was leaning…
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Well, this last turnover turned out pretty well — possibly the best so far. I sent out one cosigner application (I really only needed one additional guarantor), and received a complete application from not one, but two parents of the couple moving in. (Maybe each father wanted to be on equal financial footing if things were to go awry?). I pulled credit reports on both guarantors, and they both checked out just fine. I scheduled a lease signing, got a check for the security deposit, and received signed and notarized cosigner agreements within a week. The couple really seemed genuinely excited about the duplex, and it seemed cute that it was their first place that they would have together.
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So, I got my first applicants after only a few showings. I love love love getting applications. It’s like a big scavenger hunt, calling references, checking credit, figuring out who these people are and what they’re like… That, and I’m one step closer to getting a lease signed, which means I can take the ad down and stop scheduling showings.
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I don’t know how many times I’ve said that in the past week. My unit is billed as both a 2+ and a small 3 bedroom, and totals about 1200 square feet including a large front porch. However, two of the bedrooms are quite small, and there is one common water heater for the whole duplex. That, and I live downstairs. I don’t really want a huge menagerie of people above me, for a multitude of reasons. So, I put a cap on the number of people I’ll accept. And I can’t believe how often I have to enforce it.
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So far, I’ve had three showings — two groups of two girls, and a couple that’s moving in together. Both of the two-roommate showings were one roommate only, which is always a pain, because it means another showing if roommate #1 is interested. However, it’s looking like neither one of the two-roommate groups are going to bite. One emailed me thanking me for her time, and the other I haven’t heard back from. The couple seemed extremely interested, however, so they may come around.
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Craig’s list is a great place to advertise an apartment for rent — it seems like the only place that a lot of people look. However, each year that I’ve advertised there, I get at least one bite from a scammer. Here’s this year’s version…
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