1 Minute to Rental Property Riches

New Tenant!

2010-04-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

I didn't work very long today, but it was worthwhile. My projects today consisted of changing a broken toilet handle; posting notices at several apartments to notify the tenants that trees are being cut down at those properties tomorrow; and doing the lease-up paperwork for one of my one bedroom apartments. Of course, any day that I get a new tenant is a good day.

Despite the recession, demand for rentals remains very high. Currently, ALL of my houses are full and I only have a couple of apartments open. I'm very happy with the rental situation.

After working for an hour or so, I went for a 7 mile bike ride and then came home to work on my garden. I was looking forward to working on the garden because I bought a fancy new rear-tine rotor tiller yesterday. I tilled up a relatively small area and was happy with my new toy. I'm looking forward to getting some plants in the ground in the next couple of weeks.

Dog Bite!

2010-04-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of requests to start up my blog again, so here it goes. To be quite honest, I don't really think that talking about real estate stuff is very important anymore - at least compared to the destruction of our country at the hands of the socialists. For those of you that haven't been paying attention, we have a socialist in the White House who has surrounded himself with socialists/communists/marxists. The Socialist in Chief (President) is following the Cloward and Piven Strategy, which was developed in 1966 by "progressives" to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible entitlements, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. As capitalism collapses under the weight of the entitlements that can't be funded, the socialists have an underlying socialist structure in place which they will use to "fundamentally transform" the nation. I have been busy (peacefully) fighting this socialism on a variety of fronts and simply haven't had much time to post about real estate investing. In my opinion, fighting the loss of our country is infinitely more important than talking about my rental business.

However, for those interested in the day to day activities of a landlord, I do have an interesting little story that occurred today. My 3 hours of work today consisted mainly of routine tasks. I collected one late rent, with late fee; posted 2 eviction notices; and installed a window air conditioner for a disabled tenant. My last task of the day was to unlock the basement at one of my duplexes so that the Section 8 inspector could inspect it later in the day. I walked into the back yard of the duplex and unlocked the basement. As I was walking back to my truck, a large pit bull from the house next door jumped over the fence and bit me on the shoulder. I was able to knock him off my arm and back into his yard. Through an act of great discipline, I didn't shoot the dog and fortunately for both of us, the dog didn't come at me a second time.

I knocked on the front door and told the owner that he had better chain that dog up and that the next time the dog attacked me, I would shoot it (I WILL). My shoulder was instantly bruised and was bleeding. You could (and can) see where every one of the dog's teeth bit into my shoulder. I carry a first aid kit in my truck and proceeded to clean the wound as much as possible. Then, I called the health department to see what needed to be done to ensure that the dog didn't have rabies. The health department said that the dog needed to be quarantined for 10 days and that they were sending someone to pickup the dog. They will call to let me know about the dog after they have it in custody.

Slow Week - the Holidays are Here

2009-12-16T15:44:00.001-08:00

I'm already in holiday mode. The fact is that in the rental business, not much happens between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People are busy scurrying around shopping for Christmas presents. The weather is cold in Ohio. People certainly aren't moving if they don't have to. Therefore, I typically go into slow motion and take a lot of time off during the Christmas season. This week has been the perfect example.

On Monday, I worked for about 2 hours doing a little maintenance. I checked the winterization status of the couple of vacant rentals I have; fixed a minor electrical problem; and patched some drywall. For December, Monday was a beautiful day with temperatures in the mid-50's. So, after my 2 hours of work, I decided to go to the gun club and do some shooting. I got a lot of practice in and had a good time.

On Tuesday, my new Lionfish arrived (via overnight shipping) for my 220 gallon aquarium. I decided that was a good reason to take the day off and that was exactly what I did. I spent about 3 hours acclimating my new fish to my aquarium and then practiced some timed shooting at the makeshift airsoft shooting range in my basement. I find the airsoft shooting to be very valuable training as it builds speed and accuracy; and the gun I use for the airsoft shooting is almost identical to my Glock.

Today, I was in court for the final hearing on a judgment I won against the last tenant I evicted. That only lasted about 1/2 hour and then I took the rest of the day off.

I am planning to do a little work tomorrow if I can get motivated. However, if anything more interesting comes up, I may take tomorrow off also.

Never Talk to Strangers!

2009-12-09T16:28:00.001-08:00

When I was a child, my mother used to say "never talk to strangers." I guess I never was very good at taking instruction! Today was a good example. I was driving to one of my houses to do a little maintenance work. On the way, I drove by the only house that I now have vacant. As I glanced at the house, I noticed a stranger leaning up against the front of the house, fiddling with something in his hands. The guy looked a little "iffy" and I decided to stop and see what he was doing.

I got out of the truck and asked the guy if I could help him. He said "no, I'm waiting for someone". I responded that was fine, but he couldn't wait on our property (I never say "my" property, because I want to portray that I'm just the manager). The guy said that he was waiting for the person that lived in the house and said that he had just been talking to them a few minutes before. Since the house is vacant, I knew that he was lying. I asked him for the names of the occupants of the house and he said that he didn't know, but it was a Mexican and a woman. There aren't many Mexicans in this part of Ohio and almost every Mexican male that I have seen would be working during the day (as I was doing). I told the guy that there was no Mexican that lived at the house.

I asked the liar again what he was doing at the house and he said that his friends were working in the back of the house. I followed the guy around to the back, keeping a safe distance behind him. There was no-one at the back of the house and I told the guy to get off the property and stay off or I would have him arrested! He left the property and started walking down the street.

My next concern was that someone might have indeed broken into the house. I used my key to enter the house and carefully searched it. There was no-one in the house and no evidence that anyone had been in there.

As I exited the house, I saw a couple of guys that lived in the neighborhood. I asked them if they knew who the stranger was and they said that he had been slinking around their truck and camper a little while earlier. Obviously, this guy was up to no good. Clearly, mother knew what she was talking about - this stranger was definitely trouble. I asked the two neighborhood guys to call me if they saw him again and they said the would do so, as well as calling the police.

I'll try to keep an eye on the property for the next couple of days.

EEEKS!

2009-12-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

The economy is bad - I guess that's not a great revelation. One of the issues that has arisen due to the bad economy is that I'm seeing more tenants paying late (during the 3 day eviction notice period and with a late fee). This month was no different, and I had one tenant that paid me yesterday. When I was in town to pick up the rent, another tenant called to tell me that there was a bat in her house. I told her that I was already in town and that I would be happy to stop and remove the bat for her.

I'm an animal lover. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a wacko, leftist, PETA type animal lover that doesn't eat meat or wear leather, but an animal lover nonetheless. I can't say the same thing about tenants, but that's another story. Anyway, many tenants are afraid of bats and will kill them unless I go get them. So, I always like to go rescue the bats from the less-than-lovable tenants.

When I arrived at the house, I found the bat hanging from the living room curtains. That's a frequent occurrance in this part of the country. Bats that are hanging upside down normally won't fly or cause any other problems and can be easily moved into a box. Once I located the bat, I went back to my truck to find a box. As it turned out, the only box I had was a beaten up box that contained contractor size trash bags. It had been underneath some of my tool bags and was in bad condition. I taped the corners of the box back together and took it into the house to retrieve the bat. I placed the open box against the curtain just below the bat and used a small piece of cardboard to scrape the bat off the curtain and into the box.

As usual, the bat seemed perfectly content to be in the box. He didn't move or attempt to fly. I closed the lid and put the box on the floor in the front seat of my truck, because it was quite cold outside and I didn't want to freeze the little bat before I released him.

Since the bat had already found a way into the tenant's house, I didn't want to release him close to her house. I decided to release the bat at the state park, which is located very close to my house. My business in town being completed, the bat and I headed for home. About half way home, the bat apparently started to wake up (it was getting close to dark) and he started scratching at the inside of the box. I felt sorry for the little bat being trapped in the box, but we only had another few minutes remaining before we would reach the state park.

Just before I reached the Park, the bat finally stopped scratching and I assumed that he was settling down. Then, suddenly, just as I turned into the Park, I thought I saw something fly by my head. After thinking about for a second, I convinced myself that it was just one of the floaters I've had in my eye since my recent retina tear. This isn't the first time that I thought I saw something that wasn't there due to these floaters. So, I just kept driving as I was only another minute or so from the spot where I intended to release the bat. I'm sure that you can guess where this is headed. The bat had somehow gotten out of the box and was loose in the truck with me. At this point the bat flew right by my ear and landed on the seat beside me.

Although I love animals, I certainly don't have any desire to be locked in a pickup truck cab with a bat. I immediately stopped the truck and got out. I walked around to the passenger door and as I opened the door, out flew the bat. I'm sure that he was very happy to be free and I was equally happy that he would out of my truck.

I'm Back!

2009-12-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

After a two month hiatus, I'm back to blogging. For all of you who have sent e-mails wishing me well, let me say a hearty Thank You! I appreciate your concern.

My break from blogging started one evening, about two months ago, as I was cleaning the swimming pool. As I glanced into the water, it suddenly looked like a thousand gnats were swimming in the water. Obviously, gnats don't live in water. I looked away from the water and discovered that the "gnats" were still there. Within a few more seconds, the swarm of gnats had expanded to fill the entire field of vision in my left eye, only now there weren't a thousand gnats - now there were THOUSANDS OF GNATS. I was puzzled as to what could cause such a malady, so I decided to make my way back to the house. Within a very short period of time, things got much worse and there was a sudden influx of thick black liquid swirling around in my left eye. To top it all off, there were sudden flashes of light that looked like little lightning bolts. At that point, I decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order. That is how my adventure began.

After sitting for several hours in the emergency room, it was decided that I probably had a torn retina. Being a Saturday night, there was no opthamologist on duty, but the ER physician called one that was on-call and he scheduled an appointment to meet me at his office the next afternoon. After a detailed exam, the opthamologist determined that I had a retina that was torn in two places and that I had experienced a hemmorage as the retina tore (that was the thick black liquid floating around in my eye).

I felt sorry for the opthamologist who was wasting his Sunday afternoon to work on my eye (although I appreciated his sacrifice). It reminded me of the occassional times that I have had to fix some tenant problem on a weekend. As it turned out, about 2 1/2 hours of his Sunday afternoon would be spent examining my eye and then performing emergency laser surgery to "tack up" my retina - enough to get me through until the next day at which time I would see a retinal specialist. As I understand it, the surgery basically consists of using a laser to burn the retina, causing it to form scar tissue and thereby welding it to the rods and cones at the back of the eye. This prevents the vitreous humor, which is the liquid in the eye, from leaking behind the retina and causing a retinal detachment, which is a very serious problem that can cause blindness.

The following day, I met with the retinal specialist and had more surgery. While the first surgery on Sunday was relatively painless, the surgery on Monday was excruciating! I think the issue was that Monday's surgery included re-burning the previous day's burns to my retina and let me tell you - IT HURT! Within a few minutes of the surgery being completed, the pain was nearly unbearable. I took everything I could think of to lessen the pain and put an ice pack on my eye for a couple of hours. Although painful - it was certainly better than being blind - so I really didn't have anything to complain about.

The retinal specialist recommended that I not do much reading for the next 60 days, therefore I stopped blogging and all but stopped reading anything on the internet. Gradually, the sight in my left eye improved as the thousands of "gnats" slowly faded. The bigger problem was the thick black liquid (from the hemmorrhage) which was very slow to re-absorb into my eye and in fact is still not completely gone even today. At any rate, the danger of further retinal tears is now largely over and I can get back to participating on the internet and blogging.

Obviously, my rental business didn't stop just because of my eye problem. I really wasn't under any restriction during this period (other than limiting my reading) and I have continued to work on my rental business about 12-16 hours per week as usual.

During my break, I have also taken up competition shooting, which has been a lot of fun. I am now participating in various defensive type shooting sports including IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) and USPSA (Unites States Practial Shooting Association), both of which are very good practice for anyone that carries a concealed handgun. My goal is to practice a lot over the winter and to be competitive in matches starting in the spring.

That's about it. I'll be back to blogging about the rental property business with my next post.

Back From Vacation and Younger Than Ever!

2009-09-14T18:21:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a very relaxing vacation on Topsail Island in North Carolina. For those of you that have never been to Topsail Island, it is a very quiet island with beautiful beaches. It is just about as far from being a tourist destination as a beach can be. There is no amusement park; no tourist type shows; and very few tourist shops. It was very relaxing, and except for a trip to visit the Battleship North Carolina, we didn't do any tourist activities.

However, little did I realize just how relaxing it was. Today as I returned to work on my rental business, I discovered that not only did I get a lot of relaxation on vacation, I actually got younger - A LOT YOUNGER! In fact, one rental applicant that I talked to today apparently thought I was born YESTERDAY! Talk about finding the fountain of youth! LOL!

Here's what happened. A woman called today wanting to see one of my two bedroom apartments. As always, I asked her who would be living there. She said it would be her mother; her mother's boyfriend; and she would occassionally stay there too, when she was in town. I was thinking "B.S."!!! Obviously, if the mother was actually going to live there, then she would have come to look at the apartment. So, I asked the woman why her mother wasn't here to look at it and she replied that her mother had C.O.P.D., which is a lung disease that makes breathing difficult. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that a woman with severe breathing problems would not be able to climb a LONG flight of stairs to a second story apartment. Even though my vacation had been relaxing, I clearly wasn't born YESTERDAY!

Just for fun, I played along with the charade. I told the woman that I would need her to take an application to her mother and have her mother fill it out. And by the way, I would need a copy of all their driver's licenses in order to do their screening. We walked out to my truck and I gave the woman an application. She left.

Within 5 minutes, she was back. She asked if SHE could fill out the application and now claimed that she would be paying the rent for her mother. The crap was getting pretty deep and I didn't have my hip waders! Even so, I managed to keep a straight face. I told the woman that she could indeed fill out the application, but that I would still need the info for her mother and her mother's boyfriend, including their driver's licenses. With that she left again.

I quit work today about 1 pm and headed home. As I pulled into the driveway, the woman called me. She said that she had the application complete and wanted to meet me to give me the application. I asked her if she had copies of the driver's licenses for her mother and her mother's driver's licenses. She said that her mother and the boyfriend wouldn't be living there now - they had changed their mind! At this point even hip waders couldn't stay above the b.s. and I ended the game. I told the woman that I would not rent to her, her mother, or her mother's boyfriend and then I said goodbye!

As Paul Harvey used to say - 'and now the rest of the story'. When the woman came to look at the apartment, she brought 2 men with her. She looked iffy. Her boyfriend had tattooes all over his body and I judged him to be a druggie. The other man looked even worse - like a FREAK! From experience, I immediately knew that these were the scumbags that wanted to rent the apartment, probably with the mother and the mother's boyfriend. The woman claimed to have all the money with her to rent the apartment on the spot. That was additional confirmation that I did NOT want to rent to them. My theory is that these scumbags were being setout after being evicted. I'd bet good money that their current apartment is in the mother's name and if I had screened her, she would have an eviction on her record. I would also bet that the boyfriend had an extensive criminal record. Therefore, the only one left with a relatively clean record was the woman who came to look at the apartment. NO THANKS! I don't need any scumbags renting my apartment!

Criminal Busted!

2009-08-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

My morning started bright and early. Shortly after I woke up this morning, I sat down to watch the news and check my e-mail. My security camera views are always up in the background on my laptop and as I picked up my computer I noticed a convicted felon walk onto the property at one of my apartment buildings. This criminal is nothing but trouble and is barred from the property. I called the police and reported that the felon was trespassing (criminal trespassing) on my property and asked that an officer meet me at the building. I met the officer and gave a report. The criminal was about 2 buildings down and the officer gave him a citation for the criminal trespass charge. The officer also requested that I get a copy of the security camera video to him and I did so.

After this incident, since I was already in town, I decided to lay another room of carpet at one of my 3 bedroom houses. I got that done and then moved onto mowing grass. I mowed grass at 3 buildings and then called it quits for the day.

Appliance Day and Armed Robbers

2009-08-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

I had a very busy day today. It started with a trip to drop off my final 2008 tax information to my accountant (it's on extension). Next was a trip to the bank and post office. I moved in a new tenant yesterday, so I had to take the money to the bank.

After these preliminary tasks, I got started on applicance day, which consisted of putting appliances in two rentals. I know this sounds like a minor task that should have only taken a few minutes - but that wasn't the case.

The story all started a couple of weeks ago with the annual Section 8 inspection of a two bedroom apartment. As usual, the apartment passed the Section 8 inspection with flying colors. The problem started when the apartment was picked for a "quality control inspection", which is when Section 8 re-inspects the apartment to basically inspect the inspector. I've been picked for a lot of these quality control inspections and have always passed them. However, this time things took a turn for the worse. The unit failed the second inspection for two reasons: 1. the inspector said the oven didn't work and 2) the kitchen had a non-working refrigerator (which ended up being true). As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with the oven, except that the tenant had unplugged it. However, the stove was very old and ugly. I decided to just replace it, with a used stove from the used-appliance store ($65). This tenant had 2 refrigerators and a freezer in her apartment and has had this arrangement for several years. It is not my business how many appliances she has and I never questioned it (and don't honestly care). As it turns out, the refrigerator in the kitchen stopped working at some time in the past, leaving the tenant with a refrigerator in the bedroom and a deep freezer in the living room. The Section 8 inspector apparently questioned the tenant about the 2 refrigerators and freezer and found that one was inop.

The tenant is not in good shape and isn't capable of much physical activity. I had to move a bunch of furniture to get the old stove and refrigerator out and then move the new in. Of course, after doing that, I had to move all the furniture back. All in all, a 5 minute job ended up taking over an hour.

Next on the agenda was to put a (used) stove and refrigerator in the 3 bedroom house I'm finishing. Unlike the previous job, this literally took 5 minutes.

There was an armed bank robbery a couple of days ago in the area. The police released a description of the suspect and the get-away car today and I think I know who did it, so I called and talked to the police captain about my suspicions. To make a long story short, there is a convicted felon in the neighborhood near the pink elephant. The felon is on parole for robbery and he is associated with another scumbag that drives a car that matches the description of the get-away car. I offered to look at the bank's security camera system and the captain said that he would pass the info to the detective in charge of the case.

Enough for one day. More tomorrow.

Another Deadbeat Evicted!

2009-08-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

Today was yet another day in court. The purpose of today's court appearance was to evict another deadbeat. The deadbeat in question is a 21 year old girl who only moved in one month ago. At the time of her move-in, she had no history of evictions and no criminal record. Now, she has both. Almost immediately after she moved in, she began hanging around with a convicted felon, who is out on parole and who lives down the street. In that short month, she's been arrested for disorderly conduct and has been involved in numerous thefts and fights. I did everything right on the screening and yet I still got this scumbag! UGH!

The eviction hearing was at 9am this morning and predictably, the scumbag didn't appear. It is almost impossible for scumbags to drag their butts out of bed to be in court by 9am! So, she was evicted and I immediately filed for the writ of possession. My guess is that I'll be throwing her stuff out by next Tuesday!

In addition to the eviction, I layed another room of carpet in one of my 3 bedroom houses and replaced a broken bathtub drain. All in all, not a bad day!

Getting Ready!

2009-08-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm back to work again, after taking a few days off last week. Today was all about getting my 3 bedroom house ready to rent. I'd like to have it ready to go for September 1st and I'm getting a lot of calls about it. The big project for today was to install carpet. I got the living room and spare room done today. In addition, I installed a fire extinguisher; 2 smoke detectors; and bought a bunch of miniblinds to be installed later.

Not Too Bright

2009-08-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

With dozens of rentals, there is always something to fix. Today's project was a clogged drain line that occurred because the low income tenants weren't smart enough to scrape off their plates before trying to wash them. The drain line was BADLY plugged and it took a significant amount of effort and a significant mess to fix it. I ended up cutting the drain line and installing a new cleanout in the line so that I could run a snake through the line.

After finishing the repair, I gave the tenants a lecture about scraping the food from their plates BEFORE washing their dishes. I also promised them that I wouldn't repair another tenant-caused clog without charging them!

While we're talking about tenants that aren't too bright, one of my tenants reported to me today that a fellow tenant stole cigarettes from her. The tenant that stole the cigarettes is already being evicted for non-payment and has had several police contacts in the 6 weeks she has lived in the apartment. All the tenants, including the victim KNEW that this person was a scumbag and a thief. Even so, my tenant allowed the tenant into her apartment to use the phone and therefore became the victim of the theft. Not too bright.

BTW, the thief (my tenant) had a clean criminal background check when I accepted her. She is young and was probably a criminal all along, but obviously previous juvenile records are sealed making it impossible to discover the truth about young applicants! UGH!

Homicide and Suicide

2009-08-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

I took the day off today, at least as far as the rental property business is concerned. However, I did still have a personal real estate project to do. To make a long story short, my wife's family is selling a house they inherited and somehow I got picked to do a few maintenance items at the house. To accomplish that job, I needed to pick up a few things from my storage room at the Pink Elephant. I got the things out I needed and started to cut a 2 X 6 right there on the sidewalk. I'm always aware of my surroundings when I work in low income areas (and everywhere else for that matter) and therefore I certainly took notice when a very rough looking man approached me. He had a cast on his left arm and his right forearm had MANY noticable cuts. I stopped working and asked him what I could do for him. His answer was unique to say the least. He said he wanted me to call someone to pick him up. That's not too uncommon in low income areas. Many times in the past, homeless people have asked me to call someone for them because they don't have a phone. I'm normally willing to make a quick call for them, provided I have the time. I thought that was what he wanted and I asked who he wanted me to call. His answer was that he was "thinking of committing homicide and suicide" and he wanted me to call the police. Well, that definitely got my attention! I didn't see a gun or knife and he hadn't threatened me directly, but I felt like I needed to have a few feet of separation from this guy and I definitely needed to keep him in front of me for tactical reasons. I directed him to sit down on the porch and told him that I would call the police. As soon as he sat down, I dialed the police and explained the situation to them. The said they would send an officer.

As we waited, I talked to the guy. As it turns out he was a mental health patient who is homeless and hasn't taken his medication for about 2 months. He apparently got into a fight with someone who accused him of stealing drugs and that person broke his arm. That occurred recently, although he told me different stories about when. He claimed that his wife cut his other arm, but from the shear number of cuts and the look of them, I'd bet that these were self-inflicted razor blade wounds.

About 10 minutes later, the police arrived. They talked to the man for a few minutes and it seemed like they were just going to leave. The man told them that he thought he might kill someone and burn down the guy's house that broke his arm. I wasn't too keen on him being released without getting some help. I pushed the idea of taking the guy to the hospital for a mental health evaluation and after radioing the station for permission, the police decided to do that. They searched the guy for drugs and weapons and put him in the cruiser to take him to the hospital.

Very strange encounter for a day off and just one more reason to always be armed!

My Own Brush with Euthanasia

2009-08-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

I spent a couple hours this morning finishing the taxes for one of my companies. I'll take the info to my accountant in the morning.

My projects in town today were to fix a toilet that kept running; fix a sink that had very low flow of hot water; and to replace a broken refrigerator. Just after I finished changing the refrigerator, the tenant came out complaining about hearing a kitten crying. I helped the tenant look around and just outside her house was a nearly newborn kitten that was laying beside a propane bottle. The kitten was FILTHY; obviously alone; and crying. There was no mother or other kittens to be found, but some MORON had placed a food and water bowl near the kitten, as if a newly born kitten could eat cat food! As I was cleaning the kitten up, I was alarmed to see that it's eyes and ears were covered with tiny maggots.

I didn't know how to properly take care of this issue, so I decided to take the kitten to the vet to see if anything could be done. I thought the vet might be able to remove the maggots and then I could hand nurse the kitten. The vet looked at the cat and determined that it couldn't be saved. In addition to the maggots, it had damage to it's skin and intestinal tract, and the vet recommeded euthanizing it. I offered to pay the vet, but he wouldn't take any money. He took care of it and I came home, feeling sorry for the little abandoned kitten.

That's one of the sad things I see in the city. Tenants are VERY IRRESPONSIBLE with their pets and there are many ferile cats. It's a shame!

Financial Reports - What They Really Tell Us

2009-08-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

I spent a little time today working on my 2008 taxes. OK, I admit that I've procrastinated a little in getting them done. Anyway, something really impressed me as I was working on one of my rental property businesses. This particular business has about 10 rentals in it and I was entering the data into Quickbooks Pro. As I entered all the income and expense data, it became rapidly apparent that my expenses for this business were very low. I had very low maintenance; hardly any vacancies; no lawsuits; no legal expenses; no evictions; etc. Although I haven't quite completed entering the data and I don't have the exact numbers yet, I'll certainly have expenses WELL below 50% of the gross rents.

The big question is what does that tell us? Am I a genius at the rental property business? Have I discovered some secret to success? Am I smarter than other landlords? Do I live in the best rental market on the planet? The answer is that this data tells me NOTHING! It's completely insignificant and irrelevant. I'm not a genius. I haven't discovered the secret to success. I'm not smarter than other successful landlords. I don't live in the best rental market on the planet.

A sample size of 10 rentals over one year is statistically insignificant. The data tells me absolutely nothing about my long term operating expenses. It doesn't even tell me about the operating expenses in my local area over the past year. Trying to conclude anything from this data would be foolish at best and financial suicide at worst (if I were to assume those expenses were correct for the purpose of evaluating future deals).

Once I finish the taxes on all my companies and print out the financial reports, I'll post the results on my blog. We'll see if there is any useful information that can be derived from my several dozen rentals.

One of the things that is significant is the paydown of principal over time. As I was entering the data this morning, I noticed that I'm paying down about $1,000 per month on principal on one of the loans. Picking up $12,000 per year in equity on just that one loan is significant! I'm looking forward to seeing what the principal paydown is on all my loans! I can't eat that equity, but it sure does feel good to watch it build up.

After doing the paperwork, I felt like getting out of the house, so I went down to the Pink Elephant to do some painting. I actually got quite a lot done in a short period of time.

Back to the Painting!

2009-08-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got back to painting the Pink Elephant today. It was a beautiful day, although blazing hot, and I spent about 3 1/2 hours doing some painting. In addition to the painting, I had to stop by the insurance agency to sign paperwork for a renewal of one of my rental policies. I also fixed a leaking sink trap.

That was about it - all in all a pretty routine day.

Guns and Ammo for the Weekend!

2009-08-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

This weekend was another 3 day weekend! I did work about 2 hours Friday morning in order to completely catch up with the last maintenance tasks on my list. Those projects included fixing a leaking toilet (replacing the flapper valve and tightening the hold-down bolts), spraying weeds, and taking mouse traps to a tenant (and giving her a lecture about cleanliness).

After my two hours of work, I took the rest of the day off. My wife and I spent some time having fun and doing some things around the house.

On Saturday, we went to the gun show at Vets Memorial in Columbus. I didn't buy any more guns, but I did get some ammo. As most people know, thanks to our President, ammo is in very short supply. I have a compact .32 cal auto handgun that I carry when I need a small gun - like riding my bike. Ammo for it is nearly impossible to find. I've searched all the gun shops and no-one has had any for months. I found some (that was manufactured in the former communist block) at the gun show and bought several hundred rounds. I also found some 7.62 X 39 mm ammo that was made in Russia and bought half a case. Finally, I found some JHP (Jacketed Hollow Point) self-defense ammo for my Beretta carry gun and bought some of that! A very successful journey.

With the way the country is rapidly deteriorating, I consider ammo to be as vital as an emergency food and water supply. Our economy is on the brink of disaster with debt that is crushing the country and ANY spark could easily throw us into chaos. It's happened many times throughout history and it's smart to be prepared. By the way, this isn't just crazy talk, the United States government has spent millions of dollars to tell YOU to be prepared. Here's a link to the government website: http://www.ready.gov/america/npm09/getakit.html Guns and ammo are not politically correct and are therefore not on the list.

After the gun show, we went to the shooting range for a little practice and fun. My wife got a chance to shoot my .40 Beretta, which was fun. She's a very good shot, but the kick almost lifted her off the ground, which was entertaining.

Of course, I took today off also and we had some family over to swim in the pool! It was a beautiful day - perfect for swimming. We followed that up with a cookout. All in all - a very good weekend.

Court, Section 8 Inspections and more!

2009-08-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

If you are wondering what happened to yesterday's blog, my wife and I went out with friends for an afternoon and evening of fun and I didn't get home until late - too late to post my blog. So, let's catch up now!

Yesterday started at about 9 am with the posting of an eviction notice for a tenant at the Pink Elephant. My next stop was in municipal court at 9:30. This was my "second cause of action" (lawsuit) against the tenant I evicted last month. She really pissed me off, so I sued her for everything I could possibly think of! All together, I am claiming about $2,000 in damages which includes lost rent, late fees, physical damage, etc. In reality, I have already won the lawsuit via a default judgment because the tenant didn't respond to my lawsuit in the designated time (idiot). However, a hearing before the magistrate is still required to justify the amount of the judgment. The tenant didn't show up at this hearing, which was all the better for me!

You may recall from my original post on this eviction, that I have a new lawyer. She is inexperienced in evictions, but did a very nice job at the original eviction hearing. Unfortunately, there was a little paperwork snafu at the hearing yesterday, when my lawyer hadn't filed the proper amendment to the complaint, which should have included the final amount of damages we are seeking. This amendment required a proper service on the tenant and obviously that hadn't happened. The result of this mistake was that the magistrate could only award me a little over $700 in damages yesterday. So, we elected to continue the case for another 30 days so that my lawyer could amend the paperwork. When we go back to court, I can be awarded the entire amount of the damages. No big deal!

Next on the agenda were two Section 8 inspections. The first one was at about 11:30 and I passed it with flying colors. The next one happened at about 1:30 and it also easily passed! It doesn't get better than that!

As soon as the second inspection was complete, I was ready to quit for the day and I headed home. My wife and I decided to have some fun and we met another couple for an afternoon and evening out on the town!

My projects today included repairing the ceiling in an apartment and replacing a defective ceiling light. That took about 3 hours and that was enough for today. I had a few things I wanted to do around my home today, so I spent most of the day doing personal (non-work) stuff. I'll be mowing grass tomorrow and am thinking about going shooting.

New Rail

2009-08-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

I started out the day with 17 rents to collect. With the exception of one iffy tenant and a couple of chronic late payers (bless them for the late fees every month), I got all the rents I was expecting today.

My project today was to rebuild the rail for the deck that I rebuilt yesterday. That turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated as the untreated wood that was used for the rail was in bad shape. So, I rebuilt the entire rail with treated lumber.

I also inspected one of the apartments that will be inspected by Section 8 tomorrow. It was generally in good shape. I had to plug in the exhaust fan in the bathroom, as a working exhaust fan (or a window) is required for the Section 8 inspection. However, this tenant doesn't like the noise that the exhaust fan makes, so she has me unplug it right after the inspector leaves every year.

To my dismay, I also had to put a battery in the smoke detector. You'll notice that I didn't say "replace" the battery, I said put a battery in the smoke detector BECAUSE THE TENANT TOOK THE BATTERY OUT OF IT!!! I am continually shocked at the number of tenants that remove their smoke detector batteries to use them in some other gizmo, like toys and various electrical appliances. I wasn't able to coordinate with the tenant of the other house that will be inspected tomorrow, but she said the only thing she could think of that needed to be done for her inspection was to find her smoke detector!!! She apparently hasn't only taken the battery out of her detector - SHE'S LOST IT!!!

It's a good thing that fires are relatively rare, because otherwise every tenant on the planet would burn to death! I just can't believe that people are so dumb as to remove the smoke detector batteries or remove the entire detector!

Before the inspections tomorrow, I will be in court for the conclusion of my lawsuit against the tenant I evicted last month. We have a default judgment against the tenant who didn't respond and tomorrow's hearing will be to get the amount of the judgment finalized. This idiot tenant is the manager at the local Dollar General and it should be easy to garnish her wages!

Getting Ready for Inspection

2009-08-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

I spent today getting ready for a pair of Section 8 inspections on Wednesday. My primary focus was to rehab a second floor deck for one of my apartments. Some previous landlord had overlayed the original deck floor with particle board - UGH! Obviously, particle board is NOT intended to be an exterior material and certainly isn't meant to be an exterior floor decking. Over the years, moisture has caused the particle board to get VERY soft and it was becoming unsafe. So, I removed it and the original decking underneath and replaced it with pressure treated 5/4 inch deck boards. It was a big job, but I got it done. Tomorrow, I will replace the top rail which is also rotted.

Mixed in with working on the deck was day three of rent collection. With August 1st and 2nd being on Saturday and Sunday, I collected a BUNCH of rents today. I would normally have made a mid-day trip to the bank if I collected that much money, but I was just too busy working today. So, by the time the end of the day came, I had a BIG pocket full of cash. I'll take that to the bank in the morning before I do anything else.

The other thing I did today was inspect a 3 bedroom house that I just got back. I received a call from the long term tenant (6 years with me, 9 years in this house) last night, informing me that they had moved. No notice! The good news is that they took almost all their stuff and they cleaned up the house. It will need new carpet, but not much else. This is the first house I've had available in 3 or 4 months, so it should rent quickly. With this kind of demand, I'll be raising the rent also!

Splitting Headache!

2009-07-30T19:25:00.001-07:00

You've probably never heard of a Cluster Headache. I've had them on and off since I was a kid and they are brutal. According to the doctors, they are the worst headache (pain wise) that you can have. They're called Cluster Headaches because they occur in clusters, often every day for months. Cluster headaches come on VERY fast. From the first feel of tightening in the head or neck to excruciating pain can take as little as 5 or 10 minutes. I never go anywhere without having medication close by (in my truck, backtop bag, snowboarding bag, bike bag, etc). At the first sign of a cluster headache, I take 4 Ibuprofen and 3 extra strength Excederin. Then, if the pain doesn't ease up within 30 minutes, I take a Flexeril . Flexeril is a nasty drug. It's supposed to be a muscle relaxor and they do a good job of stopping Cluster Headaches, but they make me drowsy and mean. The medicine in combination with the cluster headaches makes me very sensitive to light and especially sound. It's very hard to listen to anyone talk when you have one of these headaches.

I had a VERY bad headache yesterday that didn't want to go away, and I took almost the entire day off (except for a quick trip to sign some papers for "free" government weatherization of one of my apartment buildings). Today, I had one of the worst headaches I've had in years and the first round of drugs Ibuprofen, Excederin, and Flexeril didn't stop it. I had to wait til noon to take the second round. Finally, by 2pm, my headache started to improve and I was able to go into town to do a little work.

What does this story of my headache have to do with the rental property business? EVERYTHING! One of the best things about owning a rental property business is that I can set my own schedule. When I felt bad yesterday, I didn't have to go to work. When I felt bad again today, I didn't have to go to work. I could take off without calling a boss or asking for permission. As they say in those credit card commercials: The freedom to set your own schedule - PRICELESS!

When I did recover this afternoon, I went into town to work on a 1 bedroom apartment that I rented for August 1st. The previous tenant broke the commode and I needed to repair the floor and replace the toilet with a new one. In addition, I had to replace the smoke detector, which the tenant stole and replace the bathroom mirror. I did the smoke detector and mirror first, since they were minor jobs. Then, I removed the old commode and cut out the water damaged section of floor. I used the cardboard from the box for the new commode to make a pattern for the new subfloor, which I will make out of 3/4 inch treated plywood. Due to the late start, that is all I did for today!

Eight, Count'Em, Eight More Lawsuits

2009-07-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

They say that when it rains, it pours. If that's true, then today must have been a real storm. I started my work today with a trip to the bank and post office. When I picked up the mail, I had EIGHT letters via certified mail. As a rule, certified mail is generally not a good thing. That was especially true today as they were all lawsuits! UGH!

I posted the story of the first lawsuit about two weeks ago (7/16/09). As you may recall, the city has decided to attempt to collect past due water bills from the landlord, even though the tenant subscribed to the water service. They don't even try to collect from the tenant - they just go after the "RICH" landlord!!! Needless to say, that is COMPLETELY IMMORAL. Although we're headed straight into socialism and the government wants to 'share the wealth' through taxation, it is RIDICULOUS to think that I should pay the tenant's bill for them. What's next? Should I buy their clothes? Should I buy them a car? GIVE ME A BREAK!

If you've read much of my story, then you know that I'm a real jackass when I think I've been wronged. I will NOT give in and pay these bastards! Instead, I will do whatever it takes to fight these frivilous lawsuits. Along with a few other local investors and our REIA, I am trying to organize a lawsuit against the city. We have a big-time, out-of-town attorney coming to the next REIA meeting and we will be organizing as many landlords as possible to be party to the lawsuit. I will be writing a scathing Letter to the Editor and will meet with the news department of the newspaper to have a news article done on this story. As far as I'm concerned, it's going to be war against the morons running the city! They're up for election in November and our REIA already has two members running for city council!

Beyond that bit of cheery news to start my day, I did actually get some work done. I trashed out a vacant 2 bedroom apartment; collected 2 rents; and started working on rehabbing a deck in preparation for a Section 8 inspection next week. I also repaired a broken screen door lock.

New Tenant

2009-07-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

After not working much last week, I did get a little work done today. To start, I had a tenant that reported that her kitchen light had gone out. I always suspect that the bulb(s) are burned out when a tenant reports that a light is out, but in this case the tenant swore that the switch didn't feel the same as it felt yesterday (she thought it felt much weaker than yesterday). I have seen switches break on occassion and that is often how they feel. This particular light fixture had four flourescent tubes and the tenant reported that they all were on yesterday. It seemed highly unlikely that all four bulbs burned out at once. So, I removed the switch cover and tested the switch with a meter. The switch was fine. I should have gone with my next inclination. So, I changed the bulbs and the light worked fine. I suspect that three of the bulbs had burned out over time and the last bulb finally burned out yesterday. Obviously, the tenant hadn't realized that only one bulb was working until yesterday and the tenant just imagined that the feel of the switch had changed. No big deal!

My next project was to mow the grass at 2 apartment buildings and then spray weeds. Both of these buildings have small yards and that only took about an hour.

Finally, I was scheduled to meet a woman who was interested in one of my apartments. She is significantly disabled and this is a downstairs apartment. Moreover, her son lived right across the street and he would be able to come over and help her with her daily activities. She liked the apartment and put down a non-refundable deposit so that I would hold the apartment for her. One more apartment rented!

Water Torture!

2009-07-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

We've all heard that some of the 911 masterminds were subjected to waterboarding in an effort to get critical information from them. By all accounts this water torture was quite successful, yielding critical intelligence. I too have experienced water torture and the bad thing is that I'm not even a terrorist!

Here's what happened. I had some tenants move into a 2-bedroom apartment on Saturday. The downstairs apartment just below this apartment has had an intermittent leak in the ceiling below the bathroom in that upstairs apartment. The downstairs tenant reported that the leak only occurred when the previous upstairs tenant took a shower. So, before the new tenant moved in, I wanted to ensure that the water leak was fixed. To that end, on Friday, I took at look at the bathroom in the upstairs apartment in search of possible sources of leaks.

This bathroom has an old claw foot tub that has a shower enclosure around it. Two curtains enclose the tub. On my inspection, I noticed that the shower curtains didn't quite close on the end of the tub opposite the shower head. If the tenant was taking a shower without the curtains completely closed, that could certainly explain the leak. So, to fix the problem, I added a third curtain to that end of the shower so that it was securely covered. I then ran the shower for a solid 20 minutes and checked the downstairs apartment for leaks. The result was that there was no leak and I believed that I had solved the problem. By running the shower for 20 minutes, I had not only eliminated the possibility that water was getting through the curtain, but I had also eliminated a leak in the drain line. Furthermore, a leak in the water lines was also eliminated because the water lines had been continuously pressurized, even while the apartment was vacant.

On Saturday, the tenant began moving in. Shortly after the tenant began moving, I received a call from the downstairs tenant that her ceiling was leaking. This was particularly puzzling because the tenants weren't even in the apartment yet and certainly hadn't taken a shower. I decided to go take a look at the situation even though it was a weekend, even though the leak was only slowly dripping and the repair could certainly have waited until Monday.

Sure enough, the ceiling in the ground floor apartment was leaking with a slow drip. I checked the bathroom in the upstairs apartment again and didn't find any evidence of a leak. Somewhat frustrated, I decided to cut open the ceiling in the downstairs apartment to see where the leak was coming from. To my absolute amazement, there was a pin-hole leak in one of the hot side waterlines. That certainly was illogical, but that was definitely causing the leak. Why it leaked only intermittently I can not explain. The water line was continuously pressurized and one would think that it would leak continuously!

At any rate, since it was Saturday, I decided to do a temporary repair by installing a stainless steel band clamp designed to repair just such a leak. The water line was very close to the bottom of the floor of the upstairs apartment. To get the clamp to seal correctly, I needed to rotate it slightly by tapping it with a hammer. I didn't tap it very hard, but at that point the water torture began anyway. As I tapped it with a hammer, there was a sudden gush of water. No, the clamp hadn't failed, the torrent of water was coming from several inches above and to the right of the clamp. I ran outside and shut off the water to the entire building. I then went back to the upstairs apartment and the tenant reported that he heard a sound coming from the wall. I touched the wall and it was HOT! The old galvanized water line had broken inside the kitchen wall.

As I began exploring the extent of the issue, it became apparent that all the old galvanized water lines in the apartment were in bad shape. I found several spots that were badly corroded. Worse yet, the pipes all ran under the floor and in the walls. This would be a major project!!! UGH!

So, I started ripping open the walls and floor. Water lines ran behind the built-in kitchen cabinets and I had to demolish them also. It was a huge project!

To make a long story short, I ended up replacing all the water lines, from the basement to and through the second floor apartment. By the time I quit on Saturday afternoon, I had all the water lines (PEX) installed and the water back on to the building.

On Monday, I installed new kitchen cabinets; a new countertop; and new sink. I also did a lot of patching of the walls (where I had ripped out the old water lines). What started out as a minor slow drip rapidly turned into full blown water torture! The good news is that I survived the incident and the new tenants are thrilled to have a brand new kitchen!

Today, I only worked about 2 1/2 hours. I mowed grass at two apartment buildings; sprayed weeds at 3 buildings; and removed several small trees that were a nuisance.

Lawsuit and Paint

2009-07-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

I know it's hard to imagine that a landlord would be sued. Well...yes, I am being sued again. This time, I'm being sued by the city for a tenant's water bill. Yes, I said a TENANT'S WATER BILL! It seems that in this socialist world we live in, tenants are not responsible for their own debts. If the deadbeats don't pay their water bill, the city thinks that the landlord should pay it for them. This is happening all over Ohio and is an outrage. All I can say to that is HELL NO! I am not paying someone else's bills! To that end, I spent about an hour this morning putting together information for the attorney that my lawyer (our REIA's water bill lawyer) will need for my case and sending it off to him.

My other project for the day was to do some painting at the Pink Elephant. So, I got out the scaffolding and did some painting. I'm making progress!

Tomorrow, I have another move-in and am planning to do some work (although I don't know what). I'll think of something.

All Plugged Up!

2009-07-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

I planned on just doing a little work today. To that end, I didn't leave the house until about noon. My plan was to coat a small section of roof that was leaking; repair one window; and put a few weeds out of their misery. One of my tenants had different ideas. She called as I was on the way to town and reported that her commode and bathtub was plugged up. I asked her about the bathroom sink drain and the kitchen sink drain and she said that they were fine.

Upon arrival at the house, I did a little troubleshooting. The commode was indeed plugged as was the bathtub. The kitchen sink appeared to be open as did the bathroom sink. My initial diagnosis was that the sewer line was plugged somewhere just below the commode (and obviously below where the tub line "Y's" into the main sewer line. I tried plunging the toilet to no avail. I tried a toilet snake - again to no avail. At that point, I tried running the bathroom sink again and discovered that water was coming up into the tub as the sink was running. That signaled a more serious blockage and I called the plumber. The plumber arrived about 30 minutes later and had to cut out a BUNCH of tree roots from the main sewer line.

My next project was to coat the leaking roof, which only took about 20 minutes. I then fixed the window, which again only took a few minutes.

Finally, I had to work on one of my security camera systems. Everything was working except the "remote view" feature, which allows me to view the security cameras from home. I thought I had it fixed, but it's still not working. I'll have to call tech support tomorrow and get a little help.

All Plugged Up!

2009-07-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

I planned on just doing a little work today. To that end, I didn't leave the house until about noon. My plan was to coat a small section of roof that was leaking; repair one window; and put a few weeds out of their misery. One of my tenants had different ideas. She called as I was on the way to town and reported that her commode and bathtub was plugged up. I asked her about the bathroom sink drain and the kitchen sink drain and she said that they were fine.

Upon arrival at the house, I did a little troubleshooting. The commode was indeed plugged as was the bathtub. The kitchen sink appeared to be open as did the bathroom sink. My initial diagnosis was that the sewer line was plugged somewhere just below the commode (and obviously below where the tub line "Y's" into the main sewer line. I tried plunging the toilet to no avail. I tried a toilet snake - again to no avail. At that point, I tried running the bathroom sink again and discovered that water was coming up into the tub as the sink was running. That signaled a more serious blockage and I called the plumber. The plumber arrived about 30 minutes later and had to cut out a BUNCH of tree roots from the main sewer line.

My next project was to coat the leaking roof, which only took about 20 minutes. I then fixed the window, which again only took a few minutes. Finally, I had to work on one of my security camera systems. Everything was working except the "remote view" feature, which allows me to view the security cameras from home. I thought I had it fixed, but it's still not working. I'll have to call tech support tomorrow and get a little help.

Very Good Day!

2009-07-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

I had a very good day today - at least from the standpoint of getting a lot done. My objective for today was to finish making the 2 bedroom house, that was involved in my recent nasty eviction, ready for the new tenants. That involved doing several things: laying carpet; replacing a window pane; installing light bulbs and globes; some cleaning; mowing the overgrown yard; fixing the plugged toilet; etc. Things went VERY SMOOTHLY and I got it all done and the new tenants moved in.

I also received a letter today from the Nuisance Board regarding one of my properties. It seems the tenant put a couch out by the street and hasn't mowed her grass. I called the tenant and explained that she MUST take care of this stuff pronto. This is a long time tenant and I'm confident that she'll take care of it.

To end the afternoon, I got a call from one of my tenants who reported that her grand-daughter, who is a convicted felon, was harrassing her. I met her at the apartment building; called the police; and had her grand-daughter officially barred from the property.

To top off the day, I even got my lawn mowed at home and took a nice walk with my wife!

Tenant Likes to Fight!

2009-07-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got back my final two units today - the ones that were potential evictions. It's been a roller coaster ride as I started the month thinking I would have 3 evictions this month. Two said that they were voluntarily leaving and actually started moving. I wrote about the 3rd one in Wednesday's blog. The first of the 3 moved out immediately and left the apartment clean, although there were still a couple of pieces of furniture in the apartment. The second started moving out immediately, but were slow in getting everything out. I could have filed the eviction in court yesterday, but gave them until this morning to be completely out. When I arrived at the building this morning, they had indeed completely moved out and the apartment was relatively clean.

I had a water heater to fix this morning and as I was working on that, I got a call from the grandmother of the 3rd tenant's pregnant shack-up girlfriend. She said that they were completely out and wanted me to come pick-up the keys. I suggested that she leave the keys on the counter and lock the door. She wasn't having any part of that and wanted me to come inspect the apartment and pick up the keys. I told her that I was busy but that I would come over in a little while, when I was done with the job I was working on.

When I arrived, the deadbeat tenant and his deadbeat girlfriend were sitting on the front step. The grandmother was nowhere to be found. The tenant said his uncle had gone to the hardware store and had the keys to the apartment. He would be back shortly. The "uncle", who wasn't his uncle at all, had repaired about 20 holes that the tenant put in the walls during fits of rage. The grandmother of the girlfriend and the "uncle" had cleaned the apartment and done a pretty good job. The uncle also left a new bathroom mirror for me to install - the tenant destroyed the mirror.

The reason that they did all this - repaired all the holes; cleaned the apartment; and removed their junk - is that they expected to get their deposit back. WRONG! I've lost rent for this month; I'll still have to paint the patched walls; and they broke the commode (actually broke it during one of their violent rages). So, they won't get a penny. When I told the tenant that, he wanted to fight. Obviously, I can't be in a fist fight while I'm carrying a handgun, so I simply didn't participate in his childish nonsense. Fortunately, within a few minutes, the "uncle" returned; gave me the keys; and hauled the deadbeats away. Before he left, I briefly talked with the uncle and discovered that the deadbeats had been living with the grandmother and had destroyed her house. He wasn't very happy with them! I don't recall the grandmother mentioning that when she brought the little angels to rent my apartment!

The good news is that I got all my property back without an eviction this month and without any significant damage.

In addition to this nonsense, I replaced four glass panes in an apartment and did a little work on my security camera systems.

Really Pissed!

2009-07-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

The setout for my latest (June) eviction went bad almost immediately this morning. The setout was scheduled at 10 am and when I arrived at 10 am, I immediately suspected that things were not going to be good. There was a lot of trash and debris on the front porch; sidewalk; and front lawn. F_ _ _ YOU was spray painted on the porch facade. The door was open as was one of the front windows. As I pushed the door open, I could see that there was trash all over the place. The carpet that was exactly one year old was ruined. The tenant had shut the refrigerator off and left ice cream in the door, so there was a big pool of melted ice cream on the floor and ice cream drip out from the slightly open door. One window was broken out. Seven mini-blinds had been destroyed. The commode was plugged (probably intentionally). It was a mess. As if this weren't bad enough, the real shock occurred when I opened one of the bedroom doors. There was a very thin cat in the room with absolutely no food and no water with her newly born 8 kittens!!!

That was it - I was now officially REALLY PISSED! I called the police and met an officer at the house to report the animal cruelty. The tenant had a BEAUTIFUL Dodge Charger with custom wheels that was still parked in MY PARKING LOT. I asked the court officer what I could do to get rid of the car. He went to talk to the judge and in a little while returned and informed me that it could be towed to a private impound lot. I immediately called a tow truck and they towed her car away. In Ohio, if the car isn't claimed in 14 days, the impound company can get the title to the car!!!

The really STUPID thing about this tenant is that she is the MANAGER at Dollar General. She has a good job and I filed for a "second cause of action" (i.e. money damages) with the original eviction suit. I will sue her for the damage and I will collect by garnishing her wages. She'll lose 25% of her take-home pay until I get paid off.

This was all unnecessary. She could have paid the rent and avoided this entire situation. She could have voluntarily moved out and cleaned up the house. She could have at least not spray painted grafitti on the stone facade to the porch. She could have done the right thing. Instead, she made me evict her and then set her out; she abandoned a cat with her new kittens without so much as a saucer of water; she left her beautiful car in the parking lot. All of that was enough to piss me off and caused me to press charges for cruelty to animals; have her car towed to the impound lot; and sue her for damages! Yep, SHE'S A MORON!

New Streak Still Alive

2009-07-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

It was a great run while it lasted. I had 9 months without a single eviction. It was quite a streak! That all ended in June when I evicted a tenant, who told the magistrate that the eviction was just a misunderstanding. The setout for this tenant is tomorrow at 10 am!

I was hoping to start a new eviction free streak beginning with July, but that dream appeared to be shot down before it even started when it looked like I might have THREE evictions this month. I got lucky and two of the tenants decided to move out voluntarily instead of being evicted. That left me with one set of idiot tenants that looked like a certain eviction. One of my first projects this morning was to take the paperwork for this eviction to my new lawyer. I decided to drive by the apartment involved in this eviction on the way to the lawyer's office and to my total surprise, the tenants were loading their stuff into a pickup truck. I stopped and told the tenant that I was on my way to the attorney's office to file the eviction. They said that they would be out today and have everything cleaned up by tomorrow. As a result, I decided to wait one more day before taking the paperwork to the lawyer. I don't want to spend money on the lawyer and the court filing fee if I don't have to.

It was a beautiful, sunny day here in Ohio and I was looking forward to finally getting back to painting the Pink Elephant. I got out my scaffolding and got to work. Everything went well and I was happy with the work I got done.

I quit about 3pm because I wanted to take the paperwork to Community Action, which is the agency in charge of the weatherization program.

After dinner, I went for a nice bike ride and then my wife and I went for a walk. All in all, a very good day!

Insteresting Day!

2009-07-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

My day started with paperwork - specifically paying bills and paying my property taxes (YUK). Talk about something that gives you that sick feeling, that's exactly how I feel every six months when I write checks (in the 5 digits) for property taxes.

As I was finishing up my taxes, I got a call from The Sprint Store telling me that my Palm Pre had just arrived and I could come pick it up. So, as soon as I finished the taxes, I went to the Sprint Store and picked up my new phone.

I had a Moto Razor before, so moving up to the Palm Pre was quite a move up. The Pre is a very sophistocated machine - more like a small laptop than a phone. I'm still learning to use the phone/handheld computer, but I really like it so far. It uses an operating system that lets you view websites exactly like you would on a computer! Very cool.

After getting the Pre home and putting it on charge, I did the paperwork to take to the lawyer for the eviction I have going. As you may recall from my previous posts, I have a brand new lawyer doing my evictions. With the paperwork complete, I made a trip to the bank; the post office; and my lawyer's office to drop off the eviction paperwork. I intended to just hand the paperwork to my lawyer's secretary, but when I did the secretary said the lawyer wanted to talk to me. To my surprise, she informed me that she was moving to another city and wouldn't be able to do my eviction. RATS!

I need the evictions filed on Thursday, so I needed to find another lawyer fast! I went into town and stopped at another lawyer's office that I know. He's done some work for me in the past, so I knew he would be good. Fortunately, he was in the office and agreed to do my evictions.

Next stop was the police station. I needed to get the police reports for the last 2 months for the Pink Elephant. The reason that I needed the reports is that I've had 3 criminals barred from my property by the police and I needed copies of those reports. With copies of those reports, it's much easier to have a barred person arrested for criminal trespass.

I received a call from one of my friends who is involved in the government. She wanted to tell me that one of the local agencies had taken a BUNCH of stimulus money that they had used to hire summer workers (mostly students). They didn't have enough work to keep these workers busy and wanted to know if I had any work they could do - like painting low income houses or yard work at low income houses. My answer - YES!!! So, I made a list of rentals that I would like to have work done. We'll see what happens!

That was about it for today. I'm going to try again tomorrow to work on painting the Pink Elephant.

Eviction Paybacks

2009-07-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's been quite an unusual year in my rental business - at least as far as my evictions go. I went an entire 9 months without a single eviction, which was absolutely astounding. It got to be kind of a game for me - seeing how long this would go before I finally had an eviction. I was secretly hoping for an entire year, but I knew that was highly unlikely.

As each month went by without an eviction, I felt like a guy riding one of those mechanical bulls. The longer the ride lasted, the more it was going to hurt when it ended. That wild ride finally ended in June with one eviction. This month started with three imminent evictions, but it looks like two of those tenants will move out before the 3 day eviction notice expires. If so, I'll only have one eviction again this month.

My rental property work today included fixing a leaking shower stall; showing an apartment to a potential tenant; getting the lease signed for a new tenant; and paying some bills.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to take the eviction paperwork to the lawyer; replace a couple of cracked windows; and start painting at the pink elephant.

Tea Anyone?

2009-07-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

Today was the final day of rent collection. However, because it was also a holiday, I had already collected most of the rents and therefore only had a few to pick up this morning.

My real agenda for today was to attend a local tea party, protesting the socialist agenda; reckless spending; and impending radical increases in taxes that are occurring in the US. I was a little disappointed in the turnout at today's tea party, but the weather here in Ohio was rainy and it was a holiday. I'm sure that many people had family plans and therefore couldn't attend. However, at a time when the government is intent on taxing the vast majority of the middle class out of existence and taking away our way of life, I would hope that people could be a little more focused.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the American Public is incapable of acting proactively. Just as has happened throughout history in other countries, the vast majority of the public will allow all their freedoms to be taken away and will not utter so much as a whisper in opposition. It's disappointing.

The Rents are Rolling In!

2009-07-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

With the fourth being a holiday and being on a Saturday, I've received an unusually large number of rents on the first three days of the month. I collected so much cash today that I was a little leery of carrying it all around.

Rental demand also remains very high. I had an eviction this month in one of my SFHs (single family houses) and the tenant will be setout next Thursday. That is the only SFH that I've had available in four months and I already have it rented, with the new tenant to move in as soon as the old tenant is gone. I also rented my last two one-bedroom apartments today.

My project for the day was to finish installing the carpet and doing a little plumbing work in one of the one-bedroom apartment that I rented today.

I also had took care of a little management issue, when I had a guy that I recently had barred from my apartment buildings, charged with criminal trespass.

That was it for today. I'm going to a tea party tomorrow to protest our out-of-control government.

Misunderstanding Causes Eviction

2009-07-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

..or NOT!!! That was my tenant's best defense this morning in my 1st eviction in 9 months. She claimed that it was all a misunderstanding. The magistrate asked the tenant if she contacted me to clear up the misunderstanding. The answer was no. The magistrate asked the tenant if she paid June's rent - again the answer was no. The bottom line was that the eviction was short and sweet and the tenant was EVICTED!

What was the misunderstanding? There wasn't one, but I guess that was the only thing the tenant could think of.

This eviction was a little unique for me because I had a new lawyer, after my previous lawyer was indicted on a felony prescription drug charge a few months ago. It was also a little more interesting because I haven't had an eviction in 9 months (I felt a little rusty). My new lawyer is young and has virtually no experience actually doing an eviction, but she did fine today and this was actually a very good first eviction for her.

I have collected several rents so far today and will be collecting more later this afternoon. I didn't have any maintenance to do today, so that is about it for today.

Advanced Pistol Training

2009-06-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I spent the day at an advanced pistol training course near Dayton. With all that has been going on lately (with the felon that has threatened me), I thought an advanced pistol training course would be a good idea. I was not disappointed. The course included a lot of close quarters gunfighting techniques; shooting from behind baracades; and shooting while moving. It was a very good advanced course taught by a couple of very experienced self-defense instructors. One of the instructors just got back from IRAQ where he was working as a security contractor.

While at the training yesterday, I got a call from one of my tenants who reported that someone had damaged the door frame when they tried to break-in to the house. I also got a call from the police who wanted to discuss the incident. This is a SFH house that is located in a blue-collar neighborhood. There typically isn't a lot of crime in this area, but there have been several home invasions recently throughout the city. The really troubling thing about the incident was that it occurred between 11am and 1pm on Sunday, right in the middle of the day. These home invasions have been quite serious, with the perpetrators brandishing guns and in some cases injuring the inhabitants of the homes. Fortunately, in this case, no one was home and no one was injured.

As a result of the attempted break-in, I spent a few minutes today repairing the door jam. Fortunately, the door itself wasn't badly damaged, so the repair wasn't a big deal. I also had a discussion with the tenant about safety and security issues, so hopefully they can prevent a repeat of this incident.

In addition to repairing the door, I also bought and installed a new blade for the push-mower that I use to mow the lawns at the apartment buildings. I'm planning to do some mowing tomorrow.

An Absolute Miracle!

2009-06-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

Many of you have been wondering why I haven't posted to my blog in the last week. I've been extremely busy this week with my family and have really debated whether I wanted to discuss what happened with my family this week on my blog.

When I last posted, I was about to leave on a 3 day camping weekend. We went to Deer Creek State Park this weekend and had a great time camping with friends from Church. We had a wonderful weekend and a great start to the week.

That suddenly changed Tuesday evening. My wife and I were sitting at home. I was watching some stupid movie and my wife was checking her e-mail. I made a comment about how stupid the movie was and my wife didn't respond. I glanced over at her and noticed that the laptop had slipped off her lap and was laying at an odd angle. She also had an odd look on her face. I asked her if everything was alright, and she responded in a slurred speech that she was 'having trouble thinking'. She stood up and it was immediately obvious that she was having trouble standing and balancing. As a former paramedic, the altered level of consicousness and difficulty speaking immediately made me think that she was having a stroke. She was trying to walk to the bathroom and I assisted her in doing so. As soon as we arrived at the bathroom, she began vomiting. I grabbed a trash bag and immediately put my wife in the car.

Within a few short minutes, we were at the hospital. My wife was still vomiting and could no longer walk. I found a wheelchair and rushed her to the emergency room. I told the triage nurse that I believed my wife was having a stroke and she immediately signed her in and cleared an ER bed for her. By this time, my wife could no longer talk and appeared to be quite confused. The staff immediately began to work on her, starting an IV; putting her on a heart monitor; starting oxygen; drawing blood; and checking her sugar level (which was normal). A couple of minutes later, an ER doctor came into the room and evaluated her. It had only been 25 minutes from my wife's first symptom occurring, but at this point she had lost the ability to speak and couldn't move her arms or legs. I was trying to think of what could cause paralysis in all four limbs (other than an injury) and the only thing I could think of was a stroke near the brain stem. The ER doctor immediately ordered a stroke protocol and they took her for a Cat Scan. The result of the Cat Scan was negative for bleeding in the brain, but the neurologist thought he saw something in the lower part of the back of the brain. He consulted with another neurologist at Riverside Hospital and decided that the only reasonable explanation was a blood clot in the lower part of her brain. He started TPA (a clot busting drug) and ordered a medical helicopter to transfer my wife to Riverside. Needless to say, this entire episode was very scary!

The helicopter flew my wife to Riverside and I began driving. By the time I arrived at the Riverside emergency room, my wife could talk and her level of consciousness had improved, although she still couldn't move her arms or legs. Over the next several hours, she slowly regained movement in all her extremities and over the next 18 hours, she basically returned to normal. The hospital performed 3 more cat scans; an MRI and numerous other tests. All the tests pointed to a stroke that had been repaired by the prompt application of TPA. She was in intensive care until Thursday, when she was released.

As the title of my post indicates, I believe that a miracle was certainly present in this incident. The sequence of events that led to a successful outcome was astounding. First, I was with my wife at the time of her stroke and immediately recognized what was happening. Next, the right people were on duty at our local hospital to rapidly evaluate my wife. The doctor that was on duty aggressively treated my wife with TPA even though her relative young age (40's) and complete paralysis were not a typical presentation for a stroke victim. If the neurologist had hesitated on the treatment to be 100% sure on the diagnosis, the outcome would likely have been quite different. TPA can only be administered within 3 hours of the initial onset of symtpoms. Moreover, the TPA (clot busting drug) worked perfectly and my wife regained complete movement. It was apparent from my interaction witht the hospital staff at Riverside that this is the exception as opposed to the rule. In fact, the ICU nurse said that she had only ever seen one other patient released directly from the ICU.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this incident, that lesson is to know the symptoms of a stroke and immediately get the victim to the hospital. My wife is living proof that rapid treatment can make all the difference! I am very thankful that my wife is back home and healthy!!!

Feeling Guilty

2009-06-19T05:50:00.001-07:00

After feeling guilty all week (or not) about not working, I did work about 2 hours yesterday. My project for the day was to repair a soft spot in a floor where the previous owner of the building had covered an old stairwell with some particle board that was too thin. Fortunately, there was access to the underneath side of the floor from the basement, so the repair was quite easy. While in town, I also showed an apartment to a couple who were....well.... LIARS! As it turned out, he was a violent criminal and she was a deadbeat who doesn't pay her bills. Application DENIED!

While I was home yesterday, I glanced at the computer, which had my security cameras up at the Pink Elephant and noticed that there were many people on the sidewalk all looking across the street. I knew that something was going on, so I called one of the tenants and asked what was happening. There was a fight occurring across the street and one person pulled a knife. Five or six people were involved in the fight (all young punks) and another person broke it up before anyone was stabbed. There was some blood from the fight, but no one was seriously injured. Fortunately, none of this occurred on my property (probably due to the criminals knowing about my security cameras). I'm seeing a major increase in violence this summer and am not sure what the cause is. It could be the lack of summer jobs for kids or it could just be a general deterioration of our society. Low income people are breeding at an alarming rate and it's inevitable that society will fall apart as all these lazy kids grow up feeling entitled. Most of these kids are growing up to be worse than their parents. They are lazy. They are criminals. They are on drugs. They have absolutely no intention of ever getting a job. It's a mess!

Since there is nothing I can do to correct the world's problems, I'm taking a 3 day weekend to go camping!!! Have a good weekend.

Another Day Off

2009-06-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

I took another day off today. I didn't really have anything pressing to do in the rental property business, so I did some things around the house and then went to the city to pick up a part for my wife's car. While in town, I went to 3 Walmarts and then the largest gunshop in the city looking for handgun ammo. All 3 Walmarts were out. The gunshop didn't have any self-defense ammo, but they did have some target ammo. I bought 3 boxes, which is the limit due to the ammo shortage. I'm trying to buy ammo because I need at least 750 rounds for the two trainings I'm going to - one in June and one in July.

It seems like it rains every single day anymore and today was no exception. However, today's rain occurred this morning and we had a break in the weather this evening. So, I got my mountain bike ride in, without incident!

I finally got the court date for my eviction and it is July 1st. The delay in getting the court date was because the court is so far behind due to the shear number of evictions in the area. Fortunately, I only have one eviction going this month!

That's about it for today. Tomorrow, I'm planning to do a little work and then I'll be taking a 3-day weekend to go camping.

Update

2009-06-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

I wish that I could give you an interesting update regarding my rental business, but I just haven't done much the last week or so. Late last week, I did work a couple of hours building shelves in my storage unit. I was off all weekend and then mowed grass for a couple hours yesterday. I took the entire day off today.

The rental business isn't 24 hour excitement. In fact, there can be relatively long periods of time when there really isn't much to do at all. I currently don't have any current maintenance to do. There are a few projects I could do (such as trimming some trees or doing some painting), but I don't have any pressing projects. So, instead of inventing work, I've just been taking a lot of time off.

The big excitement of the weekend all revolved around birds. I bought an "upside down finch feeder" which is a really cool cylindrical bird feeder that finches hang on upside down while they feed. I put it up late one evening and by the early the next morning, there were 3 finches hanging upside down feeding. It was absolutely amazing to me that these birds found this feeder so quickly.

I also bought a bird feeder, which sits on top of the pole from which the upside down finch feeder hangs. I sealed the feeder with spar varnish over the weekend and then installed it today. In no time, there were a bunch of birds feeding. Most interesting to me was the number of doves that decided to sit on the ground right under the bird feeder. They didn't seem to have any interest in feeding, just sitting on the ground. That was quite interesting to me.

My wife and I finally got the swimming pool open over the weekend and we had some relatives come to swim almost as quickly as we finished. The temperature has been averaging about 12 degrees below normal this spring (despite global warming), so the water was quite cool. We haven't run the pool heater yet, so they must have wanted to swim pretty badly to brave that cool water!

My wife and I went to the shooting range on Saturday and I got the chance to run some ammo through my new handgun. You could really tell that a LOT of new people have been buying guns, because the people on both sides of me had bullets all over their targets (and I'm sure many missed the targets). I wanted to buy some more self-defense ammo while we were out, but neither the range nor the gunshop we went to had what I wanted. Ammo is still in very short supply, thanks to the increased number of people buying guns and people concerned that Obama wants to take their guns and ammo. I went to Walmart and Dunham Sports tonight and neither of them had any .40 Smith and Wesson ammo either. If that's not a sign of the times, I don't know what is!

That's it - we're up to date.

Heathens!

2009-06-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking I've seen it all in the rental property business. Then, I realized again today that I had not.

In yesterday's blog, I described how many low income tenants act crazy during the summer. When June arrives, so does STUPID! After an incident last evening, I decided to go to the police station today to pick up the recent police reports for two of my low income apartment buildings. I was pleased to find out that there have been VERY few incidents - only 5 in the past 2 months and most of those incidents didn't even involve my tenants. However, one of the reports illustrates what a freak show low income tenants can become when the weather warms up!

CAUTION: If you are easily offended, don't read the rest of this blog.

The following is the EXACT text from the police report: (these are two of my tenants) "Steven and Jessica were arguing with each other because Steven wanted Jessica to "perform oral sex on him" and she would not do it. Steven told Jessica he "would find someone that would do it", and Jessica got mad at him for saying that and they argued. Nothing physical, all verbal. Steven is legally blind so he called a friend to pick him up to leave for the night. All calm on Ofc departure".

comment: I didn't even know that having a girfriend (or wife) refuse sex was a criminal offense. I guess that men can now call 911 if their wife/girfriend says no!!! lol!

I don't know what else to say - UNBELIEVABLE!!! It's a freak show out there!!!

The Streak is Over!

2009-06-09T19:34:00.000-07:00

After eight months of not having an eviction, it looks like I'm not going to be so lucky this month. One of my tenants, who always pays a couple of days late (during the 3 day notice period), announced on the last day that she was moving. I explained to her that she still owed June rent and she wanted me to use her deposit as her last month's rent - which I absolutely will not do. I told her that if she didn't pay immediately, she would be evicted. She hasn't paid and she is being evicted.

Believe it or not, the attorney that I've used for my evictions these past 6 years was indicted by the grand jury on felony drug charges, so I now have a new attorney. My new attorney is a young lawyer who has very little court experience, but I think she'll be fine. I had a phone conversation with her this morning about the eviction and then took the paperwork to her this afternoon.

Once again, I didn't do any maintenance today. However, I did spend a couple of hours trying to make paperwork disappear (by paying bills, filing, etc).

This evening, the police were at the Pink Elephant for at least the 3rd time in the past few weeks. This is what happens when you have low income rentals and the weather gets hot. Tensions run high and trouble erupts. The same thing happens every year and in my experience, it takes a firm hand to get it stopped before problems set in for the entire summer. So, I drove down to the Pink Elephant to take care of business. I had the police legally bar 2 scumbag neighbors from the property (one is a convicted felon who is on parole) and the police are looking for another convicted felon (also on parole). These two guys were the same ones I wrote about a few months ago. The terms of their parole don't allow convicted felons to associate with each other, but their parole officer won't do anything about it. I will be talking to the police captain about the issue tomorrow and will try to exert some more political pressure to get the situation resolved. These criminals were on my property this evening visiting some of my tenants. I had a stern conversation with my tenants, letting them know that if they invited this scum onto my property again, their month-to-month leases would be terminated. They've seen me evict many other people and they know that I'm not bluffing!

Another Lazy Day

2009-06-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

I just couldn't get motivated to do much work today. I don't have any deferred maintenance to do and I don't have a lot of other tasks that need to be accomplished. So, I took the morning off. It was an absolutely beautiful day and I decided to do a little work around the yard, including cleaning the hummingbird feeder and making some new hummingbird nectar for it. It wasn't long until two hummingbirds were literally fighting over the feeder. For those of you that don't know about hummingbirds, they are not good at sharing!

I also worked on the swimming pool some this morning. It is nearly full of water and I did a little more work toward getting it clean.

By early afternoon, I was thinking about taking a bike ride - so I did. After the bike ride, I did accomplish some work, when I mowed the grass at one of my buildings. I also stopped by the Pink Elephant to see if anyone had any news about the convicted felon that has been stalking me. None of the tenants had seen him and one tenant heard that he was in jail. I'll try to follow up on that tomorrow.

That was it for today. I might try to get more done tomorrow, if I can remember what I was thinking about doing. I can't think of it right now (it's getting late).

And the Verdict Is...

2009-06-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

NOT GUILTY! That's right, the convicted felon that has been stalking me was found not guilty at the conclusion of a trial by the court (judge without jury). Ironically, the facts were not in dispute and the prosecutor and defense stipulated that the felon did indeed come within 20 feet of me in direct violation of the restraining order. There were 3 witnesses for the prosecution and the entire incident was on our security camera system, so there simply could be no denying of the facts. The not guilty finding came as the result of a legal technicality. It seems that when the defendant was served by the sheriff's deputy, he was in jail. Testimony showed that the deputy knew that the felon had a difficult time reading (nearly illiterate) and that the deputy didn't read the contents of the restraining order to the felon. So, the defense attorney argued that the felon was not "recklessly negligent" in violating the order. There was a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo about the definition of "recklessly negligent" as opposed to simple "negligence". The judge even read the exact definitions of these terms out of a law book. The judge ruled that the felon was simply "negligent" and therefore he was not guilty of violating the restraining order. The gist of this is that the felon claimed that he didn't know what the restraining order said and the judge found that to be the case (even though everyone in the room knew that wasn't the truth).

After finding the felon not guilty, the judge read the entire restraining order word by word to the felon and after each sentence asked him if he understood. He did that so that it is on the record that the felon now knows exactly what the terms of the restraining order are and won't be able to use this defense next time.

The other twist on the situation is that while the felon was in jail, the grand jury handed down felony drug charges against him for a drug incident that occurred in December. He went before a judge in common pleas court (felony court) in the last few days and he may continue to be held in jail on that charge. I looked at the court records myself and my interpretation is that his bond was revoked, but I'm not sure which bond that is talking about and what the implications of today's verdict will be on that situation. I discussed that with the assistant prosecutor, but she wasn't able to definitively say whether he would be held or not.

If he's released, he will almost certainly be stalking me again tomorrow and I will need to exercise extra caution while working. I bought a magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip for my handgun, just to be on the safe side. Apparently, the courts simply can not keep this felon in jail even though they know that he is a serious threat to me; to the police; and to the public in general. You might have heard the old saying: "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away"!!! So true.

The good thing about this situation is that it is allowing me to assess my defensive situation. I've upgraded my carry handgun from a .32 caliber to my .40 caliber. I bought the magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip. Finally, I signed up for an advanced tactical shooting class later in the month. Hopefully, I won't need any of this to deal with this felon, but at least I'll be prepared.

The court hearing screwed up my day, because it was scheduled in the middle of the afternoon. I did collect a couple of late rents; did a minor floor repair at an apartment, and mowed the grass at one apartment building.

My wife and I also finally got our pool opened up.

That's it for today. I'm planning to do a little mowing tomorrow.

Justice, or Lack Thereof

2009-06-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

In my experience, there is very little justice in this country. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that our criminal justice system is completely broken! Today was my latest contact with the criminal justice system and I'll have to wait until Friday to judge the outcome. My mission today was to attend the pre-trial hearing for a violent convicted felon whose latest crime was to violate the restraining order I have against him (I received a subpeona for both the pre-trial and trial). To make a long story short, he was staying in the Pink Elephant when I took it over and I promptly kicked him out. He's been homeless every since and certainly blames me for that situation. In addition, I have had him arrested several times for criminal tresspass and I'm the main witness in a felony arson/attempted murder case that is pending. He has been stalking me every time he gets out of jail and has made numerous threats.

The last time this criminal got out of jail was about 60 days ago. At that time, he had spent the previous 48 days in jail for attempting to break into several apartments in two of my buildings. I had the entire thing on our security cameras and that got him convicted of the crime. On the same day that he got out of jail, he came looking for me. My restraining order prohibits him from being within 300 feet of me or my two apartment buildings that were involved with the attempted breaking and entering conviction. He certainly violated that when he came onto my property and got within a few feet of me. There were several witnesses and the entire thing is on the security camera footage. I called the police and he was arrested. He's been in jail on that charge since that incident 2 months ago. Today was the pre-trial hearing. I spoke with the assistant prosecutor before the case and reminded her how dangerous this felon is. I reminded her that he had been arrested more than 200 times. I reminded her that he had a conviction for assaulting a police officer (breaking his leg). I reminded her that he attempted to kill several people in January by setting their apartment on fire while they were sleeping. I also reminded her that it is very dangerous when he is out of jail. He stalks me and threatens me and I carry a handgun and am fully prepared to defend myself if I feel an immediate threat of serious bodily harm or death. I told her that she needed to do her job to prevent a serious situation from developing. I reminded her that I am doing everything I can possibly do to prevent a tragedy from occurring and I need the court system to do their part!

With my very low opinion of our criminal justice system, I was expecting him to be released for time served, but was pleasantly surprised when the prosecutor did not plea bargain the case (although every other case in court this morning was plead out). The trial is scheduled for Friday at 3pm! So, we'll see what happens. In a perfect world, he'll get 6 months and before he is released from that sentence, he'll be tried on the arson/attempted murder charge. At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll let you know what happens.

In more cheery news, today was day three of rent collection. I collected a bunch of rents today during the time that I wasn't in court. I also managed to change the electrical receptical (for a stove) that was burned after a lightning strike last evening, and also installed a new gas stove in another apartment.

Catching Up!

2009-06-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

It's time for me to get caught up with my blog. There's not a lot of real estate stuff to talk about, because I just haven't been working very much. After taking 5 days off for Memorial Day, last week was an extremely short week. I basically worked 3 days, then took another 3 day weekend off. I have already posted through last Thursday, so I'll start today's post with Friday.

Friday morning started with a knock on the door. We rarely have people unexpectedly knock on the door, especially early in the morning. As I approached the door, I could see the Sheriff's car in the driveway. A deputy had come to serve me with a subpoena for the criminal trial of the convicted felon who has been stalking me. This convicted felon is currently in jail awaiting trial for violating the restraining order I have against him. That was about as exciting as the weekend got!

To be quite honest, I don't really remember what I did on Friday. I just basically took it easy (although I did mow the grass at my home). The one good thing for Friday was that the weather was finally good enough for a bicycle ride.

Saturday, my wife wanted to go shopping for new table and chairs for our deck. You might think that we could have found these at just about any store, but we wanted an all-metal table and all-metal chairs. That turned out to be a difficult task and we ended up going to stores in three different cities before we found what we were looking for! I'm not much for shopping, but the good thing for me is that I was finally able to find several boxes of .40 cal S & W (Smith and Wesson) Ammo. If you weren't aware of it, there is a severe shortage of ammo in this country because people believe that socialism will be very bad for gun rights and people are stockpiling guns and ammo. It is very difficult to find ammo. Even gun stores are low on guns and frequently completely out of ammo!

Sunday was my day to run projection at Church and that kept me busy til after noon. Then, my wife and I just took it easy - doing just about nothing. We watched a movie and then I did get in a good bike ride.

My main project for today was to take care of paperwork. I started by going to the post office to pickup my Section 8 rent checks. I then checked the money off the rent roll and made up deposit tickets for the bank. In addition, I attempted to make as much paperwork disappear as possible, by paying bills; filing receipts away; putting check stubs into the respective checkbooks; calling to straighten out a couple of bills that were incorrect, etc.

About 1pm, I was finished with the paperwork and went to the bank. Then, I collected several more rents from tenants and even spent a little time cutting up a small tree that had fallen during a storm.

Tomorrow, I'll be working on some rentals. I have the court trial on Wednesday and Thursday, but hopefully that won't last all day.

Water Works

2009-05-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

As usual, nothing goes as planned. I had planned on working on the carpet in the basement of a 3 bedroom house today. The new tenant had the water turned on at the property this morning, in anticipation of his move-in. So, upon my arrival at the house, I decided to check the water. As I checked under the kitchen sink, I discovered that the left side of the sink was leaking and that the cause was a leak around the sink strainer basket. After I saw this leak, I decided that I probably should check the rest of the water in the house, and I discovered that the chain was missing from the flapper valve in the toilet. So, to check the water to the toilet, I stuck my hand in the toilet tank and actuated the flapper with my hand. That was when I noticed that water was running out from the bottom of the toilet. Obviously, the toilet wax ring needed to be replaced. Next, I checked the tub/shower and discovered that the side of the fiberglass tub had been damaged by the previous tenants and that they had attempted to patch it (without success).

So, at this point, I realized that my plan for today needed to change. I made a list and headed for the plumbing store. A few minutes later, I was back at the house. The most pressing problem was the toilet leak, so I started there. I replaced the toilet flapper and checked it's operation. So far, so good. Next, I flushed and drained the toilet and removed it from the toilet flange. I installed the new wax ring and re-installed the toilet. To my amazement, there were no leaks!

The next priority was to repair the kitchen sink leak. That consisted of removing the old basket; tailpiece, and cross piece; and replacing them with new. Again, I was astonished when there were no leaks. That was two plumbing repairs in a row with no leaks - A NEW RECORD!

While I was on a roll, I decided to undertake the fiberglass repair in the tub. That went pretty well and I moved on to change the flourescent bulbs in the kitchen.

By this time, the grass was dry and the sun was out. I decided to mow some grass. It looked like it was going to be a great afternoon and evening - the weather was looking great for a change. So after mowing grass, I headed home for a bike ride. Right on cue, the skies darkened and the rain poured from the sky. No bike ride today. As I said earlier, nothing ever goes as planned!

Much More Productive Today

2009-05-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

Just in time for hump day, I'm finally up to full speed. I went to work about noon and my first task was to sign the lease for a new tenant in the 3 bedroom house I've been working with. After signing the paperwork, I worked on the floor in the bedroom of this house, including pulling about 400 staples (where the carpet pad had been). Once the staples were up and the floor was swept, I painted the floor with a gloss brown floor paint. With that accomplished, all the flooring on the main floor is complete. I still need to do some touch-up painting; some cleaning; and replacing the carpet in one room of the basement before the tenant moves in this weekend.

My next task for the day was to work on the camera software for the surveillance system I'm installing. I got all the hardware and two cameras up last week, but the remote viewing function wasn't working properly. I decided that I needed to replace the wireless router with a wired router and also that I needed to do some work with the software (such as port forwarding of the router, etc). The system now appears to be working properly and I can watch the cameras from my laptop at home (or anywhere else with an internet connection).

Finally, I mowed the grass at one of my apartment buildings. Oh yeah, on the way home I stopped at Office Max to buy a new (larger) laptop case for my new laptop.

All in all, a good day's work, or at least as much work as I could have hoped to accomplish in 4 hours.

It rained again this evening, so I didn't get to take a bike ride. I did however, schedule another camping trip for June and ordered a new holster for my Beretta.

Slow Start

2009-05-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

After my 5 day weekend, I wasn't in a hurry to get back to work today. I did get a little done, but not much. I spent an hour or so this morning organizing the bills that came in while I was gone. Then, I made a trip to the post office and bank. Next, I went to the local Sprint Store to have a billing mistake corrected.

About that time, I received a call from the local police about a theft that occurred a couple blocks from one of my apartment buildings. The police had reason to believe that the thieves may have walked past my building, which has an elaborate surveillance camera system. The police asked me to check my surveillance tapes (really a DVR) to see if I could spot the thieves. The theives were not on camera and I called to police to give them the bad news.

Next, I showed an apartment to a potential tenant and then went to the hardware store to pick up a metric screw for my bicycle seat. That was it for today!

I'll try to be a little more productive tomorrow.

Home Again!

2009-05-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

We returned this afternoon from a wonderful 5 day weekend, which was our first camping adventure of the season (largely because the weather has been so lousy in Ohio this spring). This weekend, we went camping at the Forked Run State Park, which is located on the Ohio River near Reedsville, Ohio. It was an absolutely fantastic 5 days, with perfect weather every day.

During our trip, we enjoyed mountain biking, frisbee golf, motorcycle riding; walking along the river; and a lot of good fellowship with friends. One of the main focuses on the trip was to ride the mountain biking course at Lake Hope State Park (about an hour away from Forked Run), which is rated number one in the state for single track mountain biking courses. Although we got a very good workout on the course, we were extremely disappointed in the course. In fact, my friend and I would rate the course the WORST in the state of Ohio!!! The course did not flow well and there were NUMEROUS trees that had fallen during the winter still obstructing the course. I would definitely not recommend this course and I won't be going back.

I would rate Forked Run as a very nice state park. It was scenic and had many nice camping sites. The frisbee golf course was excellent, and camp store was well stocked. In fact, the only real detractor I would list for this state park are the very hilly, winding roads surrounding the park (obviously not the park's fault).

I plan to get back to work tomorrow, but I haven't even thought about what I will do yet. I'll think about that tomorrow.

More Cameras!

2009-05-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

I'm finally installing a second security camera system. This one will cover 3 buildings on the same street. In preparation for the installation, today I ran wiring from the electrical box to the location for the power supply company. The cable company is scheduled to install the high speed DSL line with static IP port tomorrow morning and then I'll begin installing the cameras and DVR.

I'm REALLY sold on these security camera systems. They are a powerful deterrent to crime, as well as a deterrent the tenant's misbehaving. When there is an incident, I can copy the evidence to a DVD and take it to the police. I can also check on my rentals without ever leaving home, or even while on vacation. All I need to view my property is my laptop and an internet connection!

In addition to installing the electrical wiring for the surveillance system, I showed a 3 bedroom house to a potential tenant; mowed the grass at 3 apartment buildings; and installed a ceiling light in a 1 bedroom apartment.

Once home, I headed over to the mountain biking course for another workout! I've ridden a bunch of different mountain biking course and this one has the longest sustained vertical run of all of them. It's a killer!

My Favorite Job

2009-05-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Today I got to do my favorite job (OR NOT)! That job was pulling staples out of the living room floor of the 3 bedroom house where I removed the carpet pad yesterday. There were probably 200 staples and the floor was a horrible mess, with slimy stick pet urine attached to the floor along with mouse droppings. Of course, it's hard to sweep or mop with hundreds of staples in the floor and it's tough to remove staples with mouse droppings and pet urine slime goo all over the place. Fortunately, I don't have much of a sense of smell, but even so, the smell was terrible. I took those plug-in air fresheners with me and hopefully the house will smell better tomorrow.

Now that the staples are out, tomorrow I'll sweep and mop the floor and then install the new carpet. THAT ROOM WILL LOOK 100% better with the new carpet!

In addition to working on the room, I also got the security deposit for a new tenant in my one of my 1 bedroom apartments. Her rent is supposed to be paid by a government agency and I went over there to get the paperwork signed. What an experience! I was sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of low-income riff-raff who were looking for a government handout. It looked like the entire circus was sitting in that waiting room. I imagine that this is exactly what it will be like when universal healthcare comes to town - sitting in a crowded waiting room awaiting my turn to be seen by a benevolent government official. Fortunately, I am not too lazy to work and I don't have time to sit in a government office all afternoon. After waiting about 10 minutes, I gave the clerk the paperwork I had and told her to have the case worker call me when she had all the paperwork done. The tenants won't be able to move in until I have the signed paperwork!

Very Productive Day!

2009-05-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

After getting off to a slow (lazy) start this week, I got a lot of things done today. This morning, I paid rental bills and took care of some personal stuff. Then, I went to the bank and post office. My first work project of the day was to show my 3 bedroom house to a possible tenant and then to remove all the carpet pads from the house (I removed the carpet the other day). I found that one of the bedrooms had a good wood floor under the carpet and pad. I'll paint the floor in that room. The living room and other bedrooms did not have floors suitable for painting, so I'll replace the carpet in those rooms (without carpet pad).

The rain decided to hold off, so I decided to mow some grass this afternoon. I managed to mow the grass at 2 apartment buildings and 1 house.

The next task was to have a stern talk with one of my tenants who was involved in a big brawl last night. I don't know what it is with low income tenants, but a bunch of young adults decided that they were going to have a brawl last night. The police were on the street for 2 1/2 hours trying to break this up and they cited several people for various infractions. One of my tenants was involved and I told him today that any further problems from him would result in eviction!

I received a call from a woman that was looking for a one-bedroom apartment. I showed her my only vacant one-bedroom apartment and she said that she'll take it. I gave her an application and she's supposed to return the application tomorrow along with the paperwork from the government agency that is paying her first month's rent.

About the time I got home, it started to rain - so there will be no bike ride today!

Let the Mountain Biking Begin!

2009-05-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

It FINALLY dried up enough to actually ride a local mountain biking course today! So, I spent about 10 minutes changing a broken lock on a rental and the rest of the day doing personal tasks. My number one priority today was mountain biking. Number two was to get some work done on my pickup truck. I went to Walmart to get the work done on the pickup. That consisted of getting an oil change; getting new windshield wipers; and having a tire repaired (or should I say replaced). The tire had been slowly leaking due to a screw that was imbedded in the tire. However, when they took the tire off to repair it, they discovered that there was also a nail in the sidewall of the tire. The sidewall could not be patched, so I had to get a new tire. I know what you're thinking - that an irate tenant sabotaged the tire. However, I don't believe that's the case. I think this is just one of those road hazards that strike once in a while.

As all these things were being repaired, I walked over to a local sporting goods store and bought an AirSoft Handgun. This CO2 powered handgun is very similar to my concealed carry gun and I will be using it to practice in the house. As with many things in life, training is a critical issue when you're dealing with handguns. I wanted an airsoft gun to practice drawing and firing my handgun and I can do that a LOT cheaper and more often with the airsoft gun than with my .40 Caliber Baretta. Although slightly lighter than my Baretta, it is otherwise nearly identical to my Baretta in size and function. Of course, in addition to the practice aspect of the gun, it's fun!

My decision to buy the AirSoft gun for training purposes was partially due to an incident that occurred on Sunday. Here's my account of that incident:

I carry my handgun almost all the time. I work with a lot of riff-raff in my business and have evicted literally dozens of criminals and deadbeats over the years. I never know when I am going to meet one of these losers who wants to blame me for their situation (being homeless, put in prison, etc). In addition, some of my low income rentals are in relatively bad areas and there is occassional violence (usually among the riff-raff).

Sunday was Mother's Day. I wasn't working and wasn't planning to be in any public areas as my wife and I were going to a relative's house for a family gathering. After we left the house, my wife reminded me that we needed to stop by a convenience store to pickup one of their delicious salads. We were already running a little late and I wasn't very happy about it. We stopped at the convenience store/gas station and my wife went inside to get the salad. After an extended period of time, I went into the store to see what the delay was. I was thinking about the time and I was also perturbed that some moron had parked parallel to the convenience store door, blocking several parking spots. So, in the store I went and I asked my wife what was going on. Instead of answering my question, she asked "do you have your gun"? WHAT??? I asked, "what are you talking about"? She told me to look at the checkout counter and sure enough a loud and angry conversation was going on between some very iffy looking people and the clerk. These were the people from the oddly parked car just outside the door. MY HANDGUN WAS IN THE TRUCK! As it turned out, the people must have had their credit card declined and were yelling at the clerk about it (as if that would help). They ended up getting in their car and leaving without paying for the gas and the clerk called the sheriff.

Everything ended up being ok and obviously no-one was hurt. However, this was certainly a good opportunity for self-critique. I did just about EVERYTHING wrong in this situation. First, I wasn't wearing my gun, because I didn't think I would be exposed to the public. The lesson here is that you just never know when a dangerous situation will occur. I was so distracted by being late and the delay in getting the salad, that I lost situational awareness. The car parked parallel to the store, blocking several spots should have been a red flag that something wasn't right (think getaway car). In addition, the oddly parked car combined with my wife not returning in a timely manner should have been even more evidence that something might be amiss (maybe a robbery was in progress). Wost of all, I walked in the store (still unarmed even though my gun was in my truck), RIGHT PAST THE PEOPLE WHO WERE YELLING without even noticing because I was so pre-occupied with being late! I've gotta tell you that I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't do better. When I'm working in relatively dangerous areas, I'm always armed and always on guard; trying to maintain good situational awareness. However, yesterday, I let a sense of complacency and a minor distraction completely destroy my situational awareness. I definitely learned a lesson and will strive to do better in the future.

That incident from Sunday reminded me once again that I must take responsibility for my safety. Whether I'm working on my rentals in a low income neighborhood or stopping at the gas station, it is my responsibility to be aware of my surroundings and be prepared to act accordingly should an safety issue arise.

Court Date Changed

2009-05-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

I received a call from the city prosecutor's office today. She wanted to inform me that the pre-trial for the felon that has been stalking me has officially been moved to June 3rd and the trial is scheduled for June 4th. I also found out that he is charged with a 1st degree misdemeanor of violating a protection order and the maximum sentence is 6 months in jail.

My project of the day was to mow my grass at home; mow the grass at two of my rentals; and haul away some old carpet from a 3 bedroom house that I'm making ready to be re-rented. I also bought some solar powered sidewalk lighting; planted a tomato plant; and did a few other things at home.

I forgot to mention that I once again won't have any evictions this month. I did collect all the rents (along with several late fees), so this month makes the 8th straight month with no evictions. I currently have two rentals that are vacant and ready to be rented.

Another Look at our Criminal Justice System

2009-05-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

I haven't had time to post the past few days. My wife and I took another 3 day weekend and we've been quite busy. We spent most of the day on Friday working on landscaping at our home. Then Saturday, we had a big family gathering during the day and a party for our small group (from Church) in the evening. Today we had another family gathering for Mother's day! It was a busy 3 days.

Before my three day weekend started, I had one last work related issue to take care of. Friday morning was the pre-trial hearing for the Felon that has been stalking me. If you haven't been following my blog, it's a long story. However, the short version is that this loser has a "wrap sheet" of more than 200 criminal offenses, including several felonies. He is now awaiting charges on a felony for an arson and possibly attempted murder in a building next to one of my buildings. I'm the primary witness in that case.

Anyway, this criminal somehow got out of jail a little while back and the same day approached me on the sidewalk in front of one of my buildings, violating the restraining order I have against him. I called the police and he was arrested. He's still in jail awaiting trail on that charge and his pretrial was Friday morning.

I have VERY LITTLE confidence in our criminal justice system, so I called the court to be sure the case was still being held. It was. I arrived at the courthouse about 10 minutes before the case was scheduled to be heard. This is the same courthouse where evictions are heard, so I know all the officers that provide security. Before they screened me, I asked if the case was still on. This criminal is frequently violent and they always have extra security when he is brought to court from the jail. They said that the hearing was still on, but that I needed to check with the main bailiff to determine which courtroom was holding the hearing. So, I went to talk to the bailiff and sure enough - THE PRETRIAL HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL JUNE! I can't tell you how many times I've been subpoened to testify in a criminal trial, only to have it either dropped or postponed! It is VERY FRUSTRATING! The only good thing is that the criminal will be in jail at least until the hearing in June (or at least that's what they said).

Wet and Wild!

2009-05-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

I took on another water project today and as usual managed to get wet. Maybe I should start wearing my wetsuit to work! Anyway, today's project was to replace the old metal water lines with Pex. The old lines were in bad shape. The previous owner had installed several clamp-type patches to stop leaks in the lines and there were several rusted spots on the lines that were seeping. I started where the water line entered the basement and replaced nearly all the old metal lines in the basement. The most difficult aspect of the project was removing the old lines. Many of the connections were rusted and difficult to get apart. The entire project cost less than $100 as I used mostly crimp connections.

This project was in half of one of my duplexes. I replaced the water lines in the other half of this duplex last year.

Onward Christian Soldiers

2009-05-05T20:12:00.001-07:00

I almost never talk about religion on my blog or in any of my posts. However, it's no secret that I am a Christian - albeit a very imperfect one (aren't we all). The point of this blog post is to discuss my frequent difficulty in maintaining a Christian attitude and appropriate Christian behavior when I'm dealing with - yes, you guessed it - TENANTS!

The latest tenant to move out was a perfect example of this issue. This particular tenant moved in only a few months ago. She is disabled and essentially confined to a wheelchair. During her tenancy, I bent over backwards to help her out. That included making her apartment handicapped accessable at my expense. In addition, when a relative took advantage of her and stole some of her property, I took care of the problem for her. I went above and beyond the call of duty with this tenant.

My problem arose when she suddenly decided to move out, without giving me notice. Even with this extreme lack of courtesy and violation of her lease, I still would have been ok with her if she had just left before the 1st. Unfortunately, she decided not to do that and was still occupying the property on May 1st. To make a long story short, she stayed after the 1st without paying the rent. I knocked on her door and told her that she needed to leave ASAP or I would file an eviction. She did leave, but left a BUNCH of her junk in the apartment. Furthermore, with all that stuff being in the apartment, I couldn't be sure that she was out and I had no way to contact her. I did have a phone number for her son and I called him to explain that I had bent over backwards to help her and that I didn't appreciate the way she was acting. He agreed and said that he would attempt to get someone to remove her belongings.

Sunday, I spent all morning at church running the projection, for both services. Then, later in the evening, I was back at church for our small group meeting. As I was heading home, I received a call from one of her relatives that said that he was at this apartment to move the rest of her stuff but couldn't get in. Since I really wanted her out of there, I agreed to drive down to the apartment on Sunday night to let him in. When I arrived, I found that they had driven their pickup truck right up onto the concrete front deck - I was not happy. Then, when I let them into the apartment and they saw what a disaster the apartment was, they said that they were only there to pick up her couch and a few other things. I asked them what they intended to do about the rest of her stuff and they said that was my problem. THAT WAS IT! I went ballistic and told them what a bunch of scum I thought they were! There was a lot of cursing and nasty discourse (all coming from me) and I let them know that I was VERY angry with them and the tenant! Once again, I had learned the lesson that NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED!

There you have it - that is the point of this post. I certainly didn't act much like a Christian. In fact, I find that it is VERY difficult to turn the other cheek when some scumbag steals from me - especially when tenants do this with shocking regularity. I'm sure that there are Christians that could accept this stupidity from the tenants and really shine as a Christian. Unfortunately, that is NOT me! I guess I have a lot of room for improvement!

Busy as a Bee!

2009-05-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

Wow - did today end up being a busy day!

They say that no war plan survives the first shot. In many ways, the rental business is the same. My plan for today was to work on the 1 bedroom rehab I started yesterday. That plan didn't even make it past last night. The plan began to fall apart when I received a call from the police department at about 10 pm. The officer on the phone informed me that they had caught the convicted felon that has been stalking me and that he was in jail (where he belongs). The officer wanted me to bring the security camera video of the felon violating my restraining order to the police station so that it could be used as evidence in his pretrial hearing next week.

By itself, this task would barely have interrupted my day, however that was just the beginning. As I was headed into town, I received several calls from tenants wanting me to pick up their rents. In addition, I got another call from a tenant who had an electrical problem. All of these things took a little more of my day. I had to drop off some paperwork at the Section 8 office. I picked up the mail at the post office and received all my Section 8 checks plus some private pay checks. After collecting several rents in town and fixing the electrical problem, I went to the plumbing store to get parts for the sinks; faucets; and water lines that I wanted to work on today. Then I picked up a couple more rents. After all the interruptions, I finally made it to the apartment and began working on the water issues. I installed the new faucet; hooked up the water lines; and hooked up the drain lines. The only part of this entire sink installation that was not brand new was the double stainless steel sink. As was probably predictable, the drain basket on one side was leaking and I had to take everything back apart to replace the drain basket.

About that time, I got a call from a another tenant wanting me to pickup the rent and two tenants that are moving in this month. That was the end of my plan. I collected the rent and did the paperwork for the two tenants that are moving in. Then I gave up and went home!

The weather was very iffy with rain showers all around the area. It didn't look like I could ride my bike any distance without running a high risk of getting very wet. So, I decided to ride just around my little subdivision. Around and around I went until I'd racked up 8 miles.

I'll try again tomorrow to work on the rehab. I would really like to get it finished.

In the Kitchen!

2009-04-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

If you were looking for me today, you would have found me in the kitchen. No, I haven't suddently taken up gourmet cooking, I was rehabbing the kitchen in a one bedroom apartment. The rehab started with the badly sloped floor at the back wall in the kitchen. This is an older building and I assumed that the floor joists might have wrotted or otherwise dropped a couple of inches. Once I started working on the floor, I was pleasantly surprised that the structural members were in good shape. In fact, the floor had obviously been repaired in the past few years (before I owned it), but the repair just wasn't level. My solution was to cut out a section of the floor; add some new material on the joists to level them; and then install a new section of flooring.

After repairing the floor, I went to Lowes to buy some new kitchen cabinets and countertop because the old ones were beyond repair. Today must have been my lucky day because Lowes had a scratch and dent 36" base cabinet for only $79! I bought that base cabinet; two 15" cabinets; and a new countertop and headed back to the apartment. Normally, I wouldn't put new cabinets in a rental if there were any other choice, but in this case, there simply was no other choice. I did get the new cabinets installed; the countertop cut; and the double stainless steel sink installed. At that time, I had reached my limit of fun for one day and I called it quits. I'll continue the work on this apartment tomorrow.

I didn't see the convicted felon that has been stalking me today and I assume that he was arrested last night for violating the restraining order I have against him. Hopefully, I won't see him for another couple of months.

Off to Jail!

2009-04-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

It was back to work today after a nice 4 day weekend! I strapped on my new Baretta handgun and headed to town. After making a quick trip to the bank (leaving the handgun in the truck), I made my first stop at one of my two bedroom duplexes to look at the tenant's dryer. Although I don't provide washers or dryers and am not responsible for her dryer, this is a good tenant and I told her that I would check the dryer plug and wiring before she called a repair man. Fortunately for both the tenant and me, the problem was that the dryer plug was a little loose and wasn't making good contact. I bent the prongs a little and that fixed the problem.

My next stop was at another two bedroom apartment. The tenant's home health nurse told the tenant that she smelled gas and obviously the tenant called me. I was immediately suspicious of the gas leak because the gas company had the gas off to the entire building while I was away for the purpose of doing a safety upgrade on the main riser. Sure enough, the gas company turned the gas back on but didn't light the oven pilot light. I checked everything out and lit the pilot light and the problem was solved.

Next, I decided to mow the grass at the Pink Elephant and my newly vacant 3 bedroom house. While I was at the 3 bedroom house, I removed all the carpet, which was destroyed by the tenant's dogs.

After that, I stopped back at the Pink Elephant to return my mower to the storage room. Shortly after my arrival at the Pink Elephant, the convicted felon (that I have a restraining order against) walked down the sidewalk and began to threaten me. I'm the witness to a pending felony for this scumbag and he is basically stalking me. I called the police and then had to wait for them to arrive. Fortunately, the felon didn't do anything to make me feel concerned for my life, or we would have had an unfortunate incident. To my surprise, it only took about 5 minutes for the police to arrive and they were searching for the felon by the time I left. Violating a restraining order should be good enough to put him in jail for the next couple of months. Hopefully, his felony arson trial will begin before he gets out of jail again and he'll go straight to prison.

That was the end of my work day and I met my wife for an early supper before we came home. Upon my arrival home, I went for my daily bike ride. Today's ride was 8.5 miles with a lot of good hills thrown in for fun.

Shooting and Landlording!

2009-04-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

The 4 day weekend that my wife and I were enjoying has finally come to an end. We had a good time. We stayed at the Hilton and did a lot of walking and shopping; we ate at some good restaurants; and generally just relaxed.

After all that strenuous relaxing (I'm not good at sitting still), today was my day to get a couple of things done. The first item on the agenda was to go to The Good Feet Store to determine if I could cure my heel pain without going to the doctor. My heel has been sore for almost a year and I suspect that my arches are taking a lot of abuse. I found the staff at the store to be well informed and after taking impressions of my feet, they brought out the appropriate size arch supports. They were a whopping $350, but will be well worth it if my foot feels better for mountain biking and other summer fun.

Once my feet were fixed, it was off to the gun store to look for a handgun that would offer a little more stopping power in a small package. My preference was a .40 caliber pistol that could be easily carried in a concealed manner. It needed to be as lightweight as possible and as small as possible. The most important criteria is that it needed to be RELIABLE! Many low priced handguns are notoriously unreliable and the last thing I need is a gun that jams in an emergency. I have had expensive experience with Baretta guns including trapguns (shotguns and handguns) and therefore I knew that I would prefer a Baretta if it met the other criteria.

After looking at all the handguns, I decided on a used Baretta 9000S for only $349. It met my criteria of being small; lightweight; .40 caliber; and since it's a Baretta, I have confidence that it will be reliable.

After buying the gun, I wanted to shoot it! After all, I'm certainly not going to carry a gun for self defense that I haven't shot. So, my wife and I went to the range for a little shooting. As I expected, the gun performed flawlessly. All the shots went into the 12" targets at 25 feet and 50 feet, although I didn't get as tight a grouping as I get with my Baretta .32 caliber pistol. That may be because it's the first time I've fired it. At any rate, even with my first 50 rounds, I was certainly accurate enough for self-defense purposes.

When I got home, I downloaded the manual for the gun from the web and stripped the gun for cleaning. Even though the gun was used, everything on the gun was very tight, indicating that it hasn't been used much (if any). I'm going to start carrying it tomorrow and will use my .32 caliber Baretta for my home defense gun.

I'm back to work tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll have something to say about rentals!

Turning a Rental!

2009-04-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

I spent about 3 hours today "turning" a rental (getting it ready for the next tenant). That consisted of steam cleaning the carpet; painting the wood floors; touching up the paint on the walls; cleaning the kitchen and bathroom; and just general cleaning. When I attempted to light the gas water heater, it wouldn't light properly. The water heater is 10 years old and the bottom is rusted, so I'm going to change it tomorrow instead of fixing it.

After nearly a week of miserable weather, the sun finally decided to shine again today! That meant that I was back to riding my mountain bike. Today's ride was a little over 9 miles! I'm hoping that the weather will be consistently a little better so that I can really get serious about getting in shape for mountain biking season.

Feels Like the First Time!

2009-04-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

"Feels Like the First Time" - wasn't that a song by Foreigner? Anyway, that's how I felt today as I signed the lease on my newly rehabbed 1-bedroom apartment. Obviously, this wasn't the first time that I've rented an apartment, but it was the first time that I've rented THIS apartment. This particular apartment is one of a few rental units that I skipped over as my business was expanding. It needed a lot of work and I decided to use it for storage. So, for the past few years, it's been filled with supplies and tools and hasn't earned a single penny of rent. I felt as if I'd just bought a new rental as I signed the lease today, but the feeling was even better as I didn't have a new debt payment to go along with the added rent.

My project today was to put the finishing touches on this unit. That included a lot of little details, including installing new shower valves and handles; installing the shower curtain; wiring the water heater; installing a new flushmaster valve in the brand new toilet after repairing a microscopic hole in the tank bowl (it was easier to fix it than to take the toilet back to the store); installing 3 new miniblinds; cleaning the cabinets, etc. I am glad to finally be done with this unit and looking forward to starting another project.

Another One Rented!

2009-04-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

My day started out with a call from a local government agency. They had a homeless man that they were trying to place in an apartment and wanted to know if I had anything available and if would take this tenant. I told them that I do a thorough background check and gave them my basic screening criteria. They said that the man hadn't ever been evicted and didn't have any criminal record. They also said that he had a job. I told them that I would take an application from him and accept him if he passed the screening.

The applicant arrived on time and did fill out an application. He also brought a form from the government agency stating that they would pay his deposit and first month's rent. I have dealt with this agency before and they will certainly do so.

When I returned home this afternoon, I screened the tenant and he was fine. I told him that he could move in Thursday or Friday, after I finish cleaning the apartment.

My maintenance project for the day was to finish the electrical work in the one-bedroom apartment that I am just about finished rehabbing. I installed the Stove wiring and plug; installed several junction boxes; traced out the wiring for the water heater; and did some other electrical work. In addition, I finished up the work that needed to be done with the water. That included fixing a leak in the brand new toilet; installing new water lines for the sink; removing the line to the outside spigot; and other miscellaneous work.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

2009-04-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! There are a lot of little children's sayings that have to do with lying. They were probably all written by parents who were landlords; not as a result of the children lying, but because of the tenants lying! As a landlord, I'm so cynical that I just assume that everyone is lying until proven otherwise. When it comes to tenant applicants, if you assume that the applicant is lying, more often than not you'll be right.

In addition to assuming that all applicants are lying, I also judge a tenant by their looks, mannerisms, and the words they use. If they've got a lot of tattoes, especially on their face, neck, and hands, I assume that they're a druggie. If they've got such baggy pants that they need one hand to hold them up, I assume that they're a druggie in training. If the applicant carefully chooses their words, I assume that they're trying to shade the truth (lie). If an applicant pauses when asked if they've been evicted or stumbles when asked about their criminal record, I assume that they're trying to hide the truth.

Using these simple clues and a little common sense, I'm able to pick out about 95% of the scumbags before I ever do a screening. However, there is always a very small percentage of the population that are such practiced liars, that they slip past my initial meeting with them. Such was the case of a young family that I met a couple of days ago. They looked at the 2 bedroom apartment I just got back from a mental patient turned druggie that voluntarily left in lieu of being evicted. They were in their 20's with a young baby. I didn't see any tattoes or inappropriate piercings. They answered all my questions immediately and confidently. They filled out an application and said that they would take the apartment. I was very comfortable that they would pass the screening and move into the apartment in the next couple of days.

THEY FOOLED ME! I always start my screenings with a check of the local municipal court website. With barely a single mouse click, the extent of their lies became blatantly obvious! They had just been evicted in late 2008 and the husband (shack up boy friend) had been arrested at least 3 times in the past year! That was all I needed to see and I stopped the screening. Needless to say, I'm not renting an apartment to lying scumbags like that!

The moral of the story is no matter how nice and upstanding a person seems - you've got to screen them!

Mike

One Bedroom Rented!

2009-04-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

It was another good day in the rental business. Today, I rented my one bedroom apartment that I have been rehabbing. This was one of the units that slipped through the cracks as I was building my business. The rehab has been 95% done for a couple of weeks and I just need to put the finishing touches on it. I had a guy look at it today and he immediately gave me the security deposit to hold the property for him.

The tenant for the 3 bedroom section 8 house I rented, finally got all the utilities changed over into her name today. So, I met her at the house to give her the keys (I already had her deposit). I also installed some termite spikes at one of our apartment buildings where a few termites appeared today (it's termite swarm season here in Ohio).

I also had a talk with the relatively new tenants in a one-bedroom apartment at the Pink Elephant. These tenants apparently like to stay up all night and make a LOT of noise. The other tenants are NOT amused, nor am I.

While I was in the mood to talk, I had a discussion with the landlord of the building next to the Pink Elephant. There has been a lot of drug activity there and I asked him to do something about it. He's pretty much an absentee landlord and I have my doubts that he will cooperate, in which case I'll complain to the local nuisance board and he'll get fined.

Giving Away the Tenant's Possessions!

2009-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Today was a fun and interesting day. As you may recall, I had a tenant that decided to start taking crack instead of paying the rent. To make a long story short, she ended up being admitted to a mental health facility. Instead of being evicted, she decided to voluntarily leave. Her mother only took one car load of her belongings and then gave the key back to me. I confirmed with the mother, the administrator, and finally the tenant that she had gotten everything she wanted (although once I got the keys back, she was legally out). Today, I decided to trash out the apartment.

The place was a mess. Furthermore, there was a TON of stuff left in the apartment. I started in the living room and began bagging up the stuff. When I finished bagging up the first 45 gallon industrial strength trash bag, I took it to the trash area for the building. Before I could get back to the apartment, I saw one of the neighbors going through the bag, digging out some of the clothes. So, I walked back over and asked her if she wanted to go through the apartment to pick out anything else. Not only did she want to do that, but she got several more of her friends to come over as well. It was like a treasure hunt for them as they picked out clothes, the stereo, furniture, toys, CDs, DVDs, a microwave, tables, and a LOT of other things. By the time they were done, they had taken half of the stuff in the apartment and done half my job for me!

As it turned out, I got a lot done. I got the place trashed out; new mini-blinds put up; all the wood floors swept; the carpet vacuumed. Maybe the next time I trash out a place, I'll put up a sign!

Suicide on Easter? Give me a break!

2009-04-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Easter is always a busy time of year for me. I am actively involved in my church, which is a fairly large church that has two services every Sunday. My area of ministry at church is to be part of the tech team and more specifically to operate the projection at least once a month and for almost all of the productions. Obviously, the Easter production at our church is one of the biggest of the year. After a lot of practice, the drama production team was ready for the biggest weekend of the year for our church. We had one performance on Saturday night and two on Sunday and the church was absolutely full for each one.

Obviously, as part of the tech team, I sit in a control booth at the rear of the church. I keep my cell phone on vibrate and sometimes the choir director will text me with an issue or change (like feedback in a speaker or a change to the invitation song). So, as usual, I had my cell phone on vibrate as we started the second production Sunday morning. A few minutes into the production, my cellphone began to vibrate for a call, as opposed to a text, so I simply touched the button that sends the call to voicemail (without even checking to see who the call was from). Immediately, I received a second call, and then a voicemail. In my experience, when I receive a rapid series of calls relatively early in the morning, that is a cause for concern. Many tenants and potential tenants are sleeping in the morning, especially on a weekend morning, meaning a sudden flurry of calls may indicate trouble. So, when the team started into a song, I quickly listened to the voicemail. Here is the essence of the message I received: 'This is Officer Smith with the Police Department and we have reason to believe that one of your tenants may have committed suicide in one of your apartments. The tenant's son called us from Nevada and hasn't been able to get in touch with his father for 5 days and the other tenants also haven't seen the tenant for several days. The lights and tv are on in the apartment and we understand that this tenant has had previous problems. I understand that you have a key for the apartment and we need to get in. Please call the police department to arrange to meet me at the apartment as soon as possible.'

Well, obviously, I couldn't simply walk out in the middle of the Easter production with hundreds of people in the audience. The projection is a key part of the production and the lack of the projection would severely disrupt the production. If the police believed that there was an immediate situation, they would simple break the door to get in.

So, I began reviewing the script to see where there would be a long enough section of the production, without projection changes, to allow for a phone call. About 15 minute later, we were at that spot and I quickly called the police department. I explained who I was and that I was involved in an Easter production and that I wouldn't be able to get away for another hour. After all, if the guy had killed himself 5 days ago, another hour wouldn't matter one little bit. At about that point in our conversation, the officer on the phone interrupted me and said that they had already found the tenant - alive and well and admitted to the veteran's hospital. Good news!

The other big thing that happened to me over the weekend was that my laptop finally bit the dust. It was 3 years old, which was pretty good considering the amount of use my laptop gets. Since I use my laptop every day, I bought another a new one on Saturday. This one is a 17 inch, HP. I'm still trying to get accustomed to Windows Vista and my initial impression is YUK!

If you're wondering what happened to my Section 8 inspection on Friday morning - I PASSED! That was a nice end to the week, especially after working hard to get the house ready for the inspection.

Got the Keys!

2009-04-09T19:18:00.001-07:00

It is now official, there will be no evictions this month. As I reported yesterday, my final iffy tenant has been admitted to a mental health facility and her mother was moving her out of the apartment yesterday. Today, I got the keys back which makes it official that I have possession of the property. I'll get in there the first of next week and get this unit cleaned out so that we can get it re-rented.

I had a long day today. It started with an insurance inspection at 9am. This was an inspection of the Pink Elephant (one of my apartment buildings). The inspector seemed impressed with the work we had done and I think that he will give the insurance company a good report.

After that, I went to work on the 3 bedroom house that I discussed in yesterday's blog. This house will be inspected on Friday (tomorrow) morning and I needed to get it finished today. When I left the house yesterday, I had the kitchen floor ripped up. Today, I layed a new subfloor and then layed commercial carpet (with no pad). Although carpet is not my preference for the kitchen, this kitchen floor was too rough to be painted or to lay vinyl.

By early afternoon, I had the kitchen floor finished and decided to go for a bike ride. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Ohio and I enjoyed a quick 6 1/2 mile ride.

After the ride, I got back to work on the house. This Section 8 tenant has kids under 6 years old, so I had some paint to touch up. I painted much of the exterior wood trim including the facia and the wood posts for both the front porch and the carport. It was a long day, but I think I'm ready for the inspection tomorrow morning. We'll see how it goes.

Seven Straight!

2009-04-08T18:56:00.001-07:00

Well, contrary to my gloomy prognostications, it looks like I will have a 7th straight month with no evictions. As I reported yesterday, I had given a 3 day notice to my tenant who had been admitted to a mental facility. I also talked to the administrator at the mental health facility, letting her know that I would be evicting the tenant if she didn't pay her rent.

About 9am this morning, I noticed on my surveillance system that the tenant's mother was removing the tenant's belongings from her apartment. Shortly thereafter, I received a call from one of my other tenants to tell me that it appeared this tenant was moving out. A little later, I received a call from the administrator of the mental health facility letting me know that she had talked to the tenant and the tenant's mother and that the tenant would be moved out by the end of the day. So, the bottom line is that I got lucky and avoided the eviction.

My project today was to continue working on the 3 bedroom Section 8 house that is being inspected on Friday. Today, I painted the floor in the living room; patched many holes and imperfections in the walls; and I removed a wrotted section of floor in the kitchen (caused by a water leak at some point). I'm hoping to get it finished up tomorrow (I better get it finished up tomorrow) because I have a Section 8 inspection on Friday morning!

Collecting the Iffy Rents

2009-04-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

My normal rent collection period lasts from the 1st to the 4th of each month. On the morning of the 5th, I post 3-day eviction notices for everyone who hasn't paid and they owe a $50 late fee if they pay during the 3-day notice period (before I file the eviction in court). That's my procedure and I follow it strictly.

This month, I had (have) a couple of interesting situations going on. The first case was a tenant who called me on the 4th to say that they were moving out. No notice, no rent for the month - nothing - just a call. They said that they would be gone in the next 3 days. I told them that I would be posting an eviction notice on the 5th, and that if they weren't completely out during the 3 day period, I would file the eviction in court and it would be on their record. I do this to motivate the tenant to actually get out and to actually allow me to evict them if they don't leave. It's a common ploy among professional tenants to keep promising to leave, all the while living rent free (without any intention of leaving) for whatever period of time the landlord will allow.

Now, here's the twist on this particular tenant. He called me yesterday to say that he got the eviction notice I put on his door. He said that he was already in the process of moving, but wasn't absolutely sure that he could be out by the 8th. He asked if he could pay a third of the rent to allow him to stay until the 10th. Since I was in town, I told him that I would stop by. A few minutes later, I arrived at the house to find the tenant and his father carrying stuff out of the house. Since they were evidently moving, I did accept a third of the rent to allow him to stay until the 10th. Needless to say, I'll still keep his security deposit to cover the lost rent from his failure to give proper notice and for any damages. The risk in doing this is that if he doesn't move, I won't be able to evict him until next month because I accepted partial rent. I believe that this tenant is actually leaving and therefore I accepted the money knowing the risk involved.

The second situation this month is a low-income, Section 8 tenant who didn't pay her $95 portion of the rent. I originally believed that she was avoiding me, but found out today that she has been admitted to a local mental facility. This is the same tenant that a neighbor told me was taking illegal drugs. I placed an eviction notice on her door on the 5th and I place an inspection notice on her door yesterday, so that I could inspect the apartment today (to make sure someone still lived there). When I entered her apartment today, I discovered that her dog was still there and that the apartment was a MESS! I took pictures of the apartment and the mess while I was there. Since the tenant wasn't there, I decided to go to the local mental health facility to see if I could determine what was happening. Since I have several mental health patients in a couple of my apartment buildings, I work with these agencies on a frequent basis. I asked to talk to the administrator of the facility and told her that I would be evicting the tenant if I didn't get the $145 rent and late fee by tomorrow. The administrator said that she will talk to the tenant/patient and call me back. I'm sure that the mental health facility doesn't want her evicted, so hopefully they will arrange for the rent to be paid. If not, then I WILL evict the tenant. It's sad that this will probably happen, but my business is renting apartments, not providing free housing to the mentally ill.

I'll let you know how this all works out!

It Was Fun While It Lasted!

2009-04-04T18:04:00.000-07:00

They say that all good things must come to an end. I suppose that's true, but it can certainly be sad to see the good times end. Unfortunately, as I sit here tonight, I'm in that spot.

For the past 6 months, I haven't had a single eviction. Moreover, this past month I have been at 100% occupancy. In the space of one day, that luck has completely fallen apart. It started with a phone call this morning, when one of my tenants called to say that they were moving. No notice. No rent for this month. They can't afford the rent and they'll be out in the next 3 days.

Then, later in the day, I started getting that uneasy feeling that another tenant was avoiding me, indicating to me that she wasn't going to pay the rent. This is a Section 8 tenant who in my opinion is somewhat mentally ill. While I was in town collecting the final few rents, I stopped by her apartment and knocked on the door. It sure sounded like someone was at home, yet no one answered the door. As I was leaving the house, the next door neighbor (who looks iffy to me) asked me if I was looking for the woman that lives in that apartment. I responded that I was. He proceeded to call her a "slutty crackhead" along with just about every nasty name he could think of. He said that she had sold all her belongings to buy crack and that she was broke. That explains why she was avoiding me.

To tell the truth, I feel a little bit sorry for her. I think the truth of the situation is that she's being taken advantage of by the druggies, which often happens to people who are retarded (mentally ill). This type of crime is a real shame and my opinion is that the scumbags that prey on the mentally ill should be thrown in jail and the key thrown away. However, the reality of the situation remains and I won't allow her problems to become my problems. If she's doing illegal drugs and/or not paying the rent - SHE'S GOTTA GO! I'll take a 3-day notice to her tomorrow and will contact Section 8 on Monday.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, I have one other tenant that I'm concerned about. He is living in one of the apartments at the pink elephant and also has not paid rent. His rent is paid by a payee, so I'm a little concerned that it hasn't arrived yet. I'll also take him a 3-day notice tomorrow.

So, after 6 months of no evictions and one month of 100% occupancy, the fun has come to the inevitable end. I is impossible to have several dozen rentals and not have evictions, sudden move-outs, and tenant problems. Back to reality!

Big Rent Day!

2009-04-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

For the second month in a row, the 3rd has been a very big day. Usually, I collect a lot of rents on the first, collect only a few rents on the 2nd and 3rd, and then collect a bunch of rents on the 4th, which is the last day to pay rent without a $50 late fee. However, something seems to have changed lately and I collected a bunch of rents today! How many rents did I collect? So many that I made two trips home to unload cash so that I wouldn't have to carry it all!

In addition to being another day of collecting rents, I also spent some time today showing toys to prospective buyers. I recently made a decision to sell all my toys that haven't been used in the last year. I sold the first one last week for $14K, which I used to pay off debt. I have several other toys that I'm going to sell. Looking back, I think that it's been ridiculous having so many expensive toys that I don't even use! So, I'm going on a toy sale and debt paydown binge. Anyone need a beautiful SL 500 Convertible that's only been driven by a real estate investor to church on Sunday? LOL!

Have a good weekend!

Problem Solved!

2009-04-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

I spent about 3 hours today cutting out and replacing the split sewer line that I discussed in last night's blog. That cast iron pipe was really a chore to cut with my reciprocating saw, but I finally got it cut out. Then, I installed a new 4 inch PVC sewer line, with a cleanout assembly, in its place. After all the work was done, I checked everything for leaks and it was dry as a bone.

In addition to the sewer pipe repair, I also did a repair to the concrete front steps. The steps were cracked and deteriorating, and I patched then with a vinyl concrete patching material.

Today was day 2 of rent collections, and I collected several more rents.

I was done at about 3pm and went for my daily bike ride. If you're following my weight loss saga, I've currently lost 5 pounds and have 20 more to go! Now that the weather is better, I'm hoping that I can get in my bike ride every day. Mountain biking season is right around the corner and I need to get in proper condition.

'Split Pipe

2009-04-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Today's project was to look at a water leak coming from one of the outside walls in one of my 3 bedroom duplexes. This wall is located in the basement stairwell and is located below the upstairs bathroom. The wall was an old plaster wall, with the plaster beginning to deteriorate. There was clear evidence that water had been leaking both inside the house and through the wall to the outside of the house. The big question was where the water was coming from. I questioned the tenant about when it was leaking. She said that the leak seemed to occur every day and it didn't need to be raining for the wall to leak. That led me to believe that the leak was coming from the bathroom above the stairway. I could also deduce that the leak was not a broken water line because the leak wasn't happening all the time.

My next step was to try to determine what was leaking in the bathroom. At this point, it was obviously coming from the commode, shower, or sink. So, I decided to start by flushing the commode. That was all it took! After flushing the commode, water ran steadily out of the wall.

With the commode apparently leaking, that meant that I would need to remove the wall so that I could see what was occurring. I got my claw hammer and pry bar from the truck and started to demolish the wall. It didn't take long before the cause of the leak was crystal clear - the 4 inch cast iron sewage line inside the wall was split wide open vertically along almost the entire length of the pipe. By the time I got the wall demolished and all the mess cleaned up, it was about 2pm (I didn't start today until about 12:30 pm). I had a personal engagement at 3pm, which didn't leave me enough time to cut out the cast iron pipe and replace it with PVC. So, I used some furnace putty to fill the 1/4 " wide split in the pipe and I will replace the pipe tomorrow.

After my 3pm appointment, I went for a nice 7 mile bike ride on a new course. This course had one hill that was really a killer, which made for a very good workout. The weather is supposed to be good again tomorrow and I'm looking forward to another bike ride then.

BTW, today was the first official day of rent collection. I received all my Section 8 rents in the mail and I also collected a few private pay rents.

Water and Glass

2009-03-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

What's that old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? That's the way my day went today. I had planned on doing a little rehabbing, but instead ended up fixing a clogged sewer line and fixing a broken window.

Just before I headed into town today, I received a call from one of my tenants who said that both her toilet and her kitchen sink were clogged. Although tenants are required to plunge their own toilets, when multiple drains are clogged, that is usually the main sewer line. So, my first project of the day was to unclog the sewer at this apartment.

As I was working on the sewer line, I got a call from a tenant right across the street who reported that someone had attempted to break into her basement and that they had damaged a basement window. So, after completing the sewer job, I went across the street to look at the window. Unfortunately, the tenant's report of a damaged window wasn't quite correct. A more accurate description would have been that the window was totally destroyed. Even the window frame had been destroyed. My solution to this problem was to install a piece of plywood where the window had been. This will make a future break-in much more difficult and obviously no more glass will be broken!

While working in the basement on the broken window, I also noticed a water line that was dripping. It was too late in the day to start on another project, but I'll have to address this issue in the next couple of days.

Floor Day!

2009-03-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Floors, floors, and more floors! That's what I worked on today. I started out at the one bedroom apartment that I discussed in my last post. The rehab is nearly complete and I'm putting the finishing touches on this unit. I started out measuring for the flooring in the kitchen and pantry. This floor in the kitchen is too uneven for vinyl and in too rough a condition for painting, so I'll put commercial carpet in the kitchen. I have a piece of scrap vinyl from another unit that will fit nicely in the pantry.

After all the measuring was done, I swept the floors in the dining area, living room, and bedroom. Then, I painted these floors with high gloss floor paint and THEY LOOK GREAT!

With wet floors in my one bedroom apartment, I was forced to move to another unit to work. So, I packed up the supplies and drove over to the 3 bedroom house that I already have rented to a Section 8 tenant (starting about April 15th). This was a house that I was hoping to transform from carpet to painted floors, but unfortunately, that's not working out very well. My project today was to remove the carpet pad from one of the upstairs bedrooms in preparation for sanding and painting the floors. To my dismay, I discovered that the floor is not suitable for painting. It has a large section of hardwood floor missing and a particle board patch in its place. UGH! So, I'll simply put carpet back in this room, without carpet pad of course. I NEVER put carpet pad in rentals, because the idiot tenants spill things on the floor and the pad gets stuck to the floor as if it was concrete!

Finally, I collected a couple of rents this afternoon, two days before the beginning of the month! Gotta like that!

...and then there were NONE!

2009-03-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

That's right. All of my available rentals are now 100% occupied! The demand is simply unbelievable and needless to say - I'm very happy.

I still have a few units that fell through the cracks as I was rapidly expanding my business over the past 6 years. One of those units is a one bedroom apartment that I've been working on. I'm very close to finishing that unit. I still have the floors to paint, one room of carpet to lay, and a little electrical work to do. I'm planning to have that done Monday or Tuesday.

Next on the agenda is a two bedroom apartment that contained a Section 8 tenant when I bought the building. SHE WAS A PIG! Now that she's finally gone, that unit needs a significant cleaning, paint, carpet, a couple of windows, and a few other things. I should have that done next week also and I've already got a renter for that unit.

That about catches me up on the blogging. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Rehab Day!

2009-03-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I often spend the day doing a common task at more than one unit. For example, I might have water leak day, where I fix any little nagging faucets that drip. Another day, I might like to fix any roofs that need repair. Yet another day, I will mow grass, etc.

Today, it was rehab day and I worked on the one-bedroom apartment that is about to be completed and I also started the rehab on the last unrehabbed unit at the pink elephant. The weather here in Ohio was dismal with a steady, and sometimes heavy, rain. That made it a good day to do inside rehab work. In addition, the rain made it a very good day to start the rehab on the remaining unit of the pink elephant. Several sections of the ceiling had fallen in at that upstairs apartment, obviously caused by prior roof leaks. The rain made it an ideal day to see if the roof was still leaking or if it had been repaired by the previous owner. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the apartment was dry as a bone, even with today's heavy rain. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the wood floors in EXCELLENT condition. This will be a very nice apartment once it's rehabbed and despite all the debris on the floors and the holes in the ceiling, it doesn't appear to me that the rehab will be too extensive. The walls are in excellent condition, most of the windows look very good, and the floors are excellent. There are a lot of electrical wires exposed without the accompanying outlets and light fixtures, but that should be easy to fix. There is also no commode or sink in the bathroom, but again that shouldn't be a big deal.

In addition to the rehab work, I took my bicycle to the bike shop to have a new disc brake installed and to get a tune-up. The bike was done by the end of the day and hopefully the weather will be good enought for a ride tomorrow.

Mr. Fix It!

2009-03-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Mr. Fix It was on the job today as I spent the day doing miscellaneous maintenance jobs. To start the day, I removed some of the building materials from the 1 bedroom apartment that I'm rehabbing. This is the initial rehab for this unit, as I have been using it for storage.

My next project was to coat a metal roof that had a small leak. This was the Section 8 duplex that failed inspection a couple of weeks ago when the tenant suprised me by saying that the roof had a leak. Of course, you never really know if the roof is fixed until it rains - that's scheduled for tomorrow.

After that, I went to replace a window pane at another Section 8 apartment. This was the other Section 8 apartment that recently failed an inspection. At the inspection, we discovered that the tenant's kid had decided to break the window shortly before the inspection.

In addition to these projects, I did some more organizing in my new store room and also showed my only remaining vacant rental to a young couple.

That was it for today. By the time I got home, it looked like rain (both outside and on the radar), so I decided to cancel the bike ride for the day. Nevertheless, I have now lost 5 pounds and have 20 to go.

I'm hoping to work on the Pink Elephant tomorrow.

And Then There Was One!

2009-03-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

I rented the only one bedroom apartment that I had available today. That leaves me with only one available rental - a 3 bedroom house (that isn't yet ready to rent). I continue to be amazed at the demand for rentals in the area!

My project for the day was to work on the one-bedroom apartment that I rented today. It wasn't quite done, but the applicants wanted it anyway. So, I replaced the kitchen faucet and some of the associated waterlines; installed numerous light bulbs; did some cleaning, and a few other minor chores. Of course, I also had to sign the lease and other paperwork with the new tenant AND COLLECT THE MONEY (my favorite part).

Six of the seven units at the Pink Elephant are now rented and the remaining unit needs major rehab. I have already started on that and will be doing more of that work as the week progresses.

That was about it for today - nothing too exciting.

My Day in Court!

2009-03-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

Who spends more time in court than the judge? In the past, I would frequently joke that I did! That's because, in the past, I was in court an average of at least once a month - usually evicting an inherited deadbeat tenant. Now that I'm making good progress getting my buildings stabilized and most of the tenants are mine, my eviction rate has really dropped. As I was building my business, my monthly eviction rate was 1% per month. Now that things are more stabilized, my monthly eviction rate is about 1/4 of one percent, which means that I only evict .25% of my tenants each month. I believe that March has been the 6th straight month in a row that I haven't had a single eviction, which is a record for me. The lack of evictions for 6 months is not because I have suddenly become a rental property genius, but rather it's just a statistical anomaly. I'll probably pay for that with 2 or 3 evictions in a single month sometime in the future.

Even though I haven't been to court for evictions lately, I have still been in court for other things. You may recall that I recently posted about going to court to testify against a criminal who attempted to break into 6 of our apartments and then set an arson fire at a neighboring building. Subsequent to that hearing, I got a temporary restraining order for that criminal who continually comes back to that property and has in-fact basically stalked me, possibly because I have kicked him off the property and have had him arrested several times. This guy has a wrap sheet of more than 200 criminal offenses, including a couple of felonies.

Anyway, today was the court proceeding for a permanent restraining order, based on him stalking me. Needless to say, the judge already knew who this criminal is. I testified about the contacts that I have had with the criminal and the threats he has made toward me. I also explained that I am a concealed carry holder (I carry a handgun) and that I thought the situation was very dangerous. The judge did grant a permant restraining order against this criminal for a full five years. I was surprised that a restraining order would last that long. In addition, the judge not only ordered the criminal to stay 300 feet away from me, but also 300 feet from my apartment buildings. That will be a very valuable tool for me as I can have the criminal arrested if he even comes within 300 feet of my buildings. I'm hoping that once the criminal understands that he's going to be arrested everytime that he gets within 300 feet of my building that he may finally give up and stay away.

Furthermore, a felony arson charge and possibly attempted murder charge is still pending and awaiting evidence from the state crime lab. I'm a witness in that case as my surveillance system caught all the action! So, if I can keep him in jail for the next few months, he should eventually be tried on the felony arson and attempted murder charges and should do a long stretch in prison.

After court, I did some work at the Pink Elephant (one of my apartment buildings). I'm getting ready to rehab the final unit in that building and as part of that preparation, I replaced 3 windows and a door today.

The weather in Ohio was cold today, so I didn't go for a bike ride.

Unbelievable Demand!

2009-03-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

My normal workdays during warmer months usually go something like this. I like to get up early and watch the news; watch CNBC; put in any stock or option trades I might be doing (just a hobby); answer e-mails and do a little posting on internet forums; and then go to work sometime between 10 am and 11 am. I typically work for 3-4 hours and arrive home before the last hour of stock market trading. After the market closes, I like to do something like ride my bicycle; ride my motorcycle; or even go scuba diving. Believe it or not, Ohio has excellent scuba diving in a lot of quarries.

The weather today was forecast to be excellent early in the day and then there was a slight chance of rain later in the day. So, I decided to change the order of events for the day. About 11am, I headed for the bike path and rode 14.3 miles. It was a grueling ride as there was a strong wind in my face for the last 7 miles. I'm trying to get into shape for mountain biking season, but that 14 mile ride just about killed me! I think I'll take a shorter ride, maybe 7 miles, tomorrow to give myself a day to rest.

After riding, I took my bike to the bike shop. My bike has disc brakes and the back brake is badly bent. That happens on these mountain biking courses as we jump obstacles and occassionally wreck our bikes trying to get over or around obstacles. At any rate, the brake was dragging every time the wheel made a rotation and was producing an annoying squeak. The technician at the bike shop attempted to straighten it, but it still wasn't right. So, he ordered a new disc brake, which should be in Friday. I took the bike with me and will ride it until he gets the part in.

About 2pm, I finally got to my 3 bedroom house to continue working on the rehab. The project for today was to remove the carpet in one of the upstairs bedrooms. While I was working on the carpet, I had two people stop by to look at the apartment. One was a Section 8 tenant that says she'll take the apartment and will put down a deposit tomorrow. That just shows how incredibly strong the rental demand is in the area. This house still looks TERRIBLE and under more normal circumstances, no-one would have committed to take it in this state of ugliness. Of course, I will be working on this house for the next week or so and it will be very nice before the tenant will be allowed to move in.

I had an ealy dinner engagement, so I had to quit early today (about 4pm). Although I only worked a couple of hours, I was happy with the work I got done and happy about finding a potential tenant for the house.

If you're following my weight loss saga, as of today I've lost 4 pounds with 21 more to go. I probably won't be able to lose a whole pound tomorrow as today's 14 mile excursion really tired me out and I won't be riding that far tomorrow.

Pulling Staples

2009-03-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

My primary project today was to work on the only 3 bedroom house that I have vacant. The tenants left suddenly because they couldn't afford the rent and they left the house a mess. A lot of the carpet needs to be removed or changed and that's where I started today. I started in the living room and removed all the carpet and the pad. As you've heard me say, I NEVER put pads in rentals, but this particular house was my very first house from 5 1/2 years ago and I wasn't very smart about rehabbing rentals at that time. Fortunately, I installed that pad and there weren't a million staples in the pad like there often is when a "professional" installer goes crazy with their staple gun. I spent about 3 hours removing the carpet, pad, and staples. My plan is to sand the floor and then paint it with oil based floor paint.

After finishing the living room, I spent another half hour cleaning the carpet in the downstairs bedroom. Fortunately, the carpet in this room will be salvageable.

By this time, I was tired of working inside and wanted to go for my daily bike ride. The weather was absolutely perfect - sunny and about 70 degrees! I brought my bike with me to work today because there is a bike path near the house I'm working on. I ended up riding 12 1/2 miles and got a very good workout. My weigh-in when I got home showed that I have lost 3 pounds and have 22 to go. No carbs today. I'm hoping that I can lose another pound tomorrow, but I'm sure that my weight loss is going to slow down. The last time I lost 25 pounds, I averaged about 1/2 pound per day.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on working on the carpet in the upstairs bedrooms. I'm also planning to take another long bike ride - hopefully 14 miles!

Lots of Legal Action!

2009-03-16T19:43:00.001-07:00

I had a very nice 3 day weekend. The weather is starting to really improve here in Ohio and I have started training for the upcoming mountain biking season. Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work to do. I have gotten too fat over the past couple of years and need to lose about 25 pounds to be in top shape for the aggressive mountain biking that I plan to do this year. My friends and I are even planning on entering a couple of mountain bike races this year.

Losing weight and getting in shape is just like running a rental property business. First, you need to understand the basics and then you need to work your butt off to succeed. For me, the basics of losing weight is simply to stop eating carbs. I have done that. To get in shape for mountain biking, obviously I need to do a lot of bike riding (today I rode 7 miles with many hills). To help keep me accountable, I'm going to report on my progress on this blog. So far, I've only lost 1.5 pounds with 23.5 to go! My goal is to ride my bike everyday that the weather is suitable. If that doesn't help me pick up the pace, I'm going to start riding twice a day. WHATEVER IT TAKES!

Since this blog is about my rental property business, I guess I better say something about that! Since my last report, I did get a restraining order against the convicted felon that I've been having trouble with. The day after getting the restraining order, I saw the felon on my surveillance cameras at the Pink Elephant (one of my apartment buildings). I reported it to the police and he was arrested again for criminal trespassing. He has more than TWO HUNDRED criminal charges on his record and will be facing trial for felony arson (and maybe attempted murder).

Tomorrow, I will be working on one of my 3 bedroom houses. It needs quite a bit of work to get it ready to be re-rented, including a lot of work on the carpet. I've got to get moving so that I can rent it for April.

Forty Eight Days!

2009-03-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

Forty eight days - that's the penalty for the attempted breaking and entering of 6 apartments and criminal trespassing. As I reported yesterday, I went to court today to testify against this scumbag criminal that went on a crime spree in January. Upon my arrival at court, I was told by a court officer that the criminal pled guilty on February 27th and was sentenced to 48 days in jail which he had already served. He was released on February 27th, but then arrested again for committing another crime and is currently in jail. Today's court proceedings were on the breaking and entering and criminal trespass charges only. He has not yet been charged with the felony arson charge. I'm not sure what the delay is - maybe they're waiting for a grand jury.

After the court hearing, I talked to a court officer about filing a restraining order against this criminal. The paperwork to accomplish this was ridiculous, but I got it done. Hopefully the judge will sign it today and I'll get it from the Sheriff tomorrow. The point in filing a restraining order against this criminal is to give me one more tool for having this scumbag arrested if he shows up at my property. He is a convicted felon and had been convicted of felony assault as well as assaulting a police officer. He also tried to kill the family in the building next door to my apartment building by arson. My hope is that the restraining order will keep him away from me and my property. It will be a great thing if I can have him arrested every time he comes within 1,000 feet of me! After he's arrested a few times for violating this order, he may catch on and learn to avoid me and my property.

Once the paperwork for the restraining order was complete, I went to the police station to talk to one of the Police Captains. There has been a resurgence of scumbags (convicted felons) congregating down the street from the Pink Elephant and I want the police to help me put an end to it.

On a lighter note, I did get the floor painted in the one bedroom apartment. It looked GREAT! I'm hoping to get that apartment finished this week and then rented!

Floor Sanded

2009-03-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm trying to get a one-bedroom apartment finished. It's one that I painted recently and needed to finish the floor. I rented a floor sander and spent Monday afternoon sanding the floor. The floor needed sanded because the previous owner saw fit to GLUE the carpet down (or maybe a tenant did it). I was surprised at how well the sander did removing the rock hard glue.

Today, I had two Section 8 inspections (annual recertification inspections). I pride myself on passing the inspections on the first attempt, but that certainly wasn't the case today. Everything that I had control of passed. However, at the first rental, the tenant suddenly remembered that the roof was leaking in one small spot. In the second rental, the tenant's kid had just broken one of the window panes. So, I have those two things to repair before the reinspection on the 27th.

After the Section 8 inspections, I intended to paint the floor that I sanded on Monday. However, when I went to Lowes to pick up the floor paint, I discovered that it was no longer available. The woman at the paint counter said that they weren't allowed to sell the paint any longer because the VOC's (volatile organic compounds) in this oil based paint were too high. That was extremely disappointing to me as this was very good paint.

So, I spent a good bit of time after that driving all over town trying to find an oil based floor paint at a reasonable price. I finally found an oil based floor paint that appears to be suitable at Menards, but it was about 3pm by then, so I just gave up and came home. It was a beautiful day here in Ohio, so I got a nice bike ride in before dinner. I'm trying to get started with my training for the upcoming mountain biking season!

Tomorrow morning, I will try again to paint the floor in the apartment that I sanded on Monday. After that, I will be in court. I'm the main witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of a local criminal. This was the case that I discussed a couple of months ago in which a criminal attempted to break into several of my apartments and then attempted to kill a family in an apartment building that is next to one of my apartment buildings. He piled trash on their doorstep at 4am and lit it on fire so that they couldn't escape. My surveillance system caught it all on tape and the picture is EXCELLENT! The pretrial is tomorrow and then the trial is on Thursday. I was subpoenaed for both days. Hopefully, they'll put this moron away for a long time - we'll see. I don't have much faith in our justice system.

Another One Rented

2009-03-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

I rented another of my 1-bedroom apartments today. The demand is simply unbelievable! That leaves me with a 1-bedroom apartment and a 3 bedroom house - neither of which are ready to be rented. I need to finish sanding and painting the floor in the 1-bedroom apartment and need to do the floors and other minor cleaning and miscellaneous work in the 3 bedroom house.

My project for today was to continue working on the floors in the 2 bedroom house that I've already rented. My intent is to remove the old carpet and paint the floors. I got the carpet out yesterday, but spend the entire afternoon removing literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of staples that some moron put in the old carpet pad. I got all the staples and tack strips removed from one bedroom and about half removed from the other bedroom. I'll try again tomorrow to finish this project.

Two Units Rented

2009-03-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

The demand for rentals continues to amaze me! As you may recall from my previous posts, I only had one vacant unit (a one-bedroom apartment) at the end of February. Then, I had three moveouts, only one of which gave me notice. So, as of the 2nd of March, I ended up with two vacant 1-bedroom apartments, one vacant 2 bedroom house, and one vacant 3 bedroom house. The 1 bedroom apartment was returned to me in move-in condition, but both of the houses needed work to be ready to re-rent.

I rented one of the 1-bedroom apartments today AND I have a screened applicant that says they will take the 2 bedroom house on Friday or Saturday. I have already trashed out the 2 bedroom house and today I removed the carpet from both bedrooms and found that the wood floors are suitable to paint! That's great news because I HATE having carpet in rentals. Tenants destroy it on a regular basis and it costs money to replace it every two or three tenants. Using a high gloss floor paint makes the floors look great and it's the ultimate in easy to replace between tenants - just roll some more paint on the floor and you're done!

Now that rent collections are over (except the few late payers that will be paying the late fee), I should have time tomorrow to pull out all the staples that were holding down the carpet pad and get those floors painted. If I get lucky, I might even be able to finish the 2 bedroom house tomorrow!

Another bright spot today was that my contractor started installing the new roof at my personal residence. They got the back of the house done today and are planning to do the front tomorrow. I'll be very glad to get that finished.

Let the Rents Rain Down!

2009-03-03T20:31:00.001-08:00

Wow! Today was the mother of all rent days. Usually, I get a lot of rents on the 1st; several rents on the 2nd; a few rents on the 3rd; and then a bunch of rents on the 4th (and then a couple of late payers with their $50 late fees over the next 3 days). Not this month. Today, the 3rd, ended up being the mother of all rent collection days. Most of my tenants pay in cash and my wallet was so full of cash that I was a little concerned about carrying it all around. Usually, when I get that much cash, I make a quick trip home to drop off the money. However, I just didn't get a break and so I had to carry the money.

In addition to collecting rents, I started cleaning out the 3 bedroom house that I got back yesterday. It's a mess and I'll have several rooms of carpet to replace. I did get new miniblinds hung up so that people couldn't see in through the windows. I also got all the loose trash picked up throughout the house and took a few of the larger items out of the house.

Finally, I received a call from the parole officer of the man that I kicked out of one of my apartments (see my previous blog post). The parole officer wanted to hear what I knew about this felon. I told him that he had shacked up with another convicted felon in one of my apartments under the guise of helping my disabled tenant, and that they stole my tenant's prescription medicine and some other items. He was going to check the police reports and then hopefully violate their parole and send them back to prison where they belong.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to get an earlier start and make some serious progress on removing the damaged carpet and getting a new floor installed (whatever I decide to put down).

Rent Time!

2009-03-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

Today was the 2nd, which means rent collection is moving full speed ahead. I've received all my Section 8 rents and many of the private pay tenants' rent. Two more days to go and the rents should be in for another month.

The druggies that were taking advantage of my disabled tenant are now OUT! As it turned out, the guy (who was a relative of the disabled woman) that moved in with my tenant also moved in his shack-up girlfriend. both the guy and the shack-up girlfriend were convicted felons and both were on parole. When I found out, I went over to the apartment and forced them to leave. I told them that if they weren't gone in 5 minutes, I would call their parole officer and have their parole violated. Criminals on parole are not allowed to hang out with other convicted felons. They left a lot of their junk in the property and the tenant threw it all out! Good riddance to bad rubbish!

This afternoon, I received a call from one of my tenants who reported that they moved out yesterday. They didn't give me any notice, but at least they called to say that they left and I didn't have to evict them. I stopped by to pick up the key, which they left on the kitchen counter. The house is a mess and they left a lot of junk (as the riff-raff often does). So, I'll have to start cleaning up the house tomorrow so that I can get it rented.

More rent collecting tomorrow!

The End of a Busy Week!

2009-02-27T19:36:00.001-08:00

It's finally Friday and the end of a very busy week. Yesterday, I described the very frustrating beginning of the week and although today wasn't frustrating, it continued to be very busy. I guess I was owed a busy week after taking almost all of last week off.

I got up very early this morning after my wife heard the plop, plop, plop of water dripping from the ceiling (through the smoke detector) in the upstairs hall. It seems that the storm damage was more severe than I anticipated and last night's one-inch rain allowed the roof to leak. I had tarped the damaged area of the garage and that was dry. However, I didn't have a tall enough ladder to reach the roof over our house and the contractor thought the roofing felt would be sufficient to prevent leaks. There really wasn't any damage to the ceiling, other than perhaps the smoke detector. I will need to repaint the now water-stained ceiling, but that should be it. If it is going to rain again before the roof is replaced next week, that high portion of the roof must be tarped.

I started my work day by declining to accept a tenant that lied about a previous eviction on her application. She and her boyfriend had applied to rent one of my one-bedroom apartments. They already had a local government agency that was going to pay their first month's rent and their security deposit, and I had confirmation of that agency's committment to pay. Unfortunately, when I checked the application, I discovered that she and her husband had been evicted in 2007. Worse yet, the landlord that evicted her was her mother! What kind of scumbag makes her own mother take her to court? I don't want to find out!

Next on the agenda was signing the lease for one of the two 1-bedroom apartments that I had left. The screening results for this woman were very good and she paid two months rent up front. Gotta like that!

I then showed my last available 1-bedroom apartment to another prospective tenant. He liked it and said he will call at the beginning of the week to sign the lease. We'll see.

Then, it was time to collect rents - TWO DAYS EARLY! Because the first day of March arrives on a Sunday, many people got their government checks today and still others got their direct deposits yesterday. So, I ended up picking up about 8 rents today, even though official rent collection doesn't start until the 1st!

Between picking up rents, I received not one, but two calls from tenants that were having problems with their faucets. The first tenant had a kitchen faucet that was making a very loud whistling sound. I thought that the strainer was partial obstructed and took it off and cleaned it. After re-installing it, it still whistled. I took it off and discovered that the faucet was whistling even without the strainer installed. I'll install a new faucet there next week.

The next faucet problem was a little more serious. This faucet would not shut off, even though both knobs felt like they were working properly. I made a quick trip to Lowes to pick up a faucet and installed it. No leaks!

I also stopped by one of my 2-bedroom house that some of my neighboring tenants reported might have experienced a move-out. Sure enough, the tenants who were about 6 months into a one-year lease were gone. There was a significant amount of trash in the house, but I didn't see any damage. If I have any spare time this weekend, I may go trash it out. I don't think it will take much longer than an hour.

I got home in time to make up some quick deposits and run to the bank before it closed. Quite a busy week and I'm glad it's over.

Have a good weekend!

Frustrating Week!

2009-02-26T06:16:00.000-08:00

Before I post all the crap I've dealt with this week, let's start with the good news. I reported in a previous post that the roof on my personal residence was damaged by the 75 mph winds from a recent storm and the 80 mph winds of Hurricane Ike earlier in the year. The grit appeared to have been sandblasted from the shingles and they were paper thin. I called my insurance company about ten days ago. A few days later, an insurance adjuster came out to look at the roof. Then, last Saturday night I received a call from the insurance company. They agreed that the roof was destroyed and they estimated the repairs would be $6,500, which was almost exactly the estimate that my roofer gave me. I told them that I agreed with their estimate and they wired the money directly into my bank account on Tuesday. I was very satisfied with their service!

Now for the CRAP!!!

This week has had a steady stream of maintenance problems. Monday, I received a call from a tenant at the Pink Elephant (one of my apartment buildings) who said that her furnace wasn't working. Her furnace is in the basement and access to that basement is through the storefront, which is now the storage facility for my tools and supplies. As I approached the door to my storage room, I could hear water running (not a good sign). I opened the door to find that a water line from the upstairs apartment had become disconnected and it was spraying water into the storage room. This particular water line is some of that gray, flexible water line that is connected with compression fittings. Unfortunately, the water line that broke was at the rear of the storage area and didn't damage my tools or supplies. The water has soaked the back 10 feet of the floor in the room and was running down the stairs into the basement. The water break apparently hadn't happened too long ago because there was only about an inch of water in the basement. Obviously, I repaired the leak by replacing the line with PEX and then went to look at the furnace. The problem with the furnace was that some water had run down one of the distribution ducts for the furnace and went into the furnace. I called my HVAC guy and he came over to inspect the unit and get it working. That was Monday.

Monday evening, I got a call from a neighbor of one of my apartment buildings. She said that several known druggies were hanging around one of my apartments and that a man, woman, and two children had moved in with one of my tenants. On Tuesday, I investigated the issue. What happened is that one of my tenants had a stroke about 6 weeks ago. She was hospitalized for about 2 weeks and then in a nursing home for a month. Her relatives paid her rent during that time and everything was fine. When she moved home, her relatives asked me if one of the family could stay with her for a week or two to help her get back on her feet. Obviously, I said that was fine. What ended up happening is that a relative that just got out of prison (a convicted felon) moved in with his wife/girlfrend and their 2 kids. All the druggie friends of this guy started hanging around and one of them even stole my tenants prescriptions. What a bunch of scumbags! So, I drove over there and told the felon to "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY PROPERTY" and not come back. I also talked to the relatives of the tenant and the tenant herself. I told them all that if this scumbag isn't gone by the end of the week, or if there are ANY additional probolems in the meantime, that I will evict the tenant. We'll see what happens!

Next, I got a call from one of my better tenants who reported that her shower handle had broken and that she had to use the shutoff to stop a leak. Sure enough, she had over-tightened the handle so often and to such an extent (despite my requests in the past to the contrary) that she broke the shower. That required replacing the entire shower valve, which is in the wall behind the shower. I'll once again ask her to not overtighten the knobs, but it probably won't do any good.

Finally, and this is the kicker, I received a letter that the insurance on the Pink Elephant was being cancelled March 22 due to the "condition of the building". This was clearly a mistake on their part, but I still have had to deal with it. I talked to my agent and he called the insurance company. The sent a copy of the inspection report from the insurance inspector (13 pages in length). The report basically said that the property was safe and clean. It didn't list a single safety issue, but it did list a bunch of cosmetic items that we're still working on. This list included soffits, window trim, etc - all of which meant that we hadn't completed painting the building.

Since I tool over the building a year ago, we've already addressed ALL safety related items; upgraded the electric in several apartments; completely rehabbed 3 units and partially rehabbed 3 others; repaired the stairs; installed a handrail; had all the furnaces inspected and serviced as necessary; installed fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, a very elaborate security camera system, and painted the lower 10 feet of the building. They insured the building last year before any of these items were done and now they are cancelling the insurance because the painting isn't completed? Idiots! So, I'm writing them a letter detailing all of this. Either they will continue the insurance or will get other insurance. This is completely ridiculous and I'll get it worked out, but it is typical of the everyday frustrations of being a landlord.

That gets me up to date with the posting. Hopefully, the rest of the week will be quiet!

Off Most of the Week

2009-02-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

I started the week thinking that I would be working several days this week. I did actually do some work on Monday and everything started out as planned.

The insurance company scheduled an appoint to meet me on Tuesday at my house to look at my storm-damaged roof. The appointment was scheduled from 1 pm to 3 pm. With the appointment being in the early afternoon, I simply wasn't motivated to go to town before the appointment. As chance would have it, the insurance inspector arrived close to 3 pm. After she left, it was too late to start something for the day. The insurance inspector agreed that the roof was damaged beyond repair, but said she wasn't convinced that wind caused the grit to be removed from the roof. I must admit that I don't quite understand that. We had a hurricane (Ike) come through a few months ago with 80 mph winds and then a tremendous storm last week with 75 mph gusts. I'm pretty sure that the grit on the shingles didn't simply walk away in protest! At any rate, she thought that the insurance company would replace the roof.

The weather then got very cold and dreary and I just couldn't get too motivated to do anything on Wednesday. Part of the problem is that there just isn't a lot to do. I'm caught up on all the maintenance and am making good progress on the 1 bedroom apartment rehab. I did manage to balance my checkbooks while I was watching CNBC, so I guess that was something.

On Thursday, I did finally get back to work. I did several small maintenance items, including: fixing a partially clogged shower drain; installing a hand-held shower wand for a disabled tenant; fixing a cabinet in a Section 8 apartment; patching a hole in drywall; and (most importantly) finishing the trim around the floor I recently installed!

Today and tomorrow, my wife and I have some things to do. Therefore, I'm calling it a week and will try again next week.

Have a great weekend!

Routine Day

2009-02-16T16:13:00.000-08:00

Boring - that's the best word to decribe my day.

My day started with a trip to Office Max to pick up some ink for the printer (which cost $95 - ouch). Next stop was at Lowes to pick up materials for the one-bedroom apartment I'm working on. I bought drywall mud, some 2 X 4's, a trim piece, and a couple of other things. That was $55.

After shopping, I headed for the one-bedroom apartment, where I dropped off the materials I bought. About that time, I received a call from a tenant who reported that the water pressure in his sink was low and getting lower. So, I drove over there and cleaned the faucet screen which took all of 5 minutes. From there, I headed over to the Pink Elephant for the big project of the day, which was to make more shelves. The shelves I built today were for my electrical and lighting supplies. After finishing the shelves, I arranged my electrical and lighting supplies on the shelves.

My final stop for the day was at one of my 3 bedroom houses. I received a call last evening about the a broken shower knob in one of the bathrooms. The shower knob was indeed broken and I took it with me so that I can find a replacement. This is a 2 bathroom house, so there was no hurry to replace it today. After working about 4 hours, I had enough for one day and I returned home.

After being bored for 4 hours, I played a little 007 (Quantum of Solace) on the Wii and I'm happy to report that I finally killed all the bad guys and made it to the end of the game! I really like the game, but was disappointed in the ending. The game simply stops at the end of one level and the credits roll. Very strange ending. At any rate, now I've been through the entire game on the "trainee" level and I'll start it again on a more advanced level.

Wow! What a Day!

2009-02-13T14:51:00.000-08:00

In the rental business, you quickly learn to be flexible and to multi-task. That's just a normal part of the business and it's what I expect. However, today seemed like an unusually busy day, since so many different things were going on.

My day started by meeting a contractor to look at the roof on my home. The roof had been damaged by the storm and I wanted to get his opinion of the severity of that damage. I actually spent a few minutes last night looking at the roof myself, and it appeared to me that it was ruined. The shingles on the entire south-facing front of the house are missing all the grit from the shingles, while the shingles on parts of the north side look new. The paper portion of the shingles are literally paper thin in many areas and many are ripped (in addition to the shingles that are completely missing). The contractor's opinion is that the roof is obviously ruined and MUST be replaced. He said that without replacement, any further storms would remove more and more of the roof. In retrospect, I think that the roof was seriously damaged when hurricane Ike came through, with 80 mph winds and that Wednesday's storm finished it off.

After the roofer left and I finished talking to my insurance company, I made a trip to the bank; the post office; and another bank (to make one of my apartment building payments). Next stop was the local treasurer's office, where I paid 5 figures worth of income tax (for only 1/2 a year). OUCH! I just hate seeing all that money going to the government to waste!

The next item on my list was to stop by one of my 1 bedroom apartments to inspect it before the annual Section 8 inspection. Outside of a new smoke alarm battery, the apartment was ready for the inspection. Checking my list, Section 8 was also the next order of business. This task was to drive to the Section 8 office to initial a change they had made to one of their contracts. My newest tenant is a veteran who is part of a brand new Section 8 program for veterans. It seems the paperwork for this new program was slightly different and I needed to initial a change, reflecting that I was not providing air conditioning to the tenant. While I was there, they also gave me the rent check for February for this unit. Getting money is always a good thing. With that check, I can officially report that all rents have been received for February and that another month will go by without an eviction.

While I was at the Section 8 office, I received a call from the service provider for the DSL Line that allows me to access my security cameras via the internet. My DSL Line went out during the big storm on Wednesday. The technician said that he would be at the apartment building in about 10 minutes, so I made a bee line for the Pink Elephant. Sure enough, the techician found that the line had been damaged in the storm. After some work, the line was fixed. Once the line was fixed, I needed to do some reprogramming of the computer and router to get the cameras back online.

Once the cameras were fixed, I walked next door to meet the Section 8 inspector for a complaint inspection. This Section 8 tenant is a pain in the butt. Every time she has a concern, she calls Section 8 instead of calling me. On two occassions she has plugged up the toilet or sewer line with tampons and baby wipes. I'm not very happy with her and will not renew her lease when her year is up. Her complaints today were roaches, spiders, termites, and the plugged sewer line (which I already fixed). Of course, the roaches and spiders are being caused by her filthy housekeeping habits and I have told her that repeatedly. In fact, I think that the reason she called Section 8 is that I accused her of living like a PIG (which she does and I told Section 8 exactly that). To make a long story short, this is a BRICK BUILDING, so there were no termites. Those were a figment of her imagination. The inspector took a flashlight and checked every nook and cranny of the apartment. After a very thorough inspection, he was only able to find two roaches and he told her that her poor housekeeping skills were attracting the roaches. There were numerous spider webs around the apartment and obviously she was too lazy to take a broom and remove them. That addressed her list of grievances and needless to say, the apartment passed the inspection with flying colors.

My final project was to install the quarter-round trim pieces around the laminate floor that I installed a few days ago. As it turned out, I was about two feet short of quarter-round stock and I'll finish that along with installing the transition pieces another day.

Have a great weekend!

More Storm Damage

2009-02-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

We're having a banner year for storm damage here in Ohio. So far this year, we've had 3 major events. First was hurrican Ike which rolled through Ohio earlier in the year with hurricane force winds and did a lot of damage to the area, including minor damage to a few of my rentals. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we had a major ice storm drop more than an inch of ice on the area. This damaged a lot of trees and resulted in relatively minor damage to some of my property and some of the neighbor's property (when my trees fell on their property and downspouts were ripped from my buildings). Then, last night we have very strong winds go through the area. I don't know how strong they were, but they damaged the shingles on the roof at my home (which were probably weakened by ike) and they pulled the post that held our basketball backboard right out of the ground. That was a 4 inch steel post set in 2 feet of concrete! To my amazement, I didn't receive any reports of significant damage at any of the rentals.

The other issue that occurred as a result of the storm was that my security cameras went offline. They are still working and recording, but I just can't watch the action from home via the internet. So, I went to the storeroom at the Pink Elephant to see what the problem was. After going through the diagnostic, I determined that the DSL service was down and I called the service provider. They will be sending out a technician - hopefully tomorrow.

Finally, I had two small maintenance issues today. The first issue was a leaking trap under the kitchen sink of one of my two bedroom apartments. That was literally a 5 minute fix. The next issue was a ceiling fan that the tenant reported was sparking. I told the tenant to turn it off and not use it until I arrived. To my surprise, the tenant was correct and sparks were flying when the fan blades would reach certain points in their rotation. To be honest, I didn't look any further to see what was wrong as I'm taking out all ceiling fans anyway. Ceiling fans are too complicated for rentals (tenants) as evidenced by a recent lawsuit I read about in which a tenant was bouncing on the furniture and lost an eye when struck by the ceiling fan blade. Anyway, I removed the fan and replaced it with a builder's quality light (less than $6 at Lowes).

That was it for work today and then I came home to look at my own damaged roof. I have a contractor coming to look at it tomorrow and then I'll decide whether we'll turn it in to the insurance.

Here We Go Again!

2009-02-11T18:49:00.000-08:00

As I write this post, the wind outside is blowing literally 60 mph. That's bad enough, but unfortunately this wind is following a very significant ice storm that occurred only 2 weeks ago. The ice storm was severe enough that numerous trees were destroyed and even more were damaged. In fact, city crews are still busy picking up downed tree limbs from the ice storm and crews have just recently finished getting all their electric customers re-connected.

This evening, I received a call from one of my low income tenants at the Pink Elephant (one of my apartment buildings). The tenant told me that the wind had knocked the electrical line down and that it was sparking. I called the electric company to report the incident and then drove down to the building to check things out and ensure that the tenants didn't electrocute themselves. When I arrived at the building, the first thing I noticed was that the lights were on. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the only thing that had happened was that a tree limb had fallen on a phone line and knocked it down. It certainly wasn't "sparking" and never had been. As often happens with low-income tenants, they were exaggerating! Therefore, I ensured that the phone company had been called and came home.

This afternoon, before all the excitement started with the storm, I went to Lowes for parts and then worked on my one bedroom apartment. No big deal. Tomorrow, I'm planning to finish the trim work on the laminate floor I installed yesterday.