Letter of demand Most landlords in our area have their residential leases set up so rent is due on the first and late after the fifth of each month. That scenario means that on the sixth of the month, a letter of demand should be issued to any tenant who has not paid. This letter is often referred to as a “pay or quit” letter, and it should read…
Explaining the four jobs of a tenant I’ve written to you many times about how we “hire” people to do the four jobs of a tenant. And I’ve said those fours jobs are the standard by which we choose our tenants and also how we decide to “fire” them when they’re not performing. And just to remind you, the four jobs are: 1. Take care of the house….
Train, train and retrain your tenants I tend to be an open book, especially when I mess up, because it holds me accountable and helps me to learn from mistakes. So, with that fact in mind, I’m going to tell you about something I messed up on with a rental, and then, I’ll tell you how we remedied it. I got a little lax with doing inspections…
Do you take pride in your rentals? As I’ve told you before, I like doing service calls on our rentals. One of the big reasons for this is I get to see how our tenants are keeping the properties. We pride ourselves on good customer service, which includes a fast response time on service calls. So when something breaks, I’m often there within a few hours. As such,…
A good property management system I have been out working on rentals a lot this past week. Contrary to what you hear about most landlords, I actually like working on our properties. The reason for this is because I get to see how our people are doing, how they are keeping the house up and if they are doing the four jobs of a tenant. And just to…
Learning new things at eviction court We are 0 for 2 in magistrate court this month. How’s that for starting a real estate investor column? Truth be told, we didn’t lose both cases. They got dismissed. The first one, which took place about two weeks ago, I wrote about in “COVID, cabinets and courthouses.” But we had to go again for a different property this week. During…
COVID, cabinets and courthouses The effects of COVID-19 have reached many facets of our lives in 2020. On the real estate business level, they have has affected our purchasing capabilities — specifically how we’ve been able to purchase materials on our rehabs. It started out with 5/4 boards not being available for building decks. Then the shortage moved into other lumber areas before the eventual price increase on almost…
Missing my friends I’m missing my friends a lot lately. I didn’t even realize how much until this past week when I got to see friendly faces I haven’t seen all year. The first one was a total surprise. I came home for lunch and as I rounded the corner to my house, I saw a gold SUV sitting in my driveway. That SUV belonged to nonother than…
The Odd One On this episode of What’s The Deal, Joey and Ashley show you how to acquire a rental property via owner financing and then compare and contrast the rehab differences in a rental verses a flip project.
Cool it, buster When you own rental property, there are a lot of expenses you should plan for. Most people understand making payments on their mortgage and property taxes monthly, but there are sporadic expenses you should be saving for monthly as well. They include things like vacancy and repairs. The savings we set aside for paying these costs is something we call a rental’s “expense factor.” We…