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Category Archives: rental properties

OK, NOW It’s Cold in the Office

The finished ductwork. You can sort of see two vents.

You have to hand it to Felix. He got all the air conditioning woes taken care of as fast as humanly possible. Our Villa Park B casita had a frozen compressor, which thankfully was still under warranty (nonetheless it cost us $700 for what was not covered). Rental properties aren’t for wimps. But we need to put our tenants’ needs before ours, so that one got fixed first!

The new Internet thermostat. Lee says it has a better interface than the Nest.

Felix then trekked up to Cameron and checked out why the brand-new system wasn’t cooling. Thank goodness it wasn’t the brand-new compressor! It was, instead, the brand-new thermostat.

So, Lee took the opportunity to get a different kind of thermostat put in, which he can control via his phone. This will be handy later, when we are working in the Gillis house and renting out this space. If someone leaves the thermostat at 60 in summer or 80 in winter, we can take care of it!

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Air Conditioning Woes Everywhere

Miles and miles of ductwork!

One of our Austin tenants was all upset that Mandi and Lee weren’t answering her calls last night (well, Lee never answers calls unless you’re in his contacts), because her air conditioning was down and it was 80 in her house. She happened to hit a moment when Mandi was spending time with her family and we had 7 guests at our house (not stressful at all, nope). She then called Carol, so she got a hold of someone, at least. This is when an answering service would be great, but we really don’t have enough properties to justify that expense. So, we need to remember to be vigilant.

I know it’s hard when you can’t get in touch with your landlord, but to be honest, I don’t think I ever tried calling on a Sunday night, even when the fridge went bad and leaked. We cleaned it up and called on Monday.

But, these are different times. I used to deal with all sorts of imperfections in my apartments and rental homes, but today’s a little different. I think with rents so high, people expect 24/7 service, and I don’t blame them!

In any case, once Mandi got back to her phone, she contacted Lee and  we got things rolling. Felix will work on her house today. Whew, since they had a sick child at the house, we do understand the need and sympathize a lot. I’d might be tempted to say, “Most HVAC repair people don’t work on Sundays, anyway,” but since we had our office work done on a Sunday, I’d be untruthful!

That’s hot.

Speaking of Woes

It’s always something when you get a new system. I just happen to have to stay in Cameron today rather than going into the office in Austin. So, I walked into the office this morning expecting cool breezes to be wafting over me. Instead, I saw the thermostat telling me it was 86 in the room. That’s hotter than it was with no air conditioning. And the system was blasting away.

Now, Lee had it set to 82 at night (he’s thrifty), but it shouldn’t have gotten up to 86! So, we are investigating as we speak. At least it’s down to 84 now. Balmy! We know there’s some more work to be done on the system, so we are sure Felix’s crew will get to the root of any problem when they come back.

They will be returning in any case, because they need to get some more parts to finish the vents going to the offices and a few other things to tidy up the arrangement, so we aren’t going to go crazy cleaning the office any time soon. At least we’re partway there!

From Ductwork. To hide or not to hide? That is the question, by Chris Drake

Hey, Let’s Do This!

The House Beautiful magazine for September showed up at the house this weekend, and it had an article on painting things you normally would not consider painting. The very first thing it showed was a room with a powder pink air conditioning duct running through it. It looked fine, if you like pink. I did a little digging, since I can’t share that photo, and found this article on painting air ducts from an Austin company. It showed the red example here. Hey, red is our corporate them accent color! I like the idea of making those silver ducts into a feature!

Of course, we are trying to create a neutral backdrop for events, so maybe the red isn’t ideal. But, you could always cover it with tulle. That’s what Mandi would do.

I’ll update the temperature as the day goes on in the comments.

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Watch the Sunset with New Floors!

entry way.

A few months ago now, the house that our friends David and Kim rent from the company suffered flooring damage when the HVAC backed up and poured water onto the floor covering of the hallway. That was no good at all. They pulled up all of the pieces that got wet and had started experiencing a bad smell really quickly. They didn’t throw the flooring  away though, just put to the side, out of the house where they could be gross without bothering anyone.

We had the blockage fixed first, then realizing that this was going to be a pretty big job and how much damage was done, we decided to call our insurance company and filed a claim. We only do that if we have to.

Look at that nice trim.

In this case, for that much flooring to be replaced, we had to file one. It was not just the hallway, but the entire living room and the other hallway at the other end of the house had to have the flooring replaced. They all had the same kind of flooring and it was all connected. Considering its age, there was no way we would match it, and we weren’t going to just let parts of the hallway look different and awful.

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Don’t Get Sick! Your Credit Can Suffer!

You can’t predict illness or accidents, but you can predict they will be costly.

Yesterday I wrote about how some of our tenants would really like to buy the houses they are living in. Sure, there are lots of people who, in the current economy, prefer to rent, but there are others who would rather put their money into property, because as you know, they aren’t making any more land!

Wanting to buy a home and actually being able to do so are two very different things. Unlike the people you see on House Hunters, who always seem to have money for million-dollar homes in their late twenties, a lot of people have barriers to coming up with the all-important down payment, or they have such bad credit that lenders will not let them buy other than with cash. Too often, both of these situations are caused by people having the misfortune of becoming injured or ill, which in this country means anyone not mega-rich or lucky enough to be able to afford good insurance will owe lots and lots of money.

Here are a couple of examples of people we are currently working with (details are vague to protect their privacy).

Small Business Owner Gets Hurt

One of our tenants was a small-business owner when they first leased one of our houses. Small business owners often have trouble buying a house, because they don’t have the proof of a steady income that’s needed. Then, our tenant became badly hurt in an accident while engaged in a sport they loved. Of course, this prevented them from being able to work for a while, and of course, large hospital and doctor bills piled up (it’s also really hard for small business owners to afford insurance; that’s why I have a job in Corporate America that will insure me and Lee).

This tenant had always intended to buy this home from us. But, who will lend them the money? No one, so far. So, they keep paying us for the house they’d like to own and renovate for themselves.

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Thinking about Rental Properties

When the sale on this one is finalized, we’ll have to decide whether its future is a rental or a sale.

Why am I thinking about rental properties? Well, many of us real estate investors own a portfolio of rental properties. It’s the thing to do, according to all those classes we take and books we read. Because we are good investors, all of us at Hermit Haus have rental properties, both as a group and separately. We have them to provide a steady source of income that we can rely on, or as they say in the biz, cash flow.

A good rental property owner knows to take into account insurance, property taxes, any mortgage on the property, and anticipated repairs into account while figuring out exactly how much cash is going to flow. That’s smart.

Lately though, some of our properties have had one issue after another. The hot water doesn’t work. The air conditioner has a problem. Is that mold or just mildew from the recent rain? We want to replace the floor. Our drainage is bad. As you can imagine, that eats into the old cash flow. It’s hard to guess how much maintenance a house is going to need per year. Houses are like that.

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