The Successful Landlord Blog

I recently read an article by a BankRate.com columnist about how flipping houses is not always a bad thing. The author goes into the fraud aspect of flipping and how it can hurt the first-time home buyer.

As an investor, I know that when we were looking for properties to invest in we could spot a “flipped” house down the street. Upon closer inspection, without fail, we would have had to do repair work on the house so that it would stand up to the abuse that most tenants inflict on a rental property.

Needless to say, we never bought one of these houses and I’m glad we didn’t. Thankfully most of our rentals were built in a time when “remodelling” was just not that common I guess.

Houses in Florida that were built in the 60s and 70s were built pretty solidly. There’s no drywall as we know it. Back then they used real “sheet rock.” The kind of wall board that has actual concrete in it. If you wanted to “kick” a hole in the wall, you’d need tools or at least a good pair of steel toe boots.

I just read a post by my fellow blogger Clifford of ChangingMyDirection.com about how he just paid off his school loans and how happy he is about that.

I understand his glee as had I recently paid off a personal credit card that I have been using to rehab the rental properties we bought over two years. Now granted, the amount it cost us the rehab these properties was probably not as much as a school loan or mortgage but we did this with four properties and paid off the balance each time.

From my personal experience, paying off these balances was no less than of a pain-in-the-ass. My reason for doing it this way was to use parts of a chunk of cash we had for the down-payment on the various mortgages and use a credit card for all the small things needed to do the rehab. Well, those small things amounted to about 10K-15K per property.

As I mentioned, not fun at all in the long run to pay off. But now it’s finally done and I think I’ve had enough for a while.

Not to mention I’ve grown kind of bored with the property thing and am on to more interesting things. It’s kind of good because in our area there are just no good deals to be had.

It seems like the real-estate sellers around here are holding on to the idea that they will actually get their asking prices from the market that they would have gotten two years ago.

It’s good to dream.

Why oh why, is it necessary to beg, plead, cajole and socially maneuver to get certain contractors to come out to work here in Brevard County, FL? If this is typical, someone please let me know by leaving a comment.
I was recently out at a one of our rentals for something unrelated and the tenant mentioned that certain electrical outlets and light fittings were not working. After checking the obvious things like tripped breakers in the electrical panel and broken switches, I determined that I’m in need of the services of a professional electrician.

Getting an electrician to come out, however, is another story. So far, I’ve had electricians say that they will be there at a certain time and not show up. I’ve also had one electrician say he can’t make it out for a full month.

I mean really, I will pay for the services, on the spot if necessary, but this is getting pretty ridiculous. Brevard County is still growing and I think that when enough of the general public starts demanding decent service, the contractors will fall into line….hopefully.