The Successful Landlord Blog

So, as I’ve mentioned in the past, Florida residents are getting royally ripped off by the property insurance companies.

Here’s a synopsis:

First the insurance companies decide that we are too likely to be hit by hurricanes and so they jack up the premiums. When the homeowners complain to the insurance companies, they don’t listen.

So then the homeowners complain to the state government since insurance is regulated by the state. Many insurance companies decide that they will not insure anything which is not owner occupied. No problem, we have Citizens Property Insurance which is the state owned “insurer of last resort.” yay. Read the rest of this entry »

It flat out amazes me that companies who have a local monopoly supplying a necessary service can be and often behave like total bastards.

Case in point, Waste Management Melbourne Hauling is the company that collects trash and refuse for the three different municipalities in which we own property, rental and otherwise. All but one city government includes a charge for the services provided by Waste Management on the water bill, because it stands to reason that if you’re using water, you’re probably generating garbage too. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok folks, here’s a nice Friday story. New tradition maybe? This post is kind of a follow-up to one of my posts called Why We Are Expected To Be Lazy.

So, I’m on hold the other day and the hold music is a local West Palm Beach, FL radio station. This cheesy “credit repair” commercial comes on saying how we can fix your credit, blah blah blah.
At the end of the commercial, the announcer says, “We take care of unlucky people.”

What?!

U-N-L-U-C-K-Y?

WTF!? Read the rest of this entry »

Hola readers. Just a quick note to let you know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth or anything.

I’ve just been kind of busy with the other part of my life. It seems that one of my larger clients has seen it fit to behave like a complete ass, so much so that I’ve made up my mind to set a timeline and dump them from my client list. They run a lot of code that I wrote so I can’t just walk lest I get sued on top of having to endure their idiocy. Read the rest of this entry »

So, during the run-up to the supposed housing bubble, the local property taxing authorities have been totally taking advantage of rising property prices by jacking up the assessed property values and thereby collecting more money. Somewhat evil, but hey, it’s the government we’re talking about.

Actually what’s even more evil is that the county governments are threatening to raise the millage rate (thereby increasing the percentage of tax they collect) if the Florida state legislature passes a law forcing them to reduce property taxes due to screaming homeowners (see below), but I digress. Read the rest of this entry »