The Successful Landlord Blog

So, this past weekend I discovered a really cool service you can use for property scouting. The service is called Jott.com. This free (my favorite kind) service converts your voice into lists, reminders, notes to self, notes to others, etc.

Where the cool part comes in is when you link Jott to Zillow.com. Now, seeing that Zillow is not super accurate, you want to use it to just get an idea of the price of a property. Basically, you call up Jott.com at 866-JOTT123 from your cell phone and say”Zillow Melbourne Beach” for instance. Then say the street number and spell out the street name.

At that point Jott.com will text message you with a Zestimate^® from Zillow. How cool is that!!??

Jott.com also offers a “custom” link where you can have Jott query your own web service (if you’re programatically inclined) and return the web service response to you. Now I’m going to be awake all night thinking about what I can do with this thing!

Ok, so here’s a good one. Today I received a survey in the mail from the City of Palm Bay (Florida) asking whether I would consider paying to connect to a reclaimed water source presumably to water the grass at one of my rental properties.

To be honest, I had to laugh. First off, I don’t water the grass at ANY of my properties. Thankfully, the lawn is really just weeds but they provide a good ground covering for the beach sand that is most of Florida.

Second, the City of Palm Bay, by law, orders that if you own property, even if it’s vacant, you MUST pay for garbage collection and water/sewer base charges.
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