The Successful Landlord Blog

So I’ve noticed a trend in the landlord business over the years. When dealing with contractors, there seems to be ABSOLUTELY no trust toward customers when it comes to payment. In the past, when I’ve hired various contractors of any size, be they a one man show or a large company, without fail, they find it necessary to show up on my doorstep looking for immediate payment when the job is complete.

Now, I can understand if it’s a larger contract like a whole-house tile job and the contractor has never done business with you before, but when it’s the 6th job of that size for the same customer and they still offer to make the trip all the way across town to your office to “drop off the invoice” which means “drop off the invoice and collect payment,” I don’t get it. Read the rest of this entry »

Currently have one detached single-family house on the market for rent. When the last tenants moved out we had to hire a landscaping crew to come in and perform a complete makeover on the yard.

The tenants had “maintained” the yard by cutting the lawn about once every 2-3 months which in Florida, in the summer, is a big no-no. For those readers not familiar with Florida lawn care, you have to cut the grass every week in the summer to prevent the grass from growing as tall as your waist.

The lawn crew we hired consisted of three men and this job took them 7 hours of work so you can get an idea of how overgrown the yard was. Read the rest of this entry »

So, back in August of last year, in the heat of summer, a tenant called to let me know that their air conditioning system was not working. I called a very well known (read: big) local HVAC company to attend to the problem.

Basically, due to a recent tropical storm, this company was behind with their service calls and sent out an incompetent technician who came out to the property at the very end of the day, misdiagnosed the problem, added freon and promptly left.

The next day I called to let the company know that their guy didn’t fix the problem. They promised to send someone else out who, arrived at the very end of the day, properly diagnosed (but did not fix) the problem and again, promptly left.

The following day, a Friday, I again called the company who let me know that they were backed up on service calls and they would not be able to come out until Tuesday, due to the Labor Day weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

So this week, the A/C unit in one of the rental houses slowly started to fail. It was working fine but then it just wouldn’t cool. These days, in Melbourne (Florida), the temperatures have been reaching into the low 90′s and the humidity is just nasty and sauna like. The tenants in this property were understandably freaking out.

When they first told me about the situation, I immediately called the A/C company who installed the unit about 2 years ago. They’re usually pretty good and reliable. This time however, they gave me an ETA window of between 10am to 12 noon. They didn’t show up until 5:30pm. When the A/C tech did show up he quickly said, “Oh, all you need is some freon.” There was no improvement in the cooling of the system. Read the rest of this entry »

This post really has nothing to do about being a landlord but … anyway. Last week I had to finally break down and replace the air conditioning unit in my primary residence. The one that was installed was about 15 years old and apparently not very efficient when it was new. For the 5 years I have lived in this house the unit mostly de-humidified the environment, but cooling? Not so much.

I got a recommendation from a local real estate agent for a good AC company here in Melbourne Beach, FL. The guy that came out is the president of the company, installer, salesman and service technician. Basically a one man show.

Read the rest of this entry »