Rental Property Update
August 26th, 2006 by Grant in: Rental PropertyYesterday I went over to meet with the tenants at my rental property to address some concerns they had:
“It seems our house isn’t sealing up very well, we got our utility bill and it was a little high. Also, we’ve got a house fly problem in the kitchen, and we’d like to get a cat.”
After meeting with the tenants, they showed me a slight gap between where the back door meets the door jam. While it isn’t big enough to dump all their expensive cool air to the outside, it may be an entry source for the house flies (they’ve also got the kitchen trash can right by the door, which doesn’t help). So I agreed to come back and shim the door to plug the gap.
As for their electric bills, I remember my first summer in college when I had to pay my own electric bills. I received the July bill in the mail and immediately picked up the phone and question how three guys could ever use that much electricity. After listening to my sob story, the electric company representative asked what we had our thermostat set to, and after hearing we’d had it set to 68 degrees 24/7, she suggested that an arctic climate in July is a luxury you pay for…
Anyway, I suggested they call the electric company and find out what the highest bill was over the last 12 months and see how that stacks up to their current bill. I also suggested that they raise the thermostat to something above 75, and even further when they’re gone for the day.
Welcome to the real world, kids!
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August 26th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Hey Corner Office,
Sounds like par for the course. Good for you for being firm around the electric bill. Its important to be responsive, but not knuckle under with tenants.
Best,
James
August 26th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Yeah, what ever you do, don’t let them think you’ll bow to your every demand!
August 29th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
68 and even 75 is a luxury. My 7-day programmable thermostat is set to 77 or 78, as recommended by those Flex-Your-Power messages. When no one is home, the setting is at the max of 90.
August 29th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Yeah, we have ours set to about 80, and if it gets too warm, we turn it down manually, but it always reverts back to the program at the next interval.
I like the idea of setting the thermostat at 90 except for one hang up.
The warmer the inside of the house is, the longer it will take to cool it down to something tollerable. So there’s some setting that is optimal in terms of efficiency.
-Grant
August 30th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
The warmer the inside of the house is, the longer it will take to cool it down to something tollerable. So there’s some setting that is optimal in terms of efficiency.
I set the thermostat to switch on the air conditioner roughly half an hour before I get home everyday.
September 4th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
[…] My tenants want a cat. It could be worse (i.e. Pit Bull, Rotweiller, Great Dane..). […]