The students I have living in my rental have decided they will renew their lease for an additional year. While they haven’t been trouble free, they have never been late with the rent, and haven’t torn the place up. So I’ve really got little to complain about.

I’ve also decided to raise the rent by about 5% to try to stay in line with the local rental market.

I’ve been told by several people that have or do own rental property that it’s very important to keep increasing the rent each year, within reason of course. This is primarily …

Easter weekend was shaping up to be rather quiet and uneventful, right up until I was ready to walk out the door to go to Easter dinner.

“Yeah, Grant? My roommate and I both left our keys in the house, and we need to get in pretty quick so we can go to Easter dinner with our parents…”

My first thought was “yeah, me too. See you in a couple hours…”

Then, after preventing thought from turning into noise, I realized that I had provisions for this in the lease.

“That’ll be $50, payable by Friday, I’ll be there in an hour.”

So …

I got a call from one of my tenants on Monday indicating the pilot light went out, and she wanted me to explain to her how to light it.  A disaster waiting to happen: gas, a match, and someone who’s never brought the two together with the intention of containing the result.

So I told her to go to the water heater, remove the metal panel and look to make sure the pilot light was actually out.  Her response left me scratching my head.  “No, there’s a flame there”, she replied.

“So why did you think the pilot light went out? Did you run out of hot water?”

“No”, she replied, “the air …

As a landlord, I don’t mind being called in to fix a problem, so long as it’s an easy problem to solve!

My tenants sent me an email last night stating that the bathtub wouldn’t drain after taking a shower. I wrote back and asked if any water had drained between last night and this morning, and they replied that not a single drop had drained from the tub during that period.

This is some pretty useful information. If a pipe clogs due to hair, grease or other buildup on the inside wall of the pipe, it does so over time, not all of a …

Last night I pulled out my “Rental Expense Receipts” folder and started sorting them out so my tax preparer wouldn’t have to. A money saving effort on my part.

I turned to the good ‘ole IRS for some guidance on how many categories I need to establish, and what I can deduct and what I can’t.

Turns out, there are just 3 categories: Repairs, Improvements and “Other”.

According to the IRS, a “repair” keeps your property in good condition. It doesn’t materially add to the value of your property or substantially prolong its life. Repainting your property inside or out, fixing gutters or floors, fixing leaks, plastering, and replacing broken …

There are times I love my insurance company, and other times I’m not quite as fond.

However, whenever your insurance company sends you money for no apparent reason, it’s always a good thing. Today I received my yearly USAA dividend check to the total amount of $58.91. Last year is was just shy of $100 and in previous years it has been upwards of $150.

Overall, USAA will return more than $6.4 billion to its members in 2006 in the form of dividends, claims payments, distributions and other monetary benefits. This adds up to almost half of the total revenue USAA brought …

No matter how many times I’ve heard it, no matter how many times I’ve said it, every once in a while I have one of those “Doohhh” moments that reaffirms my faith in the saying:

“You get what you pay for.”

Once thought dead, the saga of the washer and dryer for my rental unit lives on.

Yesterday I got an email from one of the students in my rental stating the dryer was burning his clothes and ripping the buttons off his shirts.  In a previous investigation, I found the dryer drum was not turning true on the spindle and created a gap between the …

My tenants want a cat.  It could be worse (i.e. Pit Bull, Rotweiller, Great Dane..).

So I have to write an addendum to the original lease allowing for a pet under certain terms and conditions.  My search for lease addendum forms on the internet turned up a host of different sites providing free forms for landlords and other real estate professionals.

In short, the addendum needs to outline the following terms, among others:

Type of pet, along with color, weight, height
The additional pet deposit due
Any increase in monthly rent
Responsibilities of the pet owner
Freedom of liability of the landlord

I took bits and pieces from the various …

Yesterday 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, …

After I got the lease signed on my first rental property, everything went fairly smoothly and I had no complaints…

…then it got hot.

Evidently, the air conditioner was blowing air, just not cold air.  After a day of elevated nerves and frustration that the air conditioner might be my first major expense, I was relieved to find out that it was only a loose wire on the back of the thermostat.

Whew!  While it did cost me about $60 to fix the problem (a hefty $49.99 for the service call and $10 to check the unit and screw the wire back to the box), it …