I’ve been out for a while.  It’s been a rough couple of weeks.

My tenants of three solid years graduated from college and moved out, and I had exactly 9 days to go through the property, fix what needed fixin’ and clean the crap out of just about everything in sight.

Fortunately for me, the girls that moved out did a fairly decent job of getting all their stuff out on time and doing some general cleaning before turning in their keys, and for that I am extremely grateful.  It could have been a whole lot worse, and I didn’t bat an eye when I gave them their entire deposit back.

Then there was the bathroom.  The old shower surround was probably 20 years old, or at least it looked it, and was yellow, brittle and moldy.  It had to go.

Unfortunately the plaster wall behind the surround didn’t want to stick around either, and it ended up going too.

Then there was the tub itself.  It was definitely original and the enamel had worn off to the point where it was rusting and streaking down the tub.  If it was going to be replaced, now was the time to do it…

Long story short, I muscled the old cast iron tub out of the bathroom, taking about 3 other plaster walls with it, and replaced it with a new, modern tub and shower surround.

I’d rather not do that again.

Luckily I got the placed refreshed and cleaned up just in time for the new guys to move in.

And now I’m back to collecting rent.

I’ll have some more of the saga in the coming days, but now it’s time to relax for a while…  and hope stuff doesn’t break… any more than already has…

Rental Property Rental Property

Well, a good three year lease has come to an end, and my tenants have elected to move out.  Two of them are going on to grad school, and I’m not sure what the other is doing.

I must say, they were pretty good tenants.  Sure, I had some phone calls fairly late at night with a broken thermostat and an extinguished pilot light on the water heater, but that is to be expected.  Stuff doesn’t last forever.  Then there was the major plumbing problem in the basement, but my buddy the plumber knocked out that problem fairly quickly.

There was a case where all three of them locked themselves out of the house on Easter Sunday, just as I was sitting down to eat with the family.  But if that’s my biggest problem, I’ll take it.

The current tenants move out July 31st, and I’ve managed to land some new students who move in August 10th.  I don’t expect any major repairs between tenants, but I thought I’d give myself a good week in case anything major needs to be done.  I suspect I’ll need some paint on the interior, a carpet cleaning, and a good old fashioned wipe down.  But we’ll see.

Rental Property Rental Property

A foreclosure report from RealtyTrac.com indicates that foreclosures in the US swelled to over 800,000 in Q1 of 2009, a 24% increase from the same quarter a year prior.

To put it in perspective, one out of every 159 houses received a foreclosure notice, just in the first quarter of this year.

It’s no surprise that the hardest hit areas are Arizona, California and up the West coast, along with Florida, the entire East coast and inland to nearly the Mississippi River.  The Midwest has held up fairly well in the foreclosure department, although the highly populated areas of Texas and strangely most of Arkansas are suffering.

In my area, there are some foreclosure opportunities to be had for investment purposes, but they’re not moving.  Investors aren’t gobbling them up like I thought they would, which makes me wonder about the overall perception of the real estate market.  There’s just no appetite for risk right now.

A prospective future rental?

As for me, there’s a 3 bedroom, 1 bath single family home near my previous rental that is currently in foreclosure.  Asking price is $18,000 which would represent a third of what it would appraise for, give or take.

Unfortunately it’s located to the South of the Campus, so it violates requirement #1 of my criteria for future rental properties.

I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it doesn’t move in the next couple weeks, I’ll have to get a tour and find out why.

Real Estate foreclosures, investment property, Rental Property