Today was a very productive day. I started the day by replacing a defective shutoff valve and some of the water line at one of my new 2 bedroom rentals. Of course, I replaced it with PEX, which is a plastic line. With all the copper thefts recently, it is absolutely foolish to put copper in any rentals! This started out as a $36 job, but ended up being a $186 job after I needed to buy a 3/4 inch crimp tool for PEX and a bag of 3/4 inch collars. I already had a 1/2 inch crimp tool, which I use frequently, but the main line was 3/4 inch. However, I replace water lines all the time and I know I will need this tool again, so I bought it.

After finishing this job, I had an applicant come by to take a look at this and a couple other rentals. After showing her three rentals, I decided to stop by my new apartment building on the way back. When I approached the building, I could see that someone was sitting on the steps in front of the building. It was the drug addict that was arrested a couple of weeks ago!!! He had apparently just gotten out of jail and was already back at the property. I told him to IMMEDIATELY leave the property or I would have him arrested again. He left and I watched him go down the street.

I then returned to the property to clean up the roof and back yard. Some tenants are simply pigs. The previous pigs that inhabited this house had thrown a bunch of stuff onto the roof. This included beer cans, a fan, some toys, and other stuff. The back yard was even worse than the roof. There was all kinds of trash and debris back there and I bagged it all up. Finally, I repaired the wooden privacy fence, which was literally falling down. The posts were firmly in the ground, but whoever originally put the fence up had used nails that were too short to install the panels. One entire section had fallen off and another section was only attached at one end by a single nail. I used 4 inch galvanized screws to reinstall the panels. With that project complete, I called it a day.

Today was a four hour workday that was quite productive. It all started with an hour of paying bills. With dozens of rentals, there are ALWAYS bills to pay. After paying some bills, I made a trip to the bank to deposit one of my first rents for February. Then, I went to one of my apartments to fix a gas heater that needed a little work (cleaning plus thermocouple re-orientation). Next, I went to the police station to talk with the police chief and one of the police captains about my new apartment building and the problems there. While I was there, I picked up the last months worth of police reports for the building. I haven't finished reading this big stack of reports, but the very first report I read was about a fight where one of the people at the building pulled a gun during a fight! UGH! It looks like I've got a LOT of work to do to straighten up the situation at this building.

After the police station, my next stop was WalMart where I picked up some paint for the bathroom of the two bedroom house I've been working on. I normally paint all interiors Berkshire White, but this bathroom and a couple of the rooms were already painted in a tanish color which wasn't in too bad of condition. Therefore, to save time, I just had the paint matched and touched up the bad spots. While I was working on the house, a prospective tenant came by to look at it. She really liked it and said that they would take it. You never know until you get the money - so we'll see.

Finally, I put out "For Rent" signs for this 2 bedroom house and another one that I also just finished. So, I ended up working four hours and have two houses ready to rent! That's definitely a step in the right direction.

During my dinner this evening, I received two telephone calls from tenants at my new apartment building. One of the tenants allowed a drug dealer to be in his apartment and there was a disturbance. I told the tenants to call the police. They did and the police wouldn't come! I told the tenants that I would be down after I finished dinner. I've had the building almost two weeks and I decided that this evening would be the time to lay down the law.

Even though I wasn't really angry, I faked it. I was quite loud and told them that their time was up. We have a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY to drugs and ANY further infractions would result in eviction. Fortunately, I have a reputation for being a hard ass landlord and they knew I wasn't bluffing (and I'm not). I explained that if I saw ANY druggie or drug dealer in any of their apartments for any reason for any length of time (even 5 seconds) that they would be evicted. I did a little yelling and a little cursing (something they could understand).

After I returned home, I called the head of the local Nuisance Abatement Board. I let her know that I had taken over the property and that I would be cleaning out all the riff-raff. I also told her that I needed the cooperation of the Nuisance Abatement Board and the police. She assured me that the board would do everything possible to help me (they fined the previous owner several times). My purpose in talking to the board was to be proactive and therefore avoid getting any nuisance complaints from the city while I'm cleaning up the rat's nest!

Tomorrow, I'm going to the police station and talk to the police Captain about the situation. I need them to respond when they are called and I believe that is their responsibility!!! Cleaning up the city is certainly as much the responsibility of the city and the police as it is the landlord! I'm going to ask that they do their part.

I spent about 2 hours today working on a tub drain that had split after being frozen in the recent cold. I received a call at the end of last week about a clogged drain line. Going on the KISS principle, I attempted to clear the clog by using drain cleaner (on two successive days). Unfortunately, what had actually happened is that the tub is located with the plumbing literally in an exterior wall. In the basement, the trap for the tub is actually located inside one of the blocks of the basement wall. WHAT A STUPID ARRANGEMENT!!! I don't know what decade that kind of engineering would have been tolerated, but that is where the pipes were located. In the extreme cold of the past few days, the water in the trap had frozen and subsequently caused the old cast iron pipe to split. To repair this fiasco, I cut out the old pipes and installed PVC in its place. In the process, I moved the trap about 2 feet into the basement so that it would be less prone to freezing.

After completing the drain work, I proceeded to the 2 bedroom house that I've been working on. I installed some transition strips at the carpet joints and cleaned up the trash that was outside (frozen to the ground). Tomorrow, the professional carpet cleaner is coming to try steam clean the carpet. The carpet is VERY DIRTY and STAINED, but I'm not going to change it unless absolutely necessary. This is a lower income rental ($500 per month) and changing the carpet is not warranted unless it looks terrible after being cleaned.

No work this weekend. My snowboarding friend couldn't go on Monday, so we went today. Conditions were excellent today and the terrain park has been improved since our last trip. They added several boxes and a half-pipe. Today we worked on the box, a couple of jumps, and of course the half-pipe. I managed to fall on the box; off the side of the box; and did one giant face plant off the other side of the box. OUCH! The jumps are coming along and so was my progress in the half-pipe. All in all, a GREAT day even with the bruises.

On the way home, we stopped at the ski/snowboarding shop and I got some new snowboarding boots. In the past 3 years, I've managed to wear out my old pair.

Back to landlording tomorrow!

With 11 new rentals, there have been plenty of little jobs to do this week. The electrical panel upgrade was the biggest job. Then, the past couple of days, I've been working on the small things. I fixed a commode (there's always a commode to fix), replaced a light switch, fixed a thermostat, fixed a water leak, and a few other little things. In addition, I installed 3 rooms of carpet in a 2 bedroom house, installed insulation in a drafty house, fixed a gas fireplace, and even shoveled snow at our apartment buildings yesterday. It's been a pretty good week!

One of the two vacant units I just bought is a 2 bedroom house. The carpet is VERY dirty and I have a professional carpet cleaner coming Tuesday to work his magic! I also have a little painting to do to get a couple of units ready to rent.

Today was an important day for my new apartment building. As I discussed a couple of days ago, one of the apartments in this building had an old fuse box that was incorrectly wired and had a broken fuse. It was clearly a fire hazard that needed immediate attention. Today, I removed that old fuse box and replaced it with a brand new 100 amp electrical panel. In the old fuse box, someone had wired three circuits to a single 30 amp fuse, even though each of these circuits should have had a separate 15 amp circuit (based on the wire size). All of that has been corrected and I can sleep better at night knowing that this apartment is correctly wired.

I also wanted to tell the story of my closing last Friday. I closed on 11 units, 7 of which were in one apartment building. Based on the cash flow, the retail value of this property was $230,000 and I had a contract to buy it for $30,000. This property had been owned by the seller since 1958. It was a great deal and I was anxious to get it closed.

About an hour before the closing, I received a call from the seller. He stated that he discovered that he would be required to pay "back taxes" and that his intention was to receive a net of $30,000 from the sale. I asked him if he owed back taxes and he said no, but that he had been told by a banker the day before that taxes were paid in arrears and that he would owe these at the closing. I wasn't buying this story for a moment because I was well aware that he owned about 15 rentals. He knew that the buyer was responsible for pro-rated taxes and that fact was also plainly explained in the contract he signed. At any rate, I played along and I told him that this was correct (that he owed the pro-rated taxes). He stated that he was selling the property to me at a very good price and that he hadn't expected to pay the taxes. He sounded like he was trying to back out of the deal. Of course, I had a signed contract and I could always sue him for specific performance, but that was NOT a good plan if I REALLY wanted to close this deal. So, instead of allowing a confrontation, I simply told him that I would take care of the taxes and for him to come to the closing on time and we would get the deal done to his satisfaction. In the end, I wrote him a check for an additional $780 and the building was mine.

Ordinarily, I would have had a lot of heart burn over this tactic by a seller. In fact, normally, I would threaten the seller with a lawsuit if they didn't follow through on the original terms. However, with this much equity and cash flow at stake, I wasn't about to let this deal slip through my fingers for $780. It was still an outstanding deal at $30,780! In fact, I would have paid three times that much and still gotten a great deal.

Yesterday started with a call about a frozen water line in one of my apartment buildings. It has been VERY cold here this past few days with temperatures in the single digits. This was a building that I bought last May and I therefore haven't been through a winter with it. To thaw the frozen pipes, I went to my shop to pickup my big kerosene torpedo heater. Just after leaving my shop, I had a guy pull right in front of me, necessitating a rapid stop to keep from hitting him. Although I was thinking a very unkind thought about this idiot driver, it wasn't that big of a deal. However, as I proceeded down the road behind this idiot, he began swerving all over the road. He would go completely off the right side of the road and then off the left side of the road (a 2 lane road). This was VERY dangerous on a slightly hilly road and I was sure that he would kill someone. I called 911 to report this moron. As we proceeded down the road, he ran one car off the road. At the end of this road is a 90 degree turn, where this road merges with a highway. About 200 yards from the intersection, he was still going about 60 mph. As he entered the intersection at a high rate of speed, I was sure his truck was going to flip. Fortunately for him (and unfortunately for the rest of us), the truck did not flip and instead slid sideways into the intersection, up on two wheels at one point. He'll live to drive drunk (or drugged up) another day to kill some innocent family!!!

After this wild turn, he drove another 1/4 of a mile and then pulled off the right side of the road. There was NO WAY that I was allowing this scumbag to kill someone, so I pulled off about 200 yeard behind him and continued to tell the highway patrol where we were. The guy got out of his truck, stumbled around, and at one point crawled under his truck (VERY STRANGE). However, that was only the beginning of the bizarre behavior. He then started walking toward my truck. I was unhappy with that considering his very bizarre behavior. I backed up a little and he kept coming. I backed up a little more and he kept coming. He finally gave up and headed back to his truck. To my amazement, he then started backing his truck toward mine. At this point, I quickly got my handgun out of my gunsafe. I told the highway patrol that this guy was acting crazy and to hurry up. I felt VERY unfortable with this guy backing toward me and I was NOT going to have a confrontation with him. When his truck got within about 2 or 3 car lengths of my truck, I quickly pulled around him. Unfortunately, I was now in front of him, which is where I did not want to be. I pulled forward about 200 yards and stopped. He then started driving forward on the berm toward my truck. I started driving slowly forward and within a few seconds he stopped. I pulled forward another 200 yards and stopped. He got out of his car and walked toward me again. This went on for a couple of minutes and then he got back into his truck and moved toward me again. Finally, he went around me and then once again pulled over and stopped. I backed up about 200 yards and stopped. For a third time, he got out of his truck and walked toward me. I backed up. He came toward me again. I backed up more. He gave up and stumbled back toward his truck which is when the first highway patrol officer arrived. FINALLY! Within a couple of minutes, there were five cruisers on the scene. The scumbag was arrested and taken to jail. His truck was impounded. I filled out a report and headed to fix my water line problem. My little bit of excitement for the day was over. No-one was hurt and another scumbag was in jail.

My frozen water line problems also ended well. I put the torpedo heater in the basement and within a couple hours, everything was back to normal.

My recent purchase of 11 rentals included 9 rented units and 2 vacant units. One of the vacant units is a 2-3 bedroom house. My goal for yesterday was to put miniblinds up in the house and get the furnace started. I like to put miniblinds up right away and leave a light on along with a radio playing. That helps keep the criminals away.

As I was finishing up the mini-blinds, I received a call from one of the tenants in my new 7-unit apartment building. She said that her fuse box was very hot. I told her to turn off everything possible and that I would be right down. I was shocked at what I discovered. This is one of two apartments with a 100 amp Wadsworth fuse box instead of circuit breakers. When I pulled the main fuse, there were no fuses in there at all, someone had put copper jumper bars in place of the fuses!!! In addition, one of the screw-in fuse sockets was broken and someone had used a penny in place of a fuse. I simply couldn't believe it!!! What a hazard. Since the electric in this fuse panel was not right, I went directly to the other apartment that had a fuse panel. Same thing, except this time it was the range fuse that had the jumpers!!!

Fortunately, I carry a good selection of electrical stuff in my truck and I had the fuses to fix the primary problem. We are planning to replace the fuse panel tomorrow with a circuit breaker panel.

The police were at the building twice more last night, so I still got a lot of work to do getting rid of the riff-raff.

I had the closing for my last 11 rentals on Friday! I'm glad that's done, but now the real work begins. I went around Friday afternoon to meet as many tenants as I could, and left notices of the change of management to the others (NEVER tell the tenants that you own anything). One of the tenants in my new 7 unit apartment building has a significant criminal history and is allowing another drunk and serious criminal to live with him. I looked the criminals up on the internet. One of them has been arrested 110 times (yes, I said one hundred and ten times). The police have been to the building 95 times in the previous several months and were there the night before I took over the building, regarding a crack party in the apartment of my two criminal tenants. There were NO leases for anyone in this building.

I gave the criminals the news that I would tolerate NO further illegal activity and that they would be promptely evicted if there were further incidents (and arrested if I could arrange that). As you can imagine, they weren't too happy about having a new landlord. As I met the other tenants, one of them told me that there was a court order that one of the criminals was banned from the property. I thought that she meant she had a restraining order. She had a copy and I was surprised that the CITY had gotten a court order banning him from the property! I didn't even know that this was possible. At any rate, I confronted the criminal with the court order and told him to leave IMMEDIATELY and never return or he would be arrested. I then went to tell the other tenants to call the police, followed by calling me, if they see the criminal on the property in the future. The very next morning, I got a call from one of the tenants who had called the police at 3am, when the criminal arrived for his nightly crack party. He was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and other charges. He is still in jail, where he belongs.

As I was meeting the tenants, I noticed that none of the apartments had smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. Therefore, on Saturday, I spent about two hours installing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. I even got leases signed with a couple of my new tenants.

I took today off for Church and relaxation. The games will continue tomorrow!

We had a GREAT time snowboarding at Holiday Valley. I really liked the resort and the town of Ellicottville, NY. We had a very nice dinner at the Ellicottville Brewing Company, which I would highly recommend! Lots of snow Monday and Tuesday in New York made for some excellent snow conditions. Overall, I would give Holiday Valley a 5 star rating!!!

Even though we're back from the trip, I still haven't gotten back to work yet this week. I took a break yesterday after our trip and decided to just hang around the house. Today, we had to attend a funeral and therefore I didn't work today either. Tomorrow, I've got the closing on the 11 rental units we contracted in December. It is going to be brutally cold this weekend, with temperatures in the single digits. Therefore, I think I'll just write this week off and start working next week. That freedom to work when I want to is one of the GREAT things about owning a rental property business. It doesn't get any better than that!

We arrived yesterday afternoon at the Holiday Valley Ski Resort in New York. It was a very nice trip here from Ohio and all on major highways. This is a much easier drive than going to Snowshoe in West Virginia.

Holiday Valley is a relatively large resort, spread all over two or three "Mountains". It has a new high speed quad lift that is very nice and leads to the longest runs. Just as in Ohio, the snow conditions were marginal, with about 1/3 of their runs closed. However, they can't control mother nature and a day of snowboarding is great, even if the conditions aren't optimal. Particularly disappointing to me was that the half-pipe was closed (again, those 60 degree days haven't helped), but I'm not blaming the resort. Overall, so far I would give the resort a big thumbs up!

By way of comparison, I would also say that the environment here at Holiday Valley is much better than Snowshoe. The village of Ellicottville, NY is at the base of the resort and makes a nice base of operation. Shoeshoe is in the middle of NOWHERE and not good for other activities while you're not snowboarding. Another factor for me is that Holiday Valley has cell phone service and wireless high speed internet. Much better for a business owner that likes to stay in touch while on a mini-vacation.

We started our boarding last evening at 4pm (lift tickets were only $30) and there was a VERY small crowd. In fact, there wasn't any crowd at all. We didn't wait in line at all for any lift and were able to do an unlimited number of runs. Very enjoyable!

It snowed overnight and is still snowing now. The lifts open at 9am, so I've gotta go!

Yesterday, I thought I might go lay some carpet today. However, when I got up today, my heart wasn't really in it. I had just about decided to take today off, when one of the tenants called to say that one of the burners on her electric stove had "exploded". So, I told her that I would be right down to take a look. In reality, I had to go into town anyway to get some spending money for our snowboarding trip.

After a quick stop at the bank, I arrived at the apartment. Sure enough, the electric burner had failed. I've seem them do this before, although it is fairly rare. I believe that the cause is a high resistance point in the burner which causes that specific spot to overheat and fail. It usually happens where the burner bends at a 90 degree angle and that's exactly where it occurred this time. Unfortunately, this is a very small apartment size stove and I couldn't find a replacement burner at Lowes, Sears, or anywhere else. The appliance store will definitely have the part, but they won't be open until Monday. Therefore, I isolated the wiring so that it would be safe for the tenant to use the remaining 3 burners until I get the replacement next week.

That was enough for a Saturday and I took the rest of the day off. I'm still learning to fly my new radio controlled helicopter. I'm making progress, today I worked on flying from room to room including the hallways. I've still got a way to go, but I enjoy the challenge.

Take out the trash! That's what my wife tells me at least once a day. Well, today I not only had to take out the trash at home, but I had to take an entire truck and trailer load of trash, clothes, furniture, and ruined carpet to the dump. If you've been following my blog, a couple of days ago I posted about the two tenants I just lost. The tenant that I thought I would need to evict left her apartment in move-in condition. The other tenant (with mental problems) also left her apartment relatively clean, but left a mattress; a dresser; a bookcase; a CD tower; and some steel rods. I also have another vacant 2 bedroom house that needs a quick carpet and paint rehab. The tenant in this house left about 5 LARGE contractor bags of trash and an entire garage full of junk.

Therefore, today I cleaned out the apartment and cleaned all the junk out of the house. In addition, the 3 year old carpet is RUINED and I hauled all the carpet to the dump. Tenants are VERY HARD on carpet. Always buy the cheapest carpet you can find. I usually buy a relatively dark brown berber from Lowes for about 55 cents per square foot. If I get motivated enough tomorrow, I may go install a room or two of new carpet.

Then, weather permitting, we're leaving first thing Sunday morning to go snowboarding in New York at Holiday Valley. I've still got to check on the snow conditions and weather forecast. The weather has been unseasonably warm here the last week with highs in the 70s. We haven't had January temperatures this high in about 15 years.

I had an interesting situation develop this week. As I said in an earlier post, I had one tenant that didn't pay her rent. She has been a very good tenant up to this point, and despite several attempts to contact her, she has ducked my phone calls. Following my standard procedure, I posted the 3 day notice on Monday which was the first business day after the rent became late. That meant that today (Thursday) was the first day I could file the eviction with the court.

Since I hadn't heard a word from the tenant, I posted a 24 hour inspection notice on her door yesterday when I went into town for a few minutes to run a couple of personal errands. The 3 Day Notice was still taped to the door and there was a handwritten note that said she would be out on the 11th (Friday).

That left me with an interesting situation. My policy is to file the eviction in court on the first possible day. However, if she really was going to leave voluntarily, I didn't want to waste the money filing an eviction. Since her note said that she would be out on Friday, I decided to give her ONE extra day to see if she was out and file the eviction in court Friday if she wasn't gone. Per my 24 hour notice, I went by the apartment this afternoon to inspect her apartment and she was already gone. The apartment was completely clean and ready to re-rent. End of story.

Today started with a high level meeting with my boss. I held the meeting while I was shaving (my boss was in the mirror). The reason for the high level meeting is that I wanted to take the day off. The reason: I received notification this morning that my brand new helicopter was arriving today!!! That was exciting!

Can you picture the helicopter that Donald Trump owns?. Can you picture me sitting in my new helicopter with a glass of the finest champaign? Can you see me the helicopter sitting on my personal helipad at the back of my estate, waiting to whisk me to important business meetings? Well, mine is absolutely nothing like that. In fact, my helicopter is only 14 inches long. If you assumed that I was getting a helicopter to fly to some important business meetings or take me to urgent golf outings, you've been watching too many infomercials.

The helicopter I received today was a radio controlled helicopter that I can fly around the house. It is a really cool little machine that is a lot of fun to fly. I was anxious to play with it, so I took the day off so that I could learn to fly it. If you're interested in such things, the helicopter is a 4 channel, E-sky CoCo Lama 3 with counter rotating blades. If you're interested in seeing a cool video of the helicopter, I found this one on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTHUPCvO54 Check it out! I may get motivated enough to do a little work tomorrow.

You never know what is going to happen in the rental business. Yesterday was a good example. Rent collection was over on Friday and I had one tenant that didn't pay. This tenant has always paid on time and I just assumed that she forgot. I left 2 messages on her answering machine and didn't receive a call back. Since I didn't hear from her over the weekend, I posted a 3-day notice on her door yesterday. If you're wondering why I didn't post it Saturday, the answer is that posting it on Saturday wouldn't have made a difference. In Ohio, the 3 day notice must cover 3 business days. Since I still haven't heard from this tenant, I'm expecting to evict her and will file with the court on Thursday (the first day allowed by law). Down 1 Tenant!

Then, yesterday while I was installing electric heat in one of our apartments, I received a call from a tenant who just moved in last month. This is a Section 8 tenant who has a 1 year lease. She informed me that she was moving and would be out by last night. Her reason was that she is having anxiety attacks and that she is moving out of state to be near a relative. It's a freak show out there! Down 2 Tenants!

This tenant will lose her Section 8 eligibility due to her decision. She also paid a one-month security deposit which I'm keeping as damages against the broken lease. Who knows if the anxiety attack excuse was true. Tenants often lie when they want to move.

Tomorrow, I'll be changing another apartment over to electric heat. Here in Ohio, I have been changing our rentals to electric baseboard heat for three reasons.

The first reason is that the gas company can't seem to get their act together. Tenants often have their utilities shut off when they don't pay their utility bill. The problem occurs when the gas company comes to turn it back on and then frequently have some reason that they won't turn it back on. I'm 100% for having safety standards, but the gas company doesn't seem to know what they are. It always comes down to which gas company technician comes to turn it on. So, to get rid of this constant annoyance, changing over to electric heat (all electric) makes sense.

The second reason for converting to all electric is that any gas work MUST be done by a state certified gas technician. Therefore, even things that I could easily fix require the expensive service of a certified gas technician.

Finally, and most importantly, tenants WANT electric heat. Gas bills have gone up dramatically in the past few years and gas heat has a really bad reputation. When tenants call to ask about a rental, they often ask what kind of heat it has. I can tell you for a fact, that apartments with gas heat are MUCH harder to rent than all electric apartments.

So.... tomorrow another apartment will be changed to electric heat!

I admit that I'm a little spoiled. I normally only work 12-16 hours each week (3-4 hours per day, 3-4 days per week). Well, not today. For the first time in quite a while, I literally worked 9 to 5 today. It was a very busy day, starting with a Section 8 inspection on one of our 3 bedroom houses (it passed) and ending with collecting rents.

I discovered something today - I DON'T LIKE WORKING 9-5! I much prefer 11-2!

Tomorrow is the last day of rent collection for this month and then it will be time to take a few days off.

Today was day 2 of rent collection. I collect rents the first 4 days of each month (my favorite time of the month) and I made good progress by collecting a bunch of rents today.

In addition to collecting rent, I also worked on one of my rentals today. I'm installing a vent-free gas heater in one of our 2 bedroom houses that needs a little extra heat. Fortunately, I had a spare heater, so I didn't need to buy one. This particular heater came out of another unit that I converted to all electric. The previous tenant broke the feet on this heater. I went to Lowes to get new feet, but they no longer carry them!!! They also didn't have any thermocouples, which is a common maintenance item. Wonderful (sarcastic)! It really frustrates me that they don't carry the parts to service the units they sell! UGH!

Finally, I spent some time today paying bills. I try to pay bills at least once each week and today was the day! More rent collecting tomorrow!