[Coronita]

[quote=UCGal]It’s too late for this year – but the registration is in April. You need to sign up for a family account ahead of time and they email back with when your registration slot is. The slot is determined by the age/grade of the student as well as whether you’re a returning family. If you have more than one kid – in different grades, you’ll get different registration date/times.

The classes range from pure fun, to educational. I try to mix it up for my kids so they don’t hate the program.
I’ve got my soon-to-be 8th grader taking
– Magic (fun)
– Rocketry (fun)
– Engineering (less fun but he’s excited)
– C++ (less fun but he’s excited.)

I’ve got my soon to be 6th grader taking:
– Fencing
– Chess (he loves chess – this was his choice.)
– Engineering
– Architecture.

Classes they’ve taken in the past: The physics of roller coasters, quizlets (math/logic puzzles), cartooning, debate, guitar, sumi drawing…

You can see descriptions of the classes at gatewaysschool.org – and select “programs” then select the grade level.

For future years – make sure you have a family ID ahead of time – it stays the same through the years… then they’ll email when it’s coming time to enroll.[/quote]

I meant. Yeah, tell me about how crazy registration was…. I was only able to get the afternoon sessions, so the morning sessions are open, hence I was thinking of backfilling it with something…. I just wanted to make sure you were talking about the same thing….

I think they have this priority based registration based on previous year participation….

[Coronita]

My recommendation would be also if you self manage several properties, make sure you have a contingency plan if you go on a vacation longer than a few days…

[Coronita]

[quote=Del Sur 14]When going month to month how do you deal with raising prices?

Do you just send a 60 day notice?

Do you ever work out a month to month lease tied to an agreement to not raise the rent until a set time?

Something like: Month to Month lease for $2500 a month, price is locked for first year and could be re-raised annually starting in June 2015?[/quote]

Personally, if I agree to lock the rate for 6 months or a year, then they will sign a 6 months or year’s worth of lease…

Month-Month + an agreement to lock the rent for a fixed period is every benefit for the tenant and no benefit for you….They can bolt whenever they feel like it, leaving you to backfill the month(s) that it goes un-rented.

I guess as an alternative, you could always charge $X/month and upon completion of 12 months, rebate back $Y, but personally I haven’t done that yet….

I typically have slightly below market rents, and try to get the best qualified tenant with great credit score…

[Coronita]

[quote=UCGal][quote=flu]

Gateways Program?[/quote]

It’s a “fun” summer school program for kids grade 1 and up. It’s taught mainly by teachers on their summer break.

http://www.gatewaysschool.org/

But talk about tiger parents…. It’s VERY challenging to get enrolled. You have to enroll on exactly the right day at the right time slot. They’ve improved their servers – but it used to be impossible to connect, and by the time you got into the registration site most of the classes were booked. (This year was much better.)[/quote]

Ok…..We’re talking about the same thing…..Yeah, tell me about the registration days…

[Coronita]

[quote=UCGal]Hi Flu –

We’re having our kids do 3 things to keep their academic chops up during the summer.
1) 30 minutes a day of Khan Academy.
2) 30 minutes a day of Code Academy (one is learning python, the other Java – they both want to learn swift – as well.)
3) 30 minutes a day of Rosetta Stone Spanish.
(Their middle school, since it’s IB, has a foreign language requirement – so this will give them a jumpstart.)

Other than Gateways and 1 week of sailing camp – they are “free range” this summer… so I want to have their brains involved in more than just video games and shooting basketball.[/quote]

I forgot about Khan.. Maybe worth checking out….

Gateways Program?

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]Take a few weeks off and take the kidlet to an interesting foreign country or three (road trip to a part of the US where he hasn’t been also works) rather than forcing him to take “summer school.” Ideally, a situation where you both disconnect from the Intarwebz entirely for a while.[/quote]

We already are taking time off…

[Coronita]

[quote=joec][quote=flu]
Well, anyway, I registered for IPO shares just in case I change my mind.. Better to be over prepared versus under prepared….[/quote]

Will be interesting to see how this does if they allow anyone to buy. If anyone can buy shares, who will they flip the stock to?

Does anyone know historically, how stock available to the public has done?

I know of GOOG doing well, but a lot of others were major flops (like ZNGA).

I have no money so will probably just watch what it does.[/quote]

My understanding is there will be a limited allocation of shares for those that are interested..

Maximum purchase is $10k..And that might change depending on how much interest there is…

Google’s IPO was a dutch auction…

[Coronita]

I didn’t originally understand why people like GoPro so much. But I have one for my auto cross duties, and I can see why people use them. Pretty tough little camera…

I think BMW just announced connected drive connectivity with it moving forward….

Well, anyway, I registered for IPO shares just in case I change my mind.. Better to be over prepared versus under prepared….

[Coronita]

[quote=paramount]First…in the fine print in your financing contract, any buyer can only assume your payments if the lender approves. When contacted, the lender says they almost always approve a new buyer, but it states very clearly in the contract that the buyer must be approved by the lender. What happens if the lender does not give approval? Hint: you pay it off, not the new buyer.

Secondly…and more importantly…what homeowners are not thinking of at the time of the installation is this…No buyer wants to assume your debt for an item they feel they have already paid for in the sales price of the home.

Think about it. The buyer has just purchased your home that is listed with a new central air conditioning system, and then they are told in reality, they have to take over your debt to pay off the new AC system? No buyers we have seen will agree to that. The buyer is not assuming the debt you have on your existing home loan(s), so why should they assume your debt on your air conditioning system, or solar system? It doesn’t matter what the AC salesman said…the AC salesman is not the one buying your home! That is like selling your car, but asking the buyer to pay you for the car, and then also pay off your car loan too!

Thirdly, and equally as bad…Once the buyer has said they will not assume your debt, and you are faced with the real world consequence that you are responsible for the payment of said debt, did you see the part in the contract that allows the lender to not only charge you a prepayment penalty if you pay the loan off early, but charge you a processing fee as well?

Oh, you missed that part?

On a recent escrow we just closed, not only did the seller have to pay off his debt for a new solar system, but they were charged a 5% prepayment penalty (5% if paid off in year one, 4% if year two, 3% year three, etc.), but the lender also charged them a $500 processing fee. In this case, the total payoff cost to the seller was over %50,000!!

Not to be outdone, we have another escrow that involves a new air conditioning system, and while the total amount of the payoff is less, the process is the same…prepayment penalty and a processing fee of $500.

The bottom line here is that you need to be careful about the debt you take on as a homeowner when doing any upgrades to your home. Financing these upgrades can be a very good thing, as long as you don’t get caught in a vice down the road. Just as a real estate professional should not be advising you about air conditioning or solar systems, neither should these professionals give you advice about real estate.

Remember…the buyer of your home will almost always want to purchase your home free of any debt you may have aquired while you owned the home. If you keep that in mind, you will be OK.

Good luck, and don’t get caught with a loan payoff simply because some salesman said said a new buyer would assume it. Just because the buyer can, doesn’t mean the buyer will.[/quote]

Unrelated…How are your latest rentals going to pencil out in TG? Good,so-so?

[Coronita]

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to take out a HELOC?

[Coronita]

To be fair..

It appears the OP really isn’t a seasoned landlord, and from the sounds of things, it appears that he/she/they were only filling the house until their final decision of selling the house….

With that said, as part of selling the house, you probably want to paint it anyway…I’d eat the cost… There’s bigger fish to fry….

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=livinincali][quote=scaredyclassic]
instead of steadily eroding savings, wouldn’t it be more effective to have it be done randomly and in larger chunks/ Anyone who leaves cash in the bank for over 6 months, say, can randomly have a 2% chunk sliced away, say up to 3x a year. it’s done randomly by a computer. the money goes toward military operations to ensure dominance of the currency. this way, people will go out and spend it all..[/quote]

That would produce one hell of a bank run. With reserve lending every bank in America would be bankrupt in that scenario. Perhaps that is a good thing.[/quote]

even if it wre just once a year, people wouldnt tolerate it. they prefer to boil to death slowly and uniformly, rather than get hacked it brutally and quickly…[/quote]

Well, I think the solution is simple. Americans love to gamble. So make the game have odds…..

That is.

If you deposit money for a full year in a bank account, you have a 10:1 odd of winning the grand prize of getting a surprise 10% increase that year… The remaining 9 people will lose 2%….
With 10 people playing one person would win 10%, 9 people would lose a total of 2% each, and there would be plenty of money left over for the government to finance it’s war problem ,drug problem, etc…

[Coronita]

[quote=joec]How do dentists even survive? I see so many pop up and it’s not a required medical thing and insurance benefits are limited (like 1k to 1.5k)…

Seems like so much competition and a cleaning pays nothing…

Also, people with no money won’t/can’t afford the more expensive treatments.[/quote]

They don’t make money off of cleaning per se. It’s the teeth whitening, the deep cleaning, the fillings, the extraction, etc,etc,etc…

And there’s Denti-Cal.

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=flu][quote=scaredyclassic]the rich plumber is kind of a cliche, but goshdarn, we were talking to this plumber who did some work in our house the other day, had a couple helpers, and his combined take home (he couldve been exagerrating but i doubt it) was greater than my househole income.

the bigger question is not which rental to buy, but why college?

maybe the money shoudl be put into starting a small business not for the poster, but the kids…

a real plan involves making kids selfsufficient.[/quote]

Actually, one of my neigbhors thatowns a dental practice says he’s seeing dental students that are graduating from dental school with $400-500k in student loan debt. Catch 22 is they won’t be able to have their own practice for some time since lenders won’t want to lend to them if they are already in the $400-500k hole… And working for another dentist won’t let them pay off that loan quickly either…[/quote]

Desperate dentists care recommendations seem suspect. There should be full financial disclosure for all dental practitioners.[/quote]

Speak of the devil…And no, my neighbor wasn’t quoting an article. It was actual dental grads applying for work at his practice.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/520k-student-loans-where-start-113032209.html

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]

You keep saying it, so prove it.. 🙂

1. Name one property.

2. Why aren’t you doing it?

1. Look on the MLS yourself in the $100k-$250k range and run the numbers. You’ll find some.
2. I’m getting 8% plus on a property that I bought in SD last year. Right now, my lovely neighboring state of NJ is riddled with “fork-lost” (i.e. oh, FORK, I *lost* my home, waaaaaah-waaaaaah) properties, so I’m concentrating my search on future properties there. I’d rather get over 8% than 6-7%.[/quote]

Yeah, that was last year in SD. I was referring to this year. Show me one..And why aren’t you buying in NJ yet?

[Author]

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