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Hatfield
ParticipantMy shredder crapped out not too long ago, after a long slow decline, and while shopping I was amazed at how much money you could pay for a shredder if you were so inclined. After doing some online research I went with this one which at $64 seemed to be at a reasonable spot in the cost/performance curve:
This is a pretty basic shredder with a stated 11-sheet capacity. It will cut through staples and CDs but apparently NOT credit cards. I think it’ll rip though an unopened envelope with a few sheets, no problem. It’s also much faster than my old shredder. So far so good.
Participant[quote=flu]Except you really don’t want to unnecessarily piss of a tenant unless you really want him/her out…[/quote]
Even then, the change in terms is unenforceable.
April 18, 2012 at 10:53 PM in reply to: Primary residence becoming rental – impact on existing mortgage interest rate #741888Participant[quote=EconProf]And next time, please proofread what you just write.[/quote]
Hello Pot? This is Kettle. :p
ParticipantIf you have a gardener maintain the greenery, you can write that off. You also can write off utilities that you paid during the times the property is not occupied and awaiting the next tenant.
Some things can’t be expensed and have to be depreciated (carpet, appliances, a new deck) and the depreciation schedule varies depending on the item. Also, sometimes you can accelerate depreciation although state and federal never seem to be in sync on this, so you’ll end up with separate depreciation schedules for state and federal. I can never keep track of this shit and frankly have no desire to. The rules change every year, which is why I pay someone to do my taxes for me.
But if you’re a glutton for punishment, you might take a look at this IRS pub:
ParticipantThere was a bunch of live knob & tube in a rental unit that I finally got around to upgrading last year. Oddly enough the panel box had been replaced but not most of the wiring. Got two bids, one from a contractor I’d used for a bunch of small jobs previously, and one from someone who came highly recommended. The guy that was new to me came in with a more detailed bid that was less than half than the guy I knew. Go figure. I went with the new guy, and he did a great job with no “surprises.”
If it’s a smaller house or cottage, beware of in-floor furnaces. Nobody will touch these anymore, so when it dies you’re either looking at installing a wall heater or running ducts and going with forced air gas.
I love old casement windows, but they’re poorly insulated and not everyone knows how to work on ’em. Some guys will want to rip them out and replace with vinyl.
General upkeep is more expensive in an older house, so it’s really a question of priorities. I enjoy creaky floors, casement windows, the funky fixtures, and all the other charming things about an older house, but old plumbing and electrical suck.
ParticipantAll true. You can’t beat the tax benefits though. If you can hit the sweet spot you’ll have a property that generates positive cash flow while simultaneously delivering a paper loss due to depreciation, lowering your tax liability.
On the other hand, your mutual fund will never call you up at 10pm on a Sunday night and tell you its water heater is broken.
ParticipantI agree with pretty much everything in this thread so far. We bought at house in 1999 that was a two-on-one. We weren’t looking to be landlords, but we loved the house and the location.
We’ve been lucky with our tenants, but also very diligent during the screening process. The original tenants stayed on for a year or so. They moved out to buy a house, and at that time we took care of a bunch of deferred maintenance, put in new tile, redid a bunch of stuff. We offered it at a premium, and waited for the right tenant to come along. It was vacant for maybe 2-3 additional months but it was worth it. A nice couple moved in, both professionals, and they lived there for about 8 years.
Screening tenants is super important to begin with, but there is an additional kind of an oddness to being both a neighbor and landlord. So far we’ve managed to keep that line in a reasonable place, but we’re still able to stop by for a glass of wine, etc. Anyway, this couple moved away, and by this time several people in the neighborhood already had their eye on the place, including the couple next door who we knew and liked. So it’s all been great. As before, we’ve very friendly with the tenants but also maintain a distance. It’s a balancing act.
Slightly off topic, a long time ago I was given a piece of advice that you should avoid raising the rent on a good tenant. So after the first vacancy, we raised the rent to premium levels, but then we never raised it again until after they left. The theory is that you lose way more money on the turnover than you get back by nickle and diming people for another $50 a month, or whatever.
I ended up keeping my old house (about a mile away) and that same strategy has worked well there too. Last tenants were there 9 years.
ParticipantYeah, the big fire installations at burning man go through so much propane so fast that the latent heat of evaporation freezes the tank. So to prevent that, some of the installations will have a water heater running off one propane tank recirculating hot water into a bathtub, and in the bathtub they’ll have the propane tank used for the flame effects.
ParticipantPfft.
the fun begins at 2:45
ParticipantI think the wings are hideous. Even the artist who originally designed them has disavowed the project. I’m also tired of the UT front page turning into a vehicle for fluffing Manchester’s latest waterfront redevelopment hardon.
That said, I’m all for any project that reunites downtown with the waterfront. From that perspective, the location of the current convention center is awful. Even from inside the convention center you can’t see the bay. They should have built the thing elsewhere. That ship has sailed, unfortunately, and now they want to expand the thing.
Participantunexpected Goodwin +1
Not sure I understand why everyone is dumping on the Germans right now. They seem to be the only ones that have their shit together. During the whole Greece fiasco, I was surprised that there wasn’t more discussion of how the Greeks had cooked their books to join the union. When this story broke several years ago, not much was said or done about it, everyone shorta shrugged and apparently assumed nothing would come of it.
If things seem exciting now, wait till Italy and Spain default. I don’t see how the monetary union will survive, unless the only members are countries with better fiscal policy, and that seems to be a north-south divide.
ParticipantIt’s such a crapshoot you can never tell, and if there’s an accident things can change for the worse pretty quickly. I’ve had both good and bad luck with 15-210-5. Both the 15 and 210 can get all snotted up, but I don’t think either of those freeways drop down to as few lanes at the 5 does in stretches.
I agree that starting your drive late at night will increase your odds. If you decide to take the 5 and OC is a mess, taking the 73 over to the 405 and using the carpool lane will help a lot. It seems that when the 405 gets choked, it happens in a cluster (like around LAX and UCLA). When I5 gets choked, it seems to go on forever.
Using Google maps and/or a Garmin with realtime traffic can help, but sometimes there aren’t any viable alternate routes.
December 6, 2011 at 2:18 PM in reply to: OT: red light camera ticket for right turn and 0.1 secs #734141ParticipantThey don’t enforce front plates much in SD but they do up in LA. A friend of mine used to commute between here and Pasadena and got hassled about it all the time. When he bought his next car, he decided to put NO plates on it. He just left the paper dealer advertising plates on and put the DMV plates in the trunk. For like three years he did this! When the paper plates started getting faded he’d go back to the dealer and ask for new ones.
He got stopped at one point and the cop, after looking at the registration and seeing that plates had been issued, asked why the plates aren’t on the car. My friend spun some long spiel (some of which was true but most of which was highly exaggerated) about how the plates arrived in the mail right when he was moving, they’d gotten lost in a moving box and they had just turned up last week, hadn’t gotten around to putting them on yet, they’re in the trunk I can show them to you, etc. Cop gave him a lecture but let him off without so much as a fixit ticket.
I was tempted to try the same thing but didn’t have the balls to pull it off. I’m a terrible liar and I’d probably blow my story.
ParticipantI am just starting down the cable-cutting path, so this thread is well-timed for me.
I bought a Roku2 HS box and it’s OK but not great. Image quality varies greatly (I guess that’s to be expected) but a couple of the channels are just plain formatted incorrectly – the picture is zoomed in like eight times, so all you see is the upper left hand corner. Hulu+ works well. I’m still within the 30 day trial period and I haven’t decided whether to keep it or not.
I don’t have a DTV solution yet. I’d like to get one that does HiDef. The TiVo thing looks cool but I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars or pay a monthly fee. DVR functionality is nice but not a requirement, and I definitely do not want yet another PC. I want some sort of standalone box with a real remote.
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