[NicMM]

Thanks HLS.

[NicMM]

Hi FSD,
How do you decide what is normal wear and tear, and what is not?

Also just a thought, could an unhappy landlord cause negative impact to my credit? For example, this time when I purchased my house, the loan officer asked the landlord to fill some information before approving my loan. We pay our rent on 20th each month with bank automatic payment and had no cause to make her unhappy, certainly the landlord did not write any bad thing.

What if in 7 years and we want to buy another property and the landlord is mad at me about the moving out, could she delay responding to loan related inquiry and cause the delay of loan approval?

[NicMM]

The landlord asked me to do all these before the moving out inspection. I really have no idea after all these if she will still charge something else.
Should I refuse?

I have small kids, they put stickers on the wall and floor. There is one area under a rocking chair that we made big notable scratches. Because it is such a small space, the closets are not sliding ones but folding ones, sometimes when a closet door is not fully closed, you open the room door and enter the room , the door nob knocks to the closet door. So there are dents on the closet door too. Other than that, we didn’t do any other damage. We hire cleaners to clean the house every month for $80.

The house is old. But the condition when we moved in was better than today. I am fine to pay some repair. I just feel if I am paying too much (and still no guaranteed to get full deposit back). Nevertheless, the labor in Bay Area is very expensive.

If I don’t do all these, and landlord gets the same (or even more) bill with invoice to show my deduct from the deposit, is that legitimate for her to do? She even mentioned if she repairs, she will deduct the cost for days the house not available for rent.
I am not a person that would like to argue with people, hard to think to go to court for these kind of things.

[NicMM]

I am selling my house in 4S Ranch. I rarely got chance to talk to my listing agent at day time, as she seems to always be busy taking groups of Chinese clients to tour house. They are looking at Camel Valley.

[NicMM]

Here in the Bay Areas, people bid on houses and none contingency offers are everywhere. I have made three offers but all lost to none contingency offers. One townhome listed for $700k, and sold for $880k. One single house listed for $960k, and I could not buy it for $1.02M. The other tiny single house listed for $850k, and we offered $920k and lost it again (today)!!!

You may noticed that we have been throwing out offers to different kinds of properties. Because of the tiny inventory and intense competition, we make all kinds of offers.

[NicMM]

I have no idea what it is, but it sounds not fun.
Hope all goes well.

[NicMM]

Hi Flu or other piggs,

Are you interested in buying a rental property? I have a one with excellent cash flow. A two bedroom townhouse built in 80s. Monthly rent is $1200. HOA + water bill is about $310.Currently property tax is $1300. The current lease will be expire on Feb 22nd 2013. Tenants probably will extend the lease.

Since my family moved to Bay Area and it is such a crazy place for housing. We need funds to make a purchase here. So I am considering about selling it around $100k (if all cash).

If you are interested, please PM me.

NicMM

[NicMM]

My account can be used to purchase real estate. But I didnt do that. I used it to invest in precious metal.

[quote=SD Realtor]Hi Nicole

So did you make a purchase of an income property using Sunwest? I presume it has been going well? I would be interested to hear about the experience and approximate maintenance costs.[/quote]

[NicMM]

Hi IRAhelper,

I ended up using Sunwest trust. Because they don’t charge huge fees. So far so good.

Nicole

[quote=IRAhelper]Hi NicMM,
Did you ever get the help that you were looking for regarding your self-directed investments?

If not, I can help you with that. A great company to work with is The iPlan Group out of Ohio. They have a great service model that saves a lot of administrative time and their fees are probably the best in the industry, especially for active investors who are doing a lot of deals or whose account assets are growing fast and to large amounts.

Also, whats really great is that they have active Real Estate investors on staff so for all of the RE Investors out there looking to self-direct their retirement, they get it.

If you want to talk with one of their IRA Asset Strategists they have this cool little tool that allows you to view their live calendar and schedule a time that works for you. You can access it here: https://my.timedriver.com/8ZCDS+

Good Luck, The IRAhelper[/quote]

[NicMM]

Folks, I can share what is happening in bay area. Housing market is hot here! Houses in decent areas got multiple offers and often sold at a price 50k ~ 100k over asking price. Some of the houses ended up to or over their 2006’s price. It feels crazy to see this.

-NicMM

[NicMM]

This is a two door (side-by-side) refrig. The water is dripping from the ice maker. I dont think it is caused by parts at the bottom.

NicMM

[quote=mike92104]
There’s not much to an ice maker. Just based on what you described, I would suspect a leak between the solenoid valve (part at the bottom of the fridge that the water supply plugs into and the ice maker itself. It’s also very possible that the solenoid valve itself is leaking.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/improvement/electrical-plumbing/1276061

The valves aren’t very expensive.

For example:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=ice+maker+solenoid+valve&hl=en&rlz=1C1CHFA_enUS484US484&prmd=imvnsfd&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&biw=1050&bih=610&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=12557767956770927828&sa=X&ei=N4dBUOIpppSIAo-5gPgD&ved=0CGkQ8wIwAA%5B/quote%5D

[NicMM]

Both Flu and Diego Mamani have valid points. Ahh, landlording does need some careful thinking. In my case, I lived in the house before renting it out. So I just left the refrig there. If I wrote the contract differently, things could be simpler.

NicMM

[quote=Diego Mamani]FLU, I hope you’re kidding… The more I read your posts, the more convinced I am that landlording is not for you. If a fridge is leaking water, you do want to know about it. Water can damage your asset (house)! “Never bug me again” is not the proper strategy (unless they are bugging you about really trivial stuff).

I know, elsewhere you wrote “no problem, I just dock their security deposit.” Water damage, and many other kinds of damage can be costlier than a 2-month rent deposit. More generally, as a landlord, you shouldn’t be fostering an antagonistic relationship with your tenants, especially as long as they pay rent on time and are not complete pigs. One should never befriend a tenant, but that doesn’t mean he’s your adversary.

I do agree with your points about having a simpler fridge; however, if the house is in a nicer neighborhood, it’ll be hard to rent if you don’t have a relatively new fridge with ice maker and water dispenser.

A solution for some landlords is to exclude a fridge from the house, but offer to rent one out to the tenant for, say, $40 a month. If the tenant doesn’t buy his own fridge, then you can buy one cheap from Craigslist. If it breaks down, then just buy another used one.[/quote]

[NicMM]

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Bearishgurl and Ocrenter. Good to hear that.

-NicMM

[NicMM]

Among all these recent internet IPOs, why LinkedIn still holds a good value and stock price?

[NicMM]

Ok, I see everyone is sided with the tenants. Thanks for the honest opinion.

NicMM

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