Just a theory, of course, but I felt like it was worth it to change the mailing address on the applications to my office address. At the last showing, I waited for the new tenants outside the duplex (like always), but then simply didn’t disclose that I lived there. I even gave a quick knock on the door to the apartment before going in. I think that they did seem a bit more comfortable checking the place out and envisioning themselves there; it probably made me seem more like a legitimate landlord too. I walked them outside afterwards, and got in my car and drove away (and took a walk in a park nearby before going back home). No applications yet; they were looking at one more place this week… Either way, I feel better about showing the apartment this way. Let’s see if it works!

I put an ad up on Craig’s list yesterday, linking to a webpage I put together that has photos of every room, a floor plan, and a detailed description including neighborhood hot-spots. I previously did some comparative research on Craig’s list, to see what comparable rentals are going for, and priced mine at the high end of what I think I could get for it; I can always lower it if need be. I already have two showings scheduled for this week, so here’s hoping that I find some good tenants!

However, I’m about to make the switch from owner-occupied duplex dweller to straight-up landlord — my boyfriend (who’s been starring in some of the latest posts as the uber-handy guy) has asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. With the current real estate climate, it’s a terrible time to sell a house. And, the original plan when buying this duplex was to live in part of it for a while, but hold onto it as an investment when I eventually moved out into a single family house. After all, when the mortgage is paid off in 25 years or so, expenses will go waaaaay down and the rent coming in each month will mostly be money in my pocket. (A nice supplementary retirement income, too.)

I’ve always kept in the back of my mind that this day would be coming eventually, and have been making lists in my head of everything that I’d have to do to fix up my half of the duplex to turn it into a nice, low-maintenance rental that would be attractive to good tenants. Unfortunately, most of these things have stayed on that list…. not as much incentive to get the work done as there was for upstairs. We’ve set a date two months out to get most of these things done (July 1st), at which point I’ll start advertising and showing the apartment to people looking for a place in September (60 days out). A lot of the big, visible things (redoing the bathroom, replacing the kitchen floor, finishing the back room and turning it into a true four-season room) will need to be done before July; smaller, less visible things (fixing the ignition on the burners on the stove, fixing the lock hardware, painting the inside of the cabinets) can wait until later.

In fact, only about half of the things on my list absolutely HAVE to be done before renting the apartment out (the bathroom, for instance, leaks into the basement and absolutely needs to be remodeled). Other things could wait (I’m putting new french doors on the bedroom, replacing some ridiculous bifold closet doors that are used as a bedroom door, for instance.) While the bifold doors do look incredibly stupid, they don’t absolutely need to be fixed. However, once I move out, I’m never going to have this kind of unlimited access to the apartment again, unless I let it go unrented for a month or two (which means losing $1000 or $2000). So, I’d like to do as much as I can now, before I move out.

Aside from the list of repairs and improvements, I have several other things to figure out as well.

1. Snow removal
   Will my current tenants be interested in doing this, perhaps for a bit off their rent (or a monthly payment)? Othewise, I think I’ll talk to the neighbor in the duplex next door, and see if he’d be interested in taking this over, for a fee.
2. Lawn mowing
   Again, this is something my current tenants may be up for, otherwise, I’ll talk to my neighbor. If neither of them are interested, I may have to go through some sort of professional service, and I’m not sure how much that costs.
3. Insurance
   As an owner-occupant, right now I can get away with just a plain regular homeowners policy. However, once I move off-site, I’ll need to change to a landlord’s policy. This may cost quite a bit more, depending on who I go through. My boyfriend switched to a landlord’s policy on his old house, however, and his rates didn’t go up significantly.
4. Taxes
   Once I move out of the duplex, I’ll no longer get the “homestead credit,” which means that my property taxes will go up, most likely to the tune of $200-$300 more per year.
5. Deferred Loan Status
   About three years ago, I qualified for a deferred loan, through the city, for exterior improvements. I used it to put some new storm windows and exterior doors onto the house. The loan was structured such that the city paid for half of the improvements, via a deferred loan, which was forgiven over the course of five years — as long as I continued to occupy the home. I’ll be moving out at the end of year three, so I may have to come up with some cash to pay back a portion of that loan.
6. Rental License
   Right now I’m only licensed to rent out one unit; I’ll have to contact the city and get a license for the lower unit as well.

Other things to think about…. how much do I leave behind? There’s a common area in the basement, I’m thinking that I may get a locking cabinet and keep some of my tools here, for repairs and whatnot (especially since my boyfriend has a duplicate of most everything anyway). It certainly makes sense to keep all of the leftover touch-up paint here.

What else am I forgetting? I’m excited to be making the move, but I sure do have a busy couple of months ahead of me…

OK, so I called the plumber to check out the toilet upstairs, after it was still malfunctioning a few weeks later. He did the “bucket test” (pour a bucket of water into the toilet, and see how well it flushes on its own), and got a good healthy flush. This would indicate that the vent system was working just fine, and nothing was clogging the drain system. However, when we flushes the toilet using the handle, it went much, much slower. The water wasn’t getting into the bowl fast enough to create a big flush. I’d never realized this before, but all around the bowl of the toilet, under the rim, are a bunch of tiny little holes that let water into the bowl. These holes can get clogged, over time, with sediments from the water and other miscellaneous gunk. He pulled out some dental tools to see how clogged they were (how much he could get scraped out, which wasn’t a whole lot), and determined that the best solution was simply a new toilet.

He said that the toilet could be saved (for sentimental reasons?) if I really wanted; they could pour some acid into the tank and let that work out the clogs in the little holes… however, the time it would take for him to do that would be more expensive than having him install a new toilet. He quoted me on installing a new toilet (A plain-jane Gerber toilet, which he referred to as “the working man’s toilet.” A basic, no-frills reliable model. 12″ rough-in, round front, standard height) for about $100, plus installation for about $250 — as long as the flange was in good shape. (The flange, I’ve learned, is the thing that sticks up out of the floor, connecting toilet to drain pipe.)

I shared this information with the boyfriend, and he suggested that it would be better for me to spend a little more on the toilet and get “someone that I know” to install it for me. He must really think a lot of me if he’s willing to do toilet installations in my rental property for me.

He’s installed toilets before, and apparently is quite passionate about the subject (well, compared to me anyway). He immediately linked me to a page on Kohler’s class 5 “flush technology” (why you need class 5). He put in a toilet like this at his old house, and described the flush as “strong enough to rip your arm off.” Sounds good to me. He picked one up at Home Depot for around $150, and was able to install it in less than an hour (that’s even less than the plumber had estimated!) It works beautifully, and the tenants even thanked me for it. The supply line did develop a slight leak, however, so that will probably have to be replaced as well.

With such a small bathroom, I wanted to keep the toilet as small as possible, so I got a standard-height model. Apparently, though, “comfort-height,” which is a couple of inches higher at “bowl height,” is the new trend in toilets… Which really kind of creeps me out, I have to say. Never have I sat on a toilet and thought “gee, if only this toilet was a couple of inches higher, I would be so much more comfortable right now. In fact, I might be inclined to lounge around and read a magazine or something… ” Of course, I’m only 5′6″… so maybe I’m missing something?

In a perfect world, there would be only one style of toilet, all toilets would always work perfectly, and I would never, ever have to think about them again…

Two things wrong with this. First, I was relatively upset that my tenants were calling service-people to the apartment without my consent. I certainly couldn’t reimburse them for unauthorized repairs — it could have very well been something that I could have fixed myself, with little out-of-pocket expense. (It turns out that they weren’t looking to be reimbursed — they actually thought it was in the lease that they were responsible for coordinating and paying anyone having to do with clogged drains/pipes etc. ) Also, they seriously waited four days?? DAYS? If my (only) toilet completely stopped flushing, I would be taking action within hours, certainly not days.

The second thing wrong? I, in a relative panic, called my (very handy) boyfriend to come over to look at the toilet right away. I literally left work, still wearing a suit and heels to go check out this toilet issue. I’m expecting something catastrophic and gross — after all, they said that hadn’t been working for FOUR DAYS. Surprisingly, the toilet was pristine and empty. Yep, it still flushed, just not as strong as it had in the past. And they claim that there was a dramatic difference about four days before. Comparing it to my toilet downstairs, they seemed fairly equal. I don’t pay that much attention, however, to the power of the flush of my toilet. Boyfriend thinks that it isn’t flushing quite up to par either. We checked out the mechanics of the actual toilet, though, and everything seems to be working just fine.

Theory #1
There was a big ice storm that came through approximately four days before they called me about the toilet — if enough snow/ice blew up into the vent stack on the roof (which allows air into the plumbing system, allowing it to drain, flush, and all of the other things that we take for granted), that would cause a problem with both toilets — more on the second floor (tenant) toilet than on mine. If that was the case, all we needed to do was wait a week or so until we got some nice warm spring weather that would cause the blockage to melt.

But, alas, spring came and my tenants tell me that there’s no change. If it’s not a vent issue, we really have no idea what the issue is. Although, to me, it looks like the toilet is fine, and I’m kind of irritated with the way that they handled telling me about it, I do still have a duty to try to resolve the situation. So, I called the plumber. He’s coming tomorrow, I’m hoping for good news.

THE SITUATION
My house is over a hundred years old. A hundred and nine, to be exact (although I suppose I don’t know exactly what month the construction was complete). So, for an old house, a person’s willing to forgive several things. The woodwork isn’t perfectly pristine anymore, how could it be after 109 years? The rooms aren’t as large as they would be in a brand-new house, but the house makes up for it in charm. Well, one thing that I’ve been forgiving since buying the house is the almost complete lack of level floors. The living room, in the front of the house, is perceived as level by a casual observer (although it does slant toward the street). The kitchen and bathroom, in the back of the house, are perceived as as level, although they do slant slightly toward the dining room (in the middle of the house). The bedrooms and dining room, however, have a significant, immediately perceivable slant. It happens both on my floor (downstairs), and in the rental unit (upstairs). I’ve had people who were viewing the apartment actually joke about feeling like they were “walking uphill.” I have 4″ shims under one end of my bed to make it level. It’s really a significant gap. However, I’ve gotten used to it, and I’ve never had a vacancy upstairs, so other people presumably are able to get used to it as well. Most of my home-improvement-savvy friends seemed to think that the issue was that the house had shifted (past tense), and was now done shifting, so there wasn’t much to worry about at this point, unless I actually wanted to correct the slant. While the slant can be corrected, it comes with a slew of its own problems, though — crumbling plaster, windows and doors that don’t close, squeaking, cracking, all sorts of things. It didn’t seem worth it, so I just left it alone.

BUT: IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT THE HOUSE IS STILL MOVING
When I bought the house, some of the immediate maintenance that I did involved sanding down the top of a couple of doors so that they would close properly, and also the bottom of one of the bedroom doors upstairs, so that it wouldn’t scrape across the hardwood floor. I hand-sanded the doors, and sanded far enough down so that the doors would open/close freely, plus maybe a magazine’s width on the bottom of the bedroom door. This was 5 years ago. I realized during the last turnover, however, that the upstairs bedroom door was scraping the floor again… which meant that, although slight, there was still movement. Also, there are a couple of obvious patch-jobs in the plaster on my dining room walls. These have clearly been there for a while, but over the past five years, they’ve cracked through the paint. Also, my front door slowly became harder and harder to close, until it finally dawned on me that I had to sand down the top of it. I started to worry that I had a real problem on my hands.

WHAT TO DO? I knew that there wasn’t much that my friends and I could really tell about the status of the foundation, and we couldn’t make any realistic predictions as to what would happen to the house in the future (would it eventually end up at a 45 degree angle????) I was also thinking about putting some more money into the duplex by remodeling the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, but I didn’t want to put any more money into a sinking house… for piece of mind (and to know whether I should quick patch up all of the cracks and sell the house ASAP), I decided that I needed to bite the bullet and have a structural engineer take a look.

I CALLED IN THE BIG GUNS – A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER – FOR A CONSULTATION
As luck would have it, one of my good friends (a mechanical engineer, incidentally), had recently been doing some structural work at his house, and was able to refer me to a very good structural engineer. He came out to do a site visit for no charge (I was expecting to pay around $150 for a visit, which I still think would have been well worth it). He looked at the foundation, the basement, the floor joists, the slant of the floor, the walls, the woodwork, etc. He gave me his prediction for what would happen to the house in the future, and a few general ideas of how a slant like mine could be fixed. To put together an actual plan for how a contractor could carry out one of these methods, he quoted me around $400, which seems pretty reasonable to me too.

THE VERDICT, AND MY OPTIONS
Well, most importantly, he assured me that nothing “catastrophic” was going to happen if I simply left everything alone. The foundation is sound, the skeleton of the house is fine; it’s simply an old house. Likely, the ground beneath the house is compacting, and the house is simply moving with it. So, I don’t have to quick sell the house. Good. Here are the options that he gave me for fixing the slant:

• Jack up the house (like house-movers do), remove the old foundation, solidify the ground beneath it, and build a new, level foundation. Drop the old house onto the new foundation. I think that he said this would end up costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000. Yipes. Except — in the process of doing this, you could actually turn your duplex into a triplex. The new foundation could become a garden-level apartment, thus increasing the income-generation potential of the property by about a third. Over time, it could actually pay for the cost of the new foundation. Drawback? Well, aside from the initial outlay of cash, the non-level house would have to re-shift to accommodate the now level foundation, causing all of those cracking/crumbling/sagging issues all over again. While intriguing, this isn’t anything that I’m ready to jump on.
• Apparently, they can actually inject some sort of ground-solidifying material into the ground below your foundation. They can inject enough of this that it actually slowly lifts up the foundation of the house. Sounds much easier than the previous option, but apparently it isn’t much cheaper….
• They can attach a bunch of little auger-like devices to the foundation that are able to move the foundation to the proper level. I wish that I had asked more questions about the actual mechanics of this, but, like the last two options, it’s also pretty expensive. Sigh.
• I can have a soil test done to find out what’s actually going on with the soil beneath my house, what it’s made of and why it’s settling. After this, I either dig out, inject, or auger-ify. Not so helpful.
• I can just live with it. And realize that it’s an old house; one that’s not quit grand enough to warrant $50,000 worth of foundation work to correct a semi-minor problem. If this was a mansion, historical landmark, etc., it might be worth it. But, assuming that this guy knows his stuff, it’s not likely that the place is going to cease being a reasonable place to live within my lifetime. As I do plan to keep the duplex indefinitely, and use it as extra income when I’m old and retired, I’m certainly interested in the long-term. Leveling the un-level floors doesn’t seem to be in the cards, however. It seems like the best thing to do in this case is to do nothing at all. Except for maybe have a lot of shims on hand…

Of course, my new tenants weren’t trying to pull anything, they had simply forgotten to make the call. I brought them the bill that came to me, explained the situation, and they promptly called the gas company. At least, I assume that that’s what happened, since I haven’t received any more bills…

1. Be friendly, respectful, and courteous always. Then when you need to be firm, they will know you are serious.
2. Answer your phone when the tenant calls or return their call promptly. Nothing is more frustrating when you have a question or problem and someone will not return or take your calls.
3. Stop by or call to just chat and see how they are doing. This lets them know you care about them as a person. Ask about their work, their kids, or what they enjoy.
4. Repair everything in the unit that the tenant calls about. Even a simple dripping faucet can fester into a frustration in time.
5. If the tenants have lived in the apartment for more than 2 years, touch up the paint in the main areas, paint a room a color that you both agree on, or shampoo the carpet. You are not only keeping them happy, you are maintaining your property.
6. If the tenant always pays on time and they call and tell you the rent is going to be late, forgive the late fee this one time. Even the banks do it!
7. Offer an incentive if they find a new tenant for you. I give my existing tenants $200 if they find a new tenant that signs a lease. It costs the same as a newspaper ad and much cheaper than a vacant unit.

Items 1 and 2 seem like a given. I always try to keep a professional, yet friendly relationship with my tenants. Number three, though, seems a little creepy to me. While I happen to live in the same property as my tenants, and run into them occasionally, small-talk about the neighbors, etc., comes pretty easily. However, I think that calling them out of the blue (even if I lived elsewhere) would creep them out. I would say that it’s great to get to know them (as you would any business client), but do the small talk while you’re there for another purpose (fixing something, picking up a check, etc.).

Number four is a big one. Responding to maintenance requests in a timely manner goes a long way. If something can’t be fixed immediately, I try to keep tenants updated so that they know that it’s in progress and will be taken care of soon. And, keeping the unit well-maintained benefits you too.

I’ve never really done number 5, although I have taken it upon myself to do some upgrades to the apartment so that they would make it more attractive next time I had to show it to prospective renters. Tenants seem to appreciate these upgrades more if you make them before they’ve given you their notice to move out, but they’ve always been cooperative either way.

Number six seems like a given too. I can only think of one late payment that I’ve received, and it came with an explanation, so I waived the late fee.

Number seven sounds like a great idea in theory. Advertising on Craig’s list, however, is free, and seems much more effective than newspaper ads. If it gets me a good tenant quickly, it would be worth it to pay a tenant a referral bonus. However, I don’t think I’d pay $200. Maybe $50-$100.

However, on the bright side, articles like this one in Business Week claim that the hardest hit properties are luxury high-rises, especially in places like Manhattan, which is a ground zero of sorts for all that’s wrong with the economy right now. The article reports that landlords have lowered rents as much as 20% to lure tenants into their properties. I’m hoping that more modest accommodations are largely untouched. From a quick search on Craig’s list, rents don’t look significantly lower than last time I looked. I do, however, notice a lot more ads for “house for rent” than usual.

According to a related report, also on Business Week, my metro is in the list of 25 large metros where rents declined most in the end of 2008. It’s lower on the list, but still made the list. According to the entry on my metro area:

Rent drop: -2.1%
Q4 2008 rent change: -2.5%
Q4 2007 rent change: -0.5%

The unemployment rate climbed to 5.6% in November 2008 compared to 3.7% in November 2007. The apartment vacancy rate jumped to 5.5% in the fourth quarter last year from 4.4% in the same period in 2007. Landlords on average are giving 2.7 weeks of rent concessions.

Rent concessions. Yikes. My tenants are in a lease until the end of June, so hopefully they’ll just stay put. Interestingly, when my previous tenants moved out, I was able to easily find tenants who were willing to pay $50 more per month. Perhaps I was undercharging my previous tenants. However, I’ve always been of the mindset that I’d rather keep good tenants staying put than try to get $25/month more. Turnovers are a lot of work, and can be costly as well, with screening fees and turnover-related maintenance.

Or, maybe this whole economy thing will be fixed by the end of June and rents will start going up again. Here’s hoping

Now the next question… where am I going to put this thing?

I have a perfect spot, actually… a three-season porch off the side of the house that I really only use as an area for storing things that I don’t want to put away yet. Yes, a garbage room. When I first bought the duplex, it was covered in faux-wood paneling, had a dropped ceiling, strange velvet yellow drapes, and a bar lamp. Oh, and a red carpet. I’m guessing it was previously the poker/smoking room? I removed the paneling a long time ago, and had the screen door and storm windows replaced with a quality exterior door and new vinyl windows, but haven’t gotten much farther than that (aside from installing an outlet). It’s very drafty right now — so much so that I close the door to it and keep it unheated. I’m told that repeated thawing-and-freezing is not so good for electronics and moving equipment like treadmills, though, so as-is, the porch isnt’ an ideal location. That, and the whole point of having a treadmill is being able to run in a heated space…

So, now, (ideally, within 7-10 business days — shipping time for the treadmill), I need to “weatherize” the room and turn it into part of the house.

Luckily, I’ve already tackled the door and windows — those are certainly the most expensive pieces of the puzzle, and the parts that I can’t do myself. I have some options for how I can proceed with the rest:

The walls
Option 1: Tear out the existing bead-board paneling on the exterior walls, do some spray foam to seal up gaps, then lay in fiberglass insulation. Replace the walls with new drywall (or possibly just new beadboard… I haven’t determined yet if I need to have drywall beneath new paneling or not).

Option 2: Hire someone to blow cellulose or foam into the exterior walls. I haven’t looked into cost for this yet, but I’m guessing that it would be more than the cost of materials for option 1. However, the plus side is that there would be less work on my part, I’d just need to scrape and paint the existing paneling.

The interior walls of that room are currently covered with some very odd 40s-vintage faux brick siding. Beneath that is the original wood siding of the house. I’m thinking that I could just remove the faux brick, and replace it with either beadboard or drywall, depending on what I decide to do with the exterior walls.

Other variables yet-to-be-determined:

The floor.
Currently, underneath the carpet (which is in very poor condition), is a traditional painted wood porch floor. I haven’t ventured to look underneath it yet, but there isn’t an accessible crawl space (although the room is built on solid footings). I could either leave the floor as-is, and cover it with new carpet/tile/vinyl/wood, etc., OR, I could actually rip up the floor and insulate underneath, then build a new subfloor and cover that with a new floorcovering. The floor currently isn’t letting as much cold in as the walls, but it is certainly letting some in. It starts to become a question of how much time/effort I’m willing to put into a home that I don’t plan to live in forever, and what is “good enough” for a rental…

The ceiling.
Right now, the ceiling is also painted wood slats that need to be either scraped and painted or covered up. If I go with beadboard for the walls, I think that it would look fine with a little TLC and a fresh coat of paint. However, if I drywall the walls, I think it’ll look odd to have a wood slat “porch” ceiling…

Electricity.
Right now, it’s running through metal conduit. I’m fine with keeping it running outside of the walls, but would want to replace it with the nicer-looking white wiremold style conduit.

The porch is only 10′ x 7′, but this is already sounding like more than a 7-10 day project (for a person who has a day job, at least). Another point to consider: The more big surface areas that I replace (drywall, etc.), the more I will need a helper for the job. Which I can certainly get, I just like to make sure that I’m using my favors judiciously… When it’s all finished, though, it’ll be a great improvement to this floor of the duplex as a rental unit — I’m adding an entire new room that could be used as a sunroom, office, bedroom or kitchen eating area. Oh, or fitness room