Just A Landlord

This post is being written for a couple of  purposes.

Those of us with any significant amount of real estate need to plan better for what will happen if you suddenly die.  Your spouse and kids probably will not enjoy landlording as much as you.  Wait, few people “enjoy” landlording, so let’s use the word tolerate instead.  You need to have a list of people in the industry that you trust. Keep that list handy for your family so they can get their hands on it if they need to.

My other purpose is to acknowledge real estate broker Graig Goldman who pulled off what many thought would be the impossible. He sold over 100 properties at a good price in less than two months.  If you attended the March Apartment Association meeting, Graig was the presenter on buying foreclosures.

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File under “Buying Single Family Rentals Has a Downside”

Our crew shows up to work on a vacant property this morning and finds the siding and storm windows gone. It was an okay looking place yesterday. Now it needs to be resided.

At least this time they did not steal the plumbing and electric wiring.

A year ago a similar thing happened.  A tenant that lived in another of our homes a couple doors away saw the neighbor stripping our property and called 911.  The police said ‘have your landlord file a report so he can file an insurance claim’ and did not send out a squad.  By the end of the weekend the neighbor had stripped all the plumbing, heating and electric wiring from the house.

I sent the police and the DA photos my tenant took showing the neighbor loading the siding on to his car.    We ended up razing the property as the damage was so extensive.

No one was ever prosecuted, even though the damage exceeded ten grand.

“Going Green” is usually a positive phrase. Business that go “Green” are looked at as innovators and use this for a market advantage. It is hard to say anything bad about this type of greeness

However the way the city of Milwaukee is going grheck scares the heck out of me. .

As I drove the Southside neighborhoods finishing up our annual fall exterior surveys of our properties, I was shocked at the number of green boarded and abandoned homes and duplexes in that area. Even more than there were in spring

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The who’s who of Milwaukee rental housing were in attendance at Joe Peter’s funeral.  So many that one person commented that if a bomb hit the church nobody in Milwaukee would have to pay rent again.  A lot of folks I had not seen in years.  It’s sad that the only time we see these people anymore are funerals for friends.

One such person was Mike, a former board member of the Apartment Association.  He asked if I remembered having lunch with him a number of years ago.  I admitted I didn’t and kiddingly asked if I had skipped out on my portion of the bill. He assured me I hadn’t and that he just wanted to thank me for the sage advice I had given him that helped him succeed when others failed.  I had him remind me of what I shared with him that he felt was so valuable.  Once he told me, I felt it still rings so true that I would share it again.

At that lunch back in probably 2005 or 2006, the height of the silliness we were seeing in real estate pricing, Mike wanted to know how to acquire more units.  I cautioned him that his focus was wrong.

It’s not about how many units you own.  It’s about being sustainably profitable.

Unit fever is a disease that has wiped many owners in both good and bad economies. So don’t aim to have 50,100, 200, a thousand units.  Rather do the math and aim to only own profitable units and create scalable infrastructure before getting big.

A different way of municipalities interacting with property owners

In Washington  D.C. they have  The Housing Provider Ombudsman a information resource for small housing providers.

Blacklisting bad tenants

THE NAMES of 400,000 Australian renters have swelled national blacklists for crimes ranging from pouring concrete down toilets to stealing entire kitchens from properties. [Source]