Author: Tim Ballering

Categories
Leases & Rental Agreements Strategy

Raising rents for existing tenants

The first question you must ask is ‘What is the market for similar units today?’

Market rates can change quite a bit in both directions.

If an area is suddenly overbuilt or there is the loss of a major employer, rents can go down. In those cases even keeping the current rent may cause you to lose a great tenant.

If the rents have gone up a lot, then you may be leaving too much money on the table.

You can look at a bunch of local ads and Craigslist to get an idea. This can be a lot of work. I cheat and use rentometer.com (they have a free level, but we do enough to make the pro version worth while) Then go and look at their comps to see where you should be as all three bedrooms in Anytown, USA are not created equal.

For a great tenant we do not raise to market, but will often raise a bit. There is a cost to turning a unit in prepping, advertising and lost rent.

If you are not planning on selling the place, getting the last 5% of rent  may be a fools errand. On the other hand if you are selling a place, 5% of additional rent can be thousdands of dollars of added value.

Categories
Maintenance & Repairs Milwaukee

10 Year Smoke Detector Laws

You now are required to install 10 year sealed battery smoke detectors in Milwaukee. We have the law in a large part because Kiddie, the smoke detector manufacturer,  lobbied hard in Milwaukee for the law.

The sales literature claims the life to be ten years from the activation. Now if the ten year detectors actually worked for ten years, without being removed, disabled, or the battery dying they would be a bargain for owners compared to replacing batteries once a year.  However, will they?  I doubt it.

The marketing of a ten year detector may in fact cause more problem as home owners and perhaps some landlords will think ‘Okay, this January 2018, I’ll make a note on my calendar to replace the detectors in December 2027.’ and not continue to check them annually at least.

 

Let’s be clear: You still need to check the ten year units, just as you did with the regular units.

A worrisome fact is they have an “off” selector that drains the battery and permanently disables  the unit. From their literature

 

Q: How do I disable my alarm?
A: Remove the alarm from the mounting plate by rotating it counterclockwise (as indicated by the arrows on the cover of the alarm). Next, on the back side of the alarm, locate the area marked with a long arrow on the product label. Break through the label with a screw driver and turn the screw to the “OFF” position. This will deactivate the alarm, stop the end-of-life warning and render the alarm safe for disposal by draining the battery.
IMPORTANT: Deactivation of the alarm is permanent. Once the alarm has been deactivated, it cannot be reactivated or mounted back onto the mounting plate and will no longer detect smoke or carbon monoxide. This is why it’s imperative to replace your alarm immediately.
The ten year warranty only covers repair or replacing the unit, not the damage caused by them failing to work in a fire seven years from now,  your labor to replace them or even the postage to and from the manufacturer.  Some highlights of one warranty:

 

The obligation of [manufacturer] under this warranty is limited to repairing or replacing the alarm or any part which we find to be defective in material, workmanship or design, free of charge, upon receiving the alarm with proof of date of purchase, postage and return postage prepaid,
 
 In no event shall the Manufacturer be liable for loss of use of this product or for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages, or costs, or expenses incurred by the consumer or any other user of this product, whether due to a breach of contract, negligence, strict
liability in tort or otherwise.
 
The Manufacturer shall have no liability for any personal injury, property damage or any special, incidental, contingent or consequential damage of any kind resulting from gas leakage, smoke, fire or explosion.
Categories
Fair Housing Support Animals

Delta restricts emotional support animals on flights

From Reuters:

Effective March 1, Delta, the second largest U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said it will require passengers seeking to fly with pets to present additional documents outlining the passenger’s need for the animal and proof of its training and vaccinations, 48 hours prior to the flight.

People love their animals. What they often do not comprehend is the impact an animal can have on others.

My wife has severe animal allergies. The allergies are so bad she went anaphylactic on a flight over the Atlantic due to an undeclared purse dog when we were coming back from teaching in Jamaica. When an emergency inhaler did not do the trick, we used her Epipen and the flight crew gave her oxygen.

I thought she would die. Anaphylaxis is terrible it’s like a fish out of water, struggling to breath. It was the absolute scariest couple of hours of my life.

Similarly, she cannot go into a house or a hotel room if there has been a dog in the place, without similar reactions. And animal allergies are not as uncommon as some believe.

Once every rental has to be pet friendly, where do the people with life threatening allergies live?  One would hope that Fair Housing laws give more weight to issues that can cause death.

 

Categories
Strategy Taxes

New tax law – things to consider

It is clearly advantageous for most people who have businesses or itemize their personal deductions to pay as many deductible items as possible in the next couple of days.  (Of course, check with a tax pro and not rely on some landlord you found on the internet before acting)

This could include property taxes, general bills due in the next 60 days, and state estimated income taxes. Perhaps if you have subscription based software etc., you could get a discount by switching to annual instead of monthly payments and move that payment into 2017. Same if you are on an installment plan with insurance let’s say.

We paid as much as we could and I’m feeling a bit broke today.  Knowing so many others had to do the same, it got me to thinking.

My prediction is retail and things like autos and refrigerators are not going to sell well for at least the first quarter of 2018 as so much was spent by small business owners in the final two weeks of 2017.

If you are into the stocks and options, perhaps there is an opportunity to make some money, knowing that the economy will be depressed for a couple of months as people recover from the forced spend to move tax deductions into 2017. (But again, don’t take my advice as I am Just A Landlord)

Categories
Apartment Association Opportunities

What became of former AASEW president Joe Dahl?

Joe and I have stayed in touch occasionally in the couple of years since he left the AASEW for Princeton. In fact he gave me a really cool Princeton tee shirt for encouraging him to take the leap from Milwaukee landlord to attending one of the top academic schools in the world.  Wearing it is the closest I’ll ever get to an Ivy League School. 😉

 
I was talking to Joe yesterday.  He was describing his new position as Director of Lafayette univerisity’s IDEAL Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  What a great opportunity for him to be at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship at a nearly 200 year old college.
 
I asked if he was still in a hurry to rejoin the ranks of Milwaukee rental housing providers.  The answer was ’No’ of course…
 
Then Joe went on to mention that he gave a TED Talk, while at Princeton.  So if you want to learn Joe’s story… It is inspirational.
 
 
Categories
Evictions Housing policies

NPR on eviction moratoriums

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/18/570796464/as-temperatures-fall-no-halt-to-evictions-across-most-of-the-country

 

If landlords like Hahlbeck go out of business, there will be even less affordable housing for low-income families, says Heiner Giese, an attorney for the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin. Both landlords and tenants agree that a lack of such housing is at the heart of the problem.

Categories
Taxes

What will the new tax law mean to us?

This week’s tax change is large and complex.  I’m sure attorneys and accountants will be kept employed for years, determining what it means to the rental industry.   In my search for answers I found a good article that is worth sharing.

Final pass-through rules help some firms more than others

A new exclusion or deduction of 20 percent of ‘qualified business income’ will effectively reduce the tax rate on such income by 20 percent. Thus, qualified income otherwise taxed at the top rate of 37 percent will be taxed at 29.6 percent. Income otherwise taxed at 24 percent, for example, will be taxed at 19.2 percent. Self-employment or net investment income taxes, where applicable, would be in addition to these amounts.

Categories
Strategy

Using Christmas gifts to change a life

When I was just a wee lad of six or seven I was given a book for Christmas, The Way Things Work.

I do not think any gift had made as much of an impact on my life as this. Learning so many fundamentals of mechanics, physics, electricity, plumbing etc as a grade school kid was a foundation that helped me understand so much of what I needed as a small landlord that initially had to make all my own repairs.

These fundamentals also helped me succeed in my prior career in manufacturing.

How different my life would have been if instead I had gotten the Tonka dump truck I thought I wanted for Christmas.

Today, when deciding what gifts to give my grandchildren, I try to find gifts that may impact their lives as much as this book impacted mine.

In fact writing this post brought back such memories, that I just bought a used copy for myself.

Categories
Government Behaving Badly

Milwaukee “encourages” development by pilling on fees?

An ordinance was proposed that would impose a requirement that all downtown construction with 20 or more residential units set aside units for affordable housing.  10%, if privately financed, or 20% if government subsidies.  If the developer was unwilling to do so, then the city would charge a fee of $125,000 per required affordable unit, PRIOR to issuing the permit.

While providing housing to struggling families is a noble concern, the problem with this type of proposal is it discourages development.  When you have the capability to do a $100, $200, $400 million dollar project, there are a lot of communities vying for the influx of development (I’ll assume as I never did anything close to that big)

Years ago I was in Vegas helping my wife do an event there.  I was standing in line to buy something and started talking to the guy in front of me. He was a large developer.  When he asked where I was from, I said Milwaukee.  His response was ‘you do not have a decent skyline and never will as your city is too hard on developers.”

Fortunately, this proposal was shot down by the Milwaukee city attorney  But there will be further attempts to keep Milwaukee at the economic bottom, I’m sure.

Categories
Milwaukee Our industry

“Landlord Games” or more anti rental media bias?

The Milwaukee Journal reports

Lax city oversight allowed sham nonprofit to snag and flip Milwaukee properties

The article has nothing to do with a landlord, and everything to do with with fraudsters using real estate as the vehicle for their criminal activity.
.

Yet just like the other non-landlord related articles in the series, the html title tag is “Landlord Games:…” , the caption to the attached video reads “Some Milwaukee landlords game the system, taking advantage of potential renters and home buyers” and the footer:

Read the investigation

To read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Landlord Games investigation, which examines ways landlords game the system and how city officials allow it to happen, go to jsonline.com/landlordgames.


 Certainly not a “landlord game.”  But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel continually mis-captions anything negative about housing as being  “landlord” caused.