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Interview With A Landlord – Donna F.

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Interview With A Landlord Series

After the great response regarding my first interview with a landlord, I managed to wrangle another landlord into an interview to help provide some more insights into her landlord business and the overall experience of being a landlord.

I’ve actually known Donna for about six years now and  she has a great story for you in this video interview.

She started with a plan, has a goal and is making her way through it and provides some great advice for other landlords out there. If you’re wondering if it’s possible to create your own landlord business while working a full time job, here story should serve as an example that it is possible and hopefully inspires you as well.

I’m always looking for other landlords to talk to and my hopes are to have one interview a month that I can share with you, so if you have stories you believe will help other landlords with their landlord business or even cautionary tales that will help protect landlords, I’d love to hear from you.

Also, if you’re enjoying these series, let us know! Leave us a comment, share it with friends and tell Donna how she did!

Landlord Tools of the Trade – Painting Tools

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Landlord Tools

Painting Tools for Landlords

Every business has the tools of the trade, whether it’s wrenches for a mechanic, spreadsheet for analysts or even color swatches for designers. Knowing what tools to have can make those jobs easier, faster and hopefully more profitable.

The same can be said for the landlord business. So to provide some ideas of items you may want to have, I’m going to create a few articles with some of the items and tools I use to make my work easier and in turn, hopefully yours too.

Speed Up Your Painting

Hopefully you’ve seen my previous article/video about choosing paint colors (A Quick And Easy Landlord Renovating Tip), if not maybe go take a quick look at it after you’re done here. It gives you some ideas about saving time later and it revolves around painting which is where today’s tools come to play.

Now as much as I would like you to hire someone to come in and do the painting for you, it doesn’t always work that way. Hiring someone may not fit in your budget, you may have plenty of spare time or you may even find it relaxing. So if you’re doing it, make sure you have the right tools to get the job done.

I actually have several of the tools I take with me whenever I have to paint a property in the image at the top of the page. The obvious ones are the huge bucket of paint, the small ladder and the drop clothes. The less obvious ones are the scraper on the floor, the roll of sandpaper (the sanding block actually isn’t in the picture, but you’ll want one of those too) and my handy rolling stick.

Obvious Painting Tools

We buy the large buckets of paint as we use the same color in all of our properties and by purchasing in larger containers we save money. The small ladder allows us to reach the corners and top edges when painting. In my case I’m over 6′ tall, so I don’t need a very larger ladder, you might want to consider a slightly larger one if you need it. My wife actually has one with a shelf to set the paint on and it’s her favorite ladder for painting.

Drop clothes, these should be mandatory! You can purchase them from most paint supply stores, but we also use old sheets and for those paying attention the blue sheets are actually old sheets from the surgery ward in hospitals. No, they weren’t used, but they were thrown out and a friend who worked at the hospital donated them to us. They are AWESOME!

Having drop clothes can save you a ton of clean up after the fact and although it takes a bit more prep time to lay them out, you will be thankful the first time a big glob of paint falls on them.

Less Obvious Tools

The less obvious tools are the scraper for cleaning up edges, removing silicon or for outside wooden frames with pealing paint. The sand paper may actually be one of the most important pieces.

I could probably turn this into a five thousand word article about painting, but to keep your attention, I’ll gloss over a few things, and just do some Coles notes on them. Starting with prepping the walls. The amount of prep work you do prior to painting will really help determine how it looks.

If you spend extra time mudding and sanding any imperfections, patching any plaster that is damaged and scraping any old paint off it will make the finished product so much better. That sandpaper you brought with you is worth it’s weight in gold to accomplishing that goal.

On top of that, doing a quick sanding between coats can also help create a smoother finish along with helping the second and/or third coat adhere better. Don’t skip this step.

That brings me to one other tool we use in concert with the sanding, the painting pole. Obviously we use this with the roller (should I have mentioned the roller as an obvious tool?), but we also have special sanding blocks that attach to the painting pole as well. This makes the process of doing a quick scuff up of the wall fast and easy.

It’s a quick sand, you don’t want to take the paint off, just scuff it a bit to smooth out any imperfections and to allow that next coat to stick more. Trust me, if you haven’t been using a pole already for rolling the walls, just having one will make a huge difference in your speed (and it makes you back feel better too).

Finally, don’t forget a couple plastic bags full of rags. This is dual purpose. The first time you paint a wall a new color you’ll need to do a couple coats. Wrapping your paint brush in a wet rag and leaving it in the fridge over night will help stop the paint from hardening allowing you to come back the next day and apply the second coat.. You’ll also be able to use the rags to touch up any booboos.

The plastic bags (sorry environmentalists) work great with the roller and the rolling tray. If you need to come back later or the next day for coat two, make sure the tray is full of paint, the roller is soaked and then then cover the tray with two bags, one over the thick end first, then across the other end. It keeps the air away from it and allows you again to set it aside until the next day without worrying about the paint hardening or destroying the roller.

Other Painting Tips

This one is a little more advanced and may not work for you, but we don’t use painting tape. We cut in by hand along the ceilings, baseboards (when we don’t remove them first) and door frames. It takes a steady hand and it doesn’t hurt that my wife is an artist as well so she can follow the lines. I’ve just had lots of practice and I stock extra rags in case I mess up…

If this is something you’re going to try, make sure you have a two or three inch wide wedge style paint brush as the wedge shape helps keep that line and we find it’s a bit easier on the hands. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s just having the tip of the brush angle down instead of squared off when you are looking at the brush when it’s flat on the floor. See the image for a visual explanation.

Paintbrushes

If you use drywall mud to patch holes, go over the mud after you patch with a wet rag. It will remove the excess and just leave the filled in hole making the wall look smoother instead of patchy.

You can use stir sticks to stir paint that has been sitting for a while or you can purchase attachments for your drill that will do a much better job of stirring paint. If you do a lot of painting, this attachment can be very handy.

Remove all switch plates and electrical covers and bring a couple boxes to put them in so they don’t get lost. If they are grimy and dirty we often put them in the sink with a little dish soap or cleaner to soak. then we remove them and wipe them down with some of our plentiful rags later and they come out much cleaner. If they aren’t coming out clean, consider purchasing new ones or the work you did making the walls all pretty is for nothing.

Did I miss any handy tips or tools to make your next painting project easier? Do you have some you can share with me? Either way I’d love to hear your thoughts about these tips and whether you would like access to more of the tools I use and how to take advantage of them to their fullest. So leave me a comment below.

Quick Update On Our Latest Floor Renovation

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Replacing Laminate In Our Rental

What a crazy week! As it always seems to happen, if I take a long weekend off from work, I really pay for it the next week and this last week was no exception. Oh and I lied about the quick update, go get a coffee or tea, I couldn’t stop typing…

In my previous post, I talked about upgrading some water damaged floor in one of our shared accommodation properties with a newer product our flooring guy recommended called Sobella.  Well it was installed last week and it looks great.

Before and After shots of new flooring in Rental Property

I spent all morning removing the baseboards, moving the fridge, stove and other furniture out of the way, pulling the toilet and tearing out the old vanity and then finally removing the flooring. Now I normally recommend bringing someone else in to do a bunch of this for you, but sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.

If this is the sort of thing you like to do, here’s my rogues gallery of essential tools.

Floor Demo Tools

Various pry and crow bars to remove baseboards and lift flooring, a utility knife to cut the silicone on the tops of the baseboards (this keeps the paint from pulling away from the wall) and the handy hammer to force the pry bars and crowbars when needed.

As always seems to occur, once you start a job like this you always end up with additional problems or headaches along the way. This was no exception. After spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on reno and flip projects, here’s one rule I always employ when looking at my renovation budget.

Always count on exceeding your initial budget by 10%, and then add another 10% on top of that. Then hopefully, you end up under your budget. You never want to run out of money on a renovation, so that cushion can help protect you from unforeseen hiccups or hidden issues. And sometimes even this may leave you short!

One rental property we bought we needed to move some walls around in the semi finished basement to put a bathroom in and to finish it off properly. Part of this project involved removing the 1970’s style paneling form the outside walls. Once we removed the paneling, we discovered the homeowner had cheated and used 2 x 2’s as studs and insulated the concrete outer walls with cardboard rather than actual insulation.
Once we saw this, we were suddenly faced with rebuilding and insulating the entire basement which was the proper, yet expensive, thing to do. Needless to say, this blew the budget out of the water, but we got it done and made the property, better, warmer and a little more valuable.

We had inherited the installed laminate flooring with this property and although it looked fine in the most visible areas, in the kitchen, behind the appliances and in the bathroom I ran into some of those little issues that pop up.

First with laminate flooring, you need to let the floor float as it expands and contracts with the seasons. To allow this floating, you need to leave space against each wall allowing it to expand without buckling. If you leave too much space though, the floor can move and start to separate, which occurred in the kitchen.

Laminate flooring separating

Normally, you can use some special tools to tighten up the flooring and fix it, if you catch it early enough. But if the gaps against the walls are too loose, it will just happen over and over. Or if you tenants don’t tell you about it and food and crumbs collect in the gaps, you can’t tighten it either.

Since we were just ripping it out, this wasn’t going to be a problem, but then more problems. In the bathroom, you really want your flooring to be up tight against the toilets closet flange. The closet flange is basically where the toilet sits on the pipe and if the flooring is tight, you can easily seal it with silicone. Then if Toilet leaking under the flooringany leakage occurs, it shows up around the toilet, rather than getting caught between the flooring hidden from sight.

Guess what, yep, the flooring wasn’t tight and water had gotten underneath the laminate and on the sub floor. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad, it must have been a fairly recent leak and there was no mould, but I still had some water to deal with. So I removed the flooring, mopped up the excess water and now had to run to my storage garage to grab my huge industrial fan to start drying it out.

With water, it’s important to get the air flowing to help dry it out quickly and reduce complications like mould and ages ago we had acquired a very large industrial type fan unit that looks like a mini furnace, except it has a huge blower in it. More lost time.

Old parquet flooring under laminate

Finally, after several hours, I had all the flooring pulled and now I could see what we had to work with. This was the part the fellow who quoted us was worried about. We had a hodge podge of regular particle board sub flooring, old laminate and even parquet (yep it’s that old), all buried under the laminate.

I did have to use some filler in the bathroom where it looked like they used scrap pieces to fill in sections under the bathroom cabinet, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Since it was a new type of flooring to me though, I ended up calling the person who did the initial quotation and explained what it looked like.

He was only about 20 minutes away, so he offered to come over and take a look and once there, other than the bathroom section, thought the rest of the area the installers should be good with. So onward and upwards.

Fast forward to the next day and the installers met my wife at the property so she could explain everything to them and let them in (I had meetings that morning). Once they started, she ran off and took care of some other projects we had going on.

NEw sobella flooring installed in our rental propertyBy the time I finally arrived just before 1, they were already 90% complete. And it looked great!

We were originally told they would be able to install it as one continuous sheet, but once the installers looked at the layout they decided they would need to have one seem due to the layout.

In the after shot at the beginning of this, you can see the line of tape marking where they had to place it. With the little island that sticks out in the kitchen, it was a challenge to run the heavy section down without tearing it there.

Now that it’s installed you don’t even see the seam unless you know it’s there and the floor looks and feels great.

They ended up finishing by two (a five hour install) and this gave us another hour to make the next day’s list of projects to move this reno forward before we went to the dump with our old laminate.

As I mentioned before, that 10% add on to your budget (plus another 10%), gives you a ton of flexibility. Once we went through we decided to replace all the baseboard in the bathroom, to upgrade the fan fixture in the kitchen eating area and to do some quick painting in worn areas.

The fan and baseboards increased the cost, but we just happened to have over half of a five gallon bucket of Tequila (8672W) paint left over from another property. Since the property was originally painted this colour, it just meant some light sanding and minor touchup for prep work and good to go, but that was the next days’ project.

Onto the fun stuff. The flooring has been in for almost a week now and the tenants all seem to like it. This is in a shared accommodation property, so the guys are definitely hard on flooring and after the first week it’s holding up.

The flooring looks so much like wood that we also ran into a couple fun comments from the guys. There is a definite texture on it that imitates wood grain and one of the basement tenants who looked at it said they should have sanded the floor down a bit more (he thought it was real wood).

Another tenant who lives on the main floor noticed that the installers had forgotten to cut the floor vent out. He wanted to know if I would be back that night with a saw and drill to cut it open as he had an early morning the next day. He also thought it was real wood. I simply cut it out with a utility knife and dropped in the new vent we had for it. No drilling, so sawing, just a couple minutes work.

This type of article is definitely straying from the normal information I post. My question for you, Has it been helpful? Would you like more walk throughs of renovations projects, some of our day to day operations and other interesting parts of our lives as landlords, or should I just stick to the weekly tips and videos like I have been?

If you could take a minute or two and either leave me a comment below, or email me directly with some feedback, it would be extremely helpful and help shape what future articles look like. This project and the long weekend before have thrown my videos and posts schedule for a loop, but hopefully with the kids back in school and life on track I’ll have my next series of videos out and available over the next week.

You Mustn’t Stop Learning New Landlord Tricks

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Old Dog? New Tricks?

landlord tricksYes, I’ve become an old dog. When I look in that mirror I’m definitely not 29 anymore and I’m far past 39, but I do know, I need to keep on learning because the world isn’t stopping around me. And the last couple weeks have reminded me of this.

When I first jumped into Real Estate, I was veracious with my appetite to learn everything I could. I changed my whole life stye around and gave up many guilty pleasures like TV, computer games and more. Those little things that stole precious learning time from me.

I attended seminars, read books. moved from watching TV series to renovation series and home improvement shows and spent hours on the computer analyzing, researching and educating myself. Then when we had free time, we’d hang out with other Real Estate investors to learn even more.

It was like this for the first four years into what became our new full time career, then I think I just got comfortable. We’d bought and sold dozens and dozens of properties. We had systems in place, we knew what to expect and our learning slowed. We were comfortably numb.

We drifted back to more TV series, attended fewer meetings with other investors and started to rest on our laurels. We just wanted to get a little more balance of some kind in our life after all our hard work. Or so we convinced ourselves.

Not that we weren’t busy still, in a three month period around this time, we actually bought five properties plus a new home for ourselves and we had several other flip projects going on from earlier purchases that year. So there was plenty of Real Estate action going on and occupying our time.

We had renovations projects we had to schedule and manage, contractors to meet and coordinate with, we had advertising to prep and marketing for the rentals and the flip properties.  All with tight timelines as we wanted to get all the properties operational as quickly as possible. Empty properties simply don’t generate cash flow and unsold properties eat up profits with all their carrying costs.

Then The Bottom Dropped

Unfortunately, just about the same time we finished all the renovations and updates on the newly acquired properties is also when the financial crisis hit. So we moved into full hang on and wait mode. Which really elevated our coasting status.

Fortunately it took a while for the slow down to affect our rental properties and because we tended to have great tenants, it really didn’t hurt our day to day steady landlord business, but it virtually wiped out our growth as we weren’t sure the market was heading. Rather than make a bad decision, we just battened down the hatches so we could ride this through.

During this lull, we took advantage of our new found free time and promptly quit learning about what had gotten us to where we were.

While I found new areas to focus my thirst for knowledge with, I also started falling back into the habits of old. More TV, more games (Xbox now versus computers), less hanging out with investors and contractors and other people in the industry.

Sure our properties were coasting along fairly well due to all the systems we had in place, but we lost that excitement, that energy, that drive as we sat back and coasted on our laurels. (I know, finally it feels like he is getting to a point!).

Staying Thirsty

landlords need to keep educating themselvesSo the point. Finally.

To really succeed, you need to keep learning. Your competition is probably doing it, so why aren’t you?

We need to keep expanding our current knowledge and we need to stay on top of what’s happening in our field of choice. We have to stay thirsty. And this doesn’t just apply to being a landlord.

Our wake up call was a gradual nudge over the last couple of months. I’ve begun noticing all these new flipping shows appearing on the TV and new shows about rental properties and I’ve started to PVR them.

Now when I have a 30 minute break I’ll watch one of these for some thoughts and ideas. Some I may not agree with, while others are new and innovative, whether it’s new products available or new ways to look at situations.

One of these was a new flooring product I’ve seen multiple times on these shows as a substitute for laminate (personally I really dislike laminate floors, they typically get installed poorly and without proper underlay and insulation creating echo chambers in rental properties).

My wife and I have recently been busy cleaning up one of our shared accommodation properties and we’ve discovered several areas of water damage in the property to the currently installed  laminate flooring. We could potentially leave it be for another year, but this just opens the door for compounded problems and doesn’t solve anything.

The laminate came with the property and wasn’t installed very well to begin with. Add in seven years of use and abuse and it’s useful life had really caught up with it. As an added bonus,  if we improve the place, it also gives us an opportunity to consider higher rents in the future. So we have multiple reasons to deal with this.

Back to the new flooring product. Our flooring guy brings in a few samples to look at while he measures out the property and it’s gorgeous. It’s a very sturdy product and the way it is built, the fibre underlay creates a natural sound deadening effect.

Unlike laminate it doesn’t chip and it’s even resistant to denting. Unlike vinyl, it’s pliable and resistant to cuts. Plus it’s pattern is embossed into the product creating a texture that will help hide any accidents like a dropped knife (if they could even penetrate it!).

Perhaps best of all it will be one single piece that will run from the dining room, through the kitchen, down the hall and into the bathroom with no gaps or opening for water damage other than against the walls and cabinets. This will help prevent even more problems from potential water accidents.

So thanks to one of these renovating shows we learned about it and are now putting it in place. Thanks also to our flooring guy, we’ve had our eyes opened to other properties we can look at installing it into as well.

OK, product update.
This flooring is by Mannington and is the Sobella line.
The particular collection we are using is the Sobella Deluxe and
we chose the Hatteras pattern which works with the existing carpet
Mannington Sobella Flooring

So back to the point, if we weren’t open to learning, we wouldn’t have known about this product. If we hadn’t been watching these renovations shows and kick started some of our old habits, we would be looking at potentially installing more laminate.

Too often we focus on what we know as it is tried and true. We just need to be open to learning additional new things as we move forward. Whether it’s taking advantage of technology to improve screening tenants, or whether it’s staying current on new products for updating our properties our adventure as landlords is an ever learning process.

So stay thirsty, be the old dog (if you’re like me) and learn a new trick and don’t get too content you stop learning.

If you can relate to any of this, I’d love to hear your story, so leave us a comment and tell us of any tricks you’ve recently learned.

 

 

Landlord Video Tip – Tips For Choosing Your Next Rental Property

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Parking Space and
Thinking Like A Tenant

I’m still wandering down the path of helping some of you make decisions about your next rental property, so today’s video talks about two things. Parking and thinking like a tenant.

Having enough parking for suited properties can be a bit of a nightmare and the associated problems that come with it it can easily be avoided if you make it one of your concerns from the get go. Making sure there is more than enough spaces to suite the number of tenants before you buy, rather than discovering it after, is one tip that can make you sleep easier at night.

This video is a little longer than normal, but I go a bit further in depth on the topic of parking an dhow it can be an issue with illegal suites. I also go into the mind of the average tenant and bring up some other points you have to be aware of before you buy your next rental property.

Buying Your Next Rental Property

Buying your next rental property can be an adventure that is both exciting and scary. There are so many pitfalls and unexpected bonuses along the way, so be sure to check out more of my articles and videos for additional guidance.

Remember, running your landlord business well is an ongoing education, so if you’re not already registered on the sites to get our free emails and tips, take a minute to sign up down below or on the top right of this page.

As always, I appreciate your feedback, so if you have thoughts to add, to counter or just some additional questions leave us a comment. If you have some positive feedback we LOVE to hear it and if you have some negative feedback, let us know too

Landlord Video Tip – What Should I Look For When Buying A Rental Property?

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Choosing Profitable Rental Properties

Choosing effective rental propertiesIn my last article, I talked about what types of properties I don’t personally like as rental properties.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check it out here, Do Condos Make Good Rental Properties.

In today’s article/video, I’ll be talking about my preferred types of rental properties.

Now, before you get in a huff and tell me you’ve made a ton off of condos and think they rock and that the properties I suggest don’t work in your area, remember, this is based off my experience.

For some people you may have had other experiences, and if you are only looking at one or two properties, maybe that works perfectly for you. I applaud that you are successfully running a landlord business and your property works.

In the long run though, if you’re looking at expanding your landlord business, want to increase your monthly cash flow and create your own little mini Real Estate empire, you might want to watch this next video.

In it I will explain why I think the properties I like make the best rental properties for people looking to either get into the business or to expand their portfolio.

I look forward to your feedback, so leave me a comment and tell me your thoughts!

Landlord Video Tip – Do Condo Make Good Rental Properties?

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Condos As Rentals

Do condos make good rentals?When I first started in the landlord business a decade ago, we started looking at condos to use for rental properties. They were cheaper than single family homes, they were low maintenance as I didn’t have to deal with snow, lawn or building maintenance and they were in high demand as rents were a bit lower than renting a house. Also many buildings offered rental pools making my job even easier.

Fast forward a few years and I had a few more insights into the positives and negatives of condominiums as rental properties. That’s where today’s video comes in.

If you’ve just started reading the Educated Landlord, this video is off my normal beaten track. Typically my articles revolve around being a landlord, but recently people have been indicating they’re considering picking up additional properties.

I’ve been there, I’ve made some mistakes and I’ve made some great decisions. So rather than you finding out about the mistake part on your own, I’ve created a few videos addressing what to look for with picking up another property and what to watch out for.

But don’t worry, I still have plenty of additional landlord tips coming too, so watch for them as well. So check out the video below and don’t forget to share it with other landlord or potential landlord friends!

Did the video help? Did it give you a different perspective on using condos as rentals? And would you like more videos along this vein?

As always, leave me a comment if you have one (or can make one up). Let me know if you find the videos helpful, or what else you want to know about and I will do my best to get more info out to you!

Also, if you were paying attention, I’m just about ready to release my new E-course on screening tenants. It’s a short five day course that will prepare you for screening your first or your fiftieth tenant and it’s going to be absolutely FREE!!!

My “beta” reviewers have already been giving some hugely positive feedback and I’m pretty excited to hear form everyone once it’s live. If you’re not currently registered on the site, please take a moment and register on the bottom of this page with your name and email so you can be among the first to find out when it’s released.

Thanks for joining us here at The Educated Landlord. FYI, the picture at the beginning is the building where we bought our first condo(s) back in 2004 and this was one of our advertising photos when we rented them out. And that is why you turn the date stamp off on your advertising photos!