Second house almost done

The Cherry St house has been on the market for two weeks now.  The open house was well attended, but no offers yet. Doesn't help that the realtors are out of town on vacation for a week!  Keeping our fingers crossed.

The second house is on track to be finished this week.  The air conditioning finally was installed on Friday (much too late for the poor folks who've been working there since early July!).    Hope to have it listed before we leave for vacay.

Hubby is working with a friend of his to find the next project.  They put in a bid on a single family home on a nice piece of land.  It would definitely be the biggest project yet, but he had to bid way under the asking price in order to make any money at it.  He has a little room to increase the offer, but not too much.

Meanwhile Hubby has been measuring and documenting all of the improvements made an how long everything took and how much everything costs.  This is what he really brings to the game. He is really focused on developing consistent processes so he can more easily predict profits, etc.

Still haven't rented the one unit we still have open. Getting a few calls every couple of days, but the "right" tenant hasn't been found yet. After the previous disaster, he is obviously being a lot more cautious!

Good news and bad news on rentals

Well, I was just getting ready to announce that we had 6 out of 6 apartments fully paid this month (1 is still empty but  more on that later), when Hubby told me that one of our tenants had bounced a check. This is a very expensive problem for the tenant, because now they owe a $100 fine. $50 for the bounced check, and $50 because the rent will be late this month!

On the good news front the empty apartment is ready to go and Hubby has already started receiving calls for it, although he hasn't advertised at all yet!  One tip that some might find useful, he give existing tenants a "finder's fee" of $50 if the apartment is eventually rented to someone they recommend.

No activity on the first flipper (Cherry Street) this weekend.  We were hoping that it would get some showing because it is new to the market.  Keeping our fingers crossed for a quick sale!

New tenant already

Hubby met with the brother who was cleaning out apartment with the cats.  Says it looks pretty good, and he thinks he already has a tenant for it.  An older gentleman who works part-time and gets social security.  Some interesting finagling here to make this work.  He gives tenants a referral bonus of $50 if the person they refer actually works out (is approved and takes the apartment).  One of our longer-term tenants will probably get a referral for this one.  The other thing he does is that he works with people on the security deposit.  The rent for this place is $500, and the security deposit is $700.  The guy will pay $800 to move in and then an additional $100 per month toward the security deposit until it is all paid up.  By working with the guy, he'll get someone into the apartment right away (and the guy seems real nice), instead of having it sit empty for a month (lost rent).  We'll keep the deposit from the place to cover Jan rent (and will use the extra $200 to give to the brother for cleaning).  NO LOST RENT AT ALL - Sweet!

Got tax refund money from one tenant!  He is now all caught up until the end of Jan (oops that's tomorrow - lol!).  We'll see what happens in Feb!  Still waiting for money from the second group that was waiting for their refunds.