Re: why need to be a landlord???? - Landlord Forum thread 321684

Re: why need to be a landlord???? by Anonymous on July 23, 2014 @10:13

What cracks me up is people who think you just sit down and let the money roll in.
I have 2 refrigerators in my home-one from a rental where the tenant wanted her own. The extra one is quite old and has a door hinge issue that means sometimes it just comes open on its own. So I keep a heavy box of kitty litter next to the door to stop that happening. I bet if you all looked around your own homes, you could find things that aren't quite perfect, but you deal with it and live with it that way.
My brother thought that renting property was the road to easy riches-when he married he moved into his wife's home and rented his. After lease signing, during walk thru, he began explaining things like "this light switch by the door doesn't work, you need to use the other one, this bathroom you need to jiggle the handle, keep the bucket under the sink sometimes it leaks, this outlet in the family room doesn't work, etc."
Big surprise--the tenant wanted all that fixed ASAP. And although I had warned my brother multiple times that he simply didn't have the ready cash flow to be a landlord, he had to make all those repairs on expen$ive credit cards.
God only knows what will happen if a sewer line breaks on the property or something major.

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Re: why need to be a landlord???? by Kim (WV) on July 23, 2014 @19:19	[ Reply ]

Landlording can be a full time job. Lots of the little maintenance things (like you mentioned) that you might let slide in your own home you have to take care of immediately in a rental house. We don't paint the interior of our house every couple of years like we do the rentals. We don't jump to fix every little thing that goes a little wrong in our house...but the tenants will sure expect you to do it ASAP in the rental house. I don't think we have as many carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc., in our house as we have in any of our rental houses. We don't have a security system in our house but two of the rental houses have them. Tenants expect certain things for their money and one of those things is prompt service when something breaks. If you keep your properties in good shape you can get better tenants and higher rents, but for sure you need the cash available to do major repairs at any time and without delay. Like the old saw goes "It takes money to make money." Landlording is not something you want to undertake on a dime.