Earlier, I posted that two of our rental properties were vacant.
Rental #2, as I indicated before, has rented with an increase of the monthly rent by $5. We had the property tented for termites which cost $800 and we also had a small electrical issue addressed which cost about $200. Both expenses would have been necessary regardless of the tenant turnover.
Rental #3 is a work in progress, Mr. Sam was over at the property all weekend working on cleaning up the exterior of the property and having the interior painted. So far we have spent $600 on labor and supplies. We hope to have the property ready to show by mid-month, but obviously we are not collecting the rent for the month of October.
Due to the refinance of our primary property, we did not have a mortgage payment this month which means we have been able to utilize that money for all of these projects rather than dip into our rental property escrow savings accounts.
Interesting/cool post. I liked that y'all were able to redirect your mortgage payment to cover investment property expenses and that y'all did not have to utilize the money from your investment properties' savings accounts.
ReplyDeleteHow long do you expect Rental #3 to sit vacant? From previous posts; I have gathered that properties in your market/area have been pretty quick to lease.
Good luck,
Dwight, we (mostly Mr. Sam) work hard to limit vacancy to one month or less. If we are not getting good traffic on our advertisement, we often cut the rent a bit.
ReplyDeleteSo, this last round with rental #2, I wanted to increase rent by $30 a month. We advertised it as such, but when responses were slow, we reduced it by $25 (so we got an increase of $5 a month). Mr. Sam's point is its better to forgo an extra $300 than miss a whole month of rent and have to keep spending time and energy showing the place, etc.
We hope to have Rental #3, ready to show by mid-October with the goal of new tenants by November 1st.