What's on your work bench?-April

Carl said:
We put my house back in Baldwin County, AL into the rental market back in 2005.
With the current rental market and rates, we are finally making money but the mortgage is also relatively small (under $1K).
Haven't made more than 6 mortgage payments myself since 2005.
The last tenant we kicked out in summer 2023 trashed the place and it took 2 weeks and $8K to fix it back up. Already recouped the costs.
It will be paid off in two years and then we'll be seeing $1k/month in profit, emergency repairs aside.
Don't do it alone, get a management company. They do all the needed credit and background check, manage the money, maintenance call, inspections and keep the books for you. It's well worth the 10% off the top.
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See our experience was not this. We thought management company was the way to go, but we got lied to multiple times. Still dealing with legal fees and lawyers to try and get back “repair money” that was never used for repairs. We would ask for periodic inspection and told it was being done, it was obvious that was not the case
 
William Reinicke said:
See our experience was not this. We thought management company was the way to go, but we got lied to multiple times. Still dealing with legal fees and lawyers to try and get back “repair money” that was never used for repairs. We would ask for periodic inspection and told it was being done, it was obvious that was not the case
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Carl,
I second Williams comment about management company. I intitally placed rental with management company paying 11% management fee thinking they did credit and background checks. The tenant they placed with slight problems wound up being arrested in the rental. State police found him hiding in the dryer. Tenant was nice enough to leave a copy of their 40 page criminal record behind.

I manage rental myself now.

Rick Lathrop
 
Rick

How do you verify tenants? Do you have access to financial records that a management company does?
 
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Any idea if these management companies got so lax when Cov hit and they legalized squatting (for lack of better terms)? The reason my mom and wife decided to do the management company was because my grandparents had a few rentals and always said it was well worth the time. When I sat down and told them the nightmares we went through between the two properties, their jaws were on the table in disbelief. We even used 2 different companies and had very similar issues. I do live in a blue state, and the criminals and homeless have more rights than the blue collar population here. So, just because I had terrible experiences does not mean that you will, but I'd be very hesitant to use these companies. Sell it, make the lump sum, and move it towards other investments that are not near the headache. Exactly what we did with my wife's profit from the sale. Put it into a few ETF's and made a few other investments. Already up 37%, and there were some bad bad years when we first invested. In turn, shes made more in 3 years with these investments than she ever did while renting. Mom is moving out of her apartment and buying a house closer to my little bro and her grand daughter.
 
I used the same company since 2006. They have not been perfect but I would still not rent without a property manager between me and the tenants. They know all the rules and have access to do the credit checks.
 
William Reinicke said:
Any idea if these management companies got so lax when Cov hit and they legalized squatting (for lack of better terms)? The reason my mom and wife decided to do the management company was because my grandparents had a few rentals and always said it was well worth the time. When I sat down and told them the nightmares we went through between the two properties, their jaws were on the table in disbelief. We even used 2 different companies and had very similar issues. I do live in a blue state, and the criminals and homeless have more rights than the blue collar population here. So, just because I had terrible experiences does not mean that you will, but I'd be very hesitant to use these companies. Sell it, make the lump sum, and move it towards other investments that are not near the headache. Exactly what we did with my wife's profit from the sale. Put it into a few ETF's and made a few other investments. Already up 37%, and there were some bad bad years when we first invested. In turn, shes made more in 3 years with these investments than she ever did while renting. Mom is moving out of her apartment and buying a house closer to my little bro and her grand daughter.
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Yes, during COVID could not evict tenants due to hold on evictions.

Rick
 
Don Mintz said:
I do a lot of smaller wood working projects, boxes and such, but my wife thinks I could be doing lots more big reno projects around the house. Right now I have a project of making new countertops in our kitchen. They will be out of blue pine and then epoxy resin over it, easy peasy right. I've been collecting the most select pieces I can find for the project and pretty soon I'll have to figure it out. Little stuff I can handle, this countertop project scares me. Here are a few of my wood working projects.

We used to make wedding gift card boxes back in the day, this is an example of blue pine for those who are unfamiliar with it. I use it a lot in bases.
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This is a box that I made for my bedside, it has a hidden compartment in the box.
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My wife does a lot of craft stuff for local craft shows, so I've made her some display furniture, this is card table sized top.
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These landing nets were made from some walnut my dad cut on his farm in Kansas 40 years ago.

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Those nets are awesome. I would put one in the duck boat to retrieve dead ducks in open water.

RVZ
 
From the workbench of George Williams.
These are actually going to be my birds to use during early teal. Got a dozen headed my way.

I only want to hunt over all hand carved birds this season. I have 6 old ones I carved and I currently have 4 in progress.. so should hopefully have 22 birds for the annual guys trip.

Full disclaimer we put out a much bigger spread so have a long way to go

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Recently finished a pair of canvas brant and a cork gadwall. I've got another canvas swan in the works too. That one is just about ready to start painting. I believe that's #11 in just over a year.... I'm about over swan!! Got an order for a couple more cork ducks the other day too. For some reason I can't post pictures. It keeps saying "Oops we ran into a problem". I've posted a picture or two before so not sure what changed.
 
JasonM said:
Recently finished a pair of canvas brant and a cork gadwall. I've got another canvas swan in the works too. That one is just about ready to start painting. I believe that's #11 in just over a year.... I'm about over swan!! Got an order for a couple more cork ducks the other day too. For some reason I can't post pictures. It keeps saying "Oops we ran into a problem". I've posted a picture or two before so not sure what changed.
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Jason

They might be too big.
 
JasonM said:
Yeah I tried another way and that's what it said. I've posted a couple pics fine so something changed I guess. I'm not smart enough to resize them so oh well.
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send them to me and I will post them. I'll PM you my email address.
 
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