Back Home Again – An August Recap

For those of you who don’t know me very well, here is me for the month of August. Basically I do in one month what should really be done over the course of one year. (But I like to do other things throughout the course of the year.)

It was a CRAZY month, starting crazy and ending crazy! A did come with me this year, helping out a bit and generally being around for a pat on the back once in a while (he still needed to work – he doesn’t have any vacation time yet, with his new job). I need to do a bit of celebrating so here is the list of what I got accomplished this past month:

1. Drove 22 hours by myself to get to Calgary. Had to sleep in the car because there were no hotels available within 2 hours of where I started feeling tired. (WTF…?)
2. Advertised 5 units on the 2 main web sites in Calgary, with very descriptive ads along with photos.
3. Dealt with responses like: “hey, is it still avail?” (where I would have to respond that I have advertised 5 units, which one are you inquiring about and oh, by the way, do you have a name?) or “are utilities included?” (this is when the subject line of the ad says “Utils Incl”). Out of every 10 responses I received, only 1 might have been legible and business like. It is like people forget that writing a proper response to an ad might actually put them above the rest and make me ‘want’ to know more about them as potential tenants. Email in this situation is considered BUSINESS. (To all of my young friends – when replying to an ad, use “Dear ___,” and capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, and proper sentence structure, and for god’s sake, sign your name at the end of your correspondence!!!!)
4. Rented 4 out of 6 units (would have been 5 but one existing tenant decided to stay).
5. Did 7 walk throughs with both exiting and entering tenants – sometimes that is very stressy, sometimes not.
6. Cleaned 3 units myself – I tried to get cleaners but the ones that I got were terrible (and I needed to redo the job anyway) and other were either outrageously priced or unavailable.
7. Sourced out replacement parts for fridges, stoves and the suchlike
8. Dealt with tenants who, for some unknown reason, demanded their deposit return at the conclusion of the walk-through. This included a rather trying phone discussion where one tenant heaped verbal abuse with her misunderstanding of the laws. These tenants had actually damaged something that required replacement. A small item, none-the-less requiring replacement.
9. Dealt with tenants who, having lived in the unit for 3+ years, forgot what belonged to them and what belonged to the unit and got rid of, sold or otherwise disposed of various items. They did not contact me at any point to ask me what might have belonged to the unit. Were very upset when I replaced those items and charged them.
10. Took 50 yr old wool area carpet out to be cleaned, no promises but they did a very good job. Only small marks left.
11. Dealt with tenants who decided to use comet to clean EVERY surface in the house leaving a fine powdery coating over everything. Ummm…. do we know how to clean at all?!?
12. Dealt with a potential tenant who tore our lease apart with validity.
13. Rewrote said lease to be more inline with the Act. (!)
14. Removed all furniture and items (the majority of it carried by myself – you gotta check out these new muscles!) from one unit (had been rented semi-furnished) and either gave it away or moved it into storage at the other unit. This involved physically removing it from the house and putting it in the garage and then renting a Uhaul trailer to move the items. This also involved dealing with, and meeting with, people from Freecycle.
15. Cleaned up the garbage left behind by tenants in 2 units, including breaking down empty boxes, putting smelly garbage in new bags and in the bin, disposing of used oil and car/motorbike batteries, etc. Again… do we know how to clean at all?!?
16. Major yard clean up – I had actually hired someone to do this but once they had begun the job of cutting the hedge, they realized what a big job that it was and basically refused to do the rest (they did some, but it was basically a crap job). Normally I would have argued vehemently, however the woman came guarded by big, mean looking guys who looked pissed. (Not worth the loss of use of my legs.) I let it go and we did the rest ourselves. Whew! By the end the yard looked lovely and people walking by kept stopping and saying “Thank you” and then they would ask if we had just bought the place, it had apparently looked run down for a long time. Our bad… (This actually took days on our part, even including the work that we had hired someone else to do.)
17. Got up on the roof of the garage to trim back a bunch of branches that were dropping leaves into the new eavestroughing.
18. Trimmed all of the neighbours trees that were coming over the fence and basically interfering with the fence.
19. Cutting and bundling huge amounts of tree clippings so that the garbage men would take it all away. (I must say, given the amount of garbage that we had placed there that week, I was surprised to come out and see that they had taken EVERY SINGLE ITEM!!!)
20. Cleaning up 3 years of lawn clippings that were dumped beside the garage along the alley, visible to every passing person.
21. Put a garbage can at the bus stop beside the house so that people would be encourage the ‘keep the area clean’ and STOP THROWING THEIR CRAP INTO OUR HEDGE!!!
22. Chaining and locking the garbage can to the bus stop so that it didn’t walk away.
23. Cleaned up the ‘garden’ area that some past tenant had dug up with great intentions but never actually did anything with – so it was quite overgrown.
24. Slept one the worst beds that I have EVER slept on. It was much better when we put the mattress on the floor.
25. Hired someone to take apart and fix our ‘new’ fence that was falling apart. I worked alongside him for the whole time. He was a great worker, I am not sure that he even stopped to pee. I did – I couldn’t keep up with him. The fence, now painted – looks amazing!!! (And doesn’t look like it is going to fall down now.)
26. Organized all of the furniture (that we were keeping) in our garage so that the new tenant would also be able to use it for storage.
27. Figured out how to increase the $ for our coin op washer and dryer without a service call. (Not much – from $1 to $1.50 each.)
28. Cleaned and reorganized the common laundry room in one unit.
29. Put up a cupboard in the laundry room in one unit.
30. A figured out how to install the new upstairs tenant’s washer and dryer, making it usable for her but not for the other tenants.
31. A then implemented the washer/dryer plan.
32. A installed little temperature probes in the two lower (and colder) units and a button that would turn on the furnace recirculation fan for 30 minutes.
33. Visited with 2 friends for an evening at a time. (Yay!)
34. Offered to back up any midwives who might need it – no one needed me. Whew!
35. Set up a working space for A so that he could continue to work – including internet, table and spreading room.
36. Put together 5 leases, sat down with 5 sets of tenants, explained the lease to 5 sets of tenants and received 4 sets of post dated cheques, requiring a trip to the bank where I stand there for a long period of time while they fill in all of the required boxes for 50+ cheques and give me a printout so that I have a record. Whew!
37. Repaired patch of lawn where tenants had damaged it.
38. Bought enough furnace filters for a tenant to replace them throughout the year.
39. Gave tutorial on how to replace said filters.
40. Researched the condo by-laws and the condo act for one of our units. Found glaring errors on how the building was being run and began pointing them out to people who would be able to make a difference. (What a great read…!)
41. Wrote email after email with references to my comments. (Good fun…!)
42. Spoke to both our family lawyer and a civil engineer to review my concerns – and was validated.
43. Redid the insurance for one of our units. (Yay… we get to pay more!)
44. A went through one of our units and tightened or reinstalled almost every towel bar or toilet paper holder, along with a few glass shelves.
45. A checked and ensured that all fireplaces were working, which actually required wiring…ummm?
46. Dealt with family concerns and (semi) emergencies.
47. Dealt with a general contracting company whose workers damaged our stainless steel fridge while replacing it after the floors were refinished. I watched them damage it. The fellow fought me with every step, even insulting my business acumen at one point. 2-3 days before I left Calgary, I got a phone call from him basically apologizing for everything (without actually saying sorry). I don’t know what happened but he was much nicer to deal with after that. Because they were not able to find a new fridge door, the day before I left, he asked me to go and choose a new fridge without saying that they were going to replace it. It was an odd interaction all around.
48. Tried to keep my business hat on all month.
49. Tried to keep my cool in all business dealings.
50. Tried to stay within budget, even refusing to do one thing that I had REALLY wanted to do this year because it would really put us over budget. (On the list for next year.)
51. Went over budget.
52. Went to a memorial service of a very lovely woman that we did not even know that she had been ill.
53. Stared at the wall.
54. Met with, or talked on the phone, every trade that we hired. An average of 4 times each.
55. A had 2-3 very frustrating conversations with ADT regarding the hook up of the security system for one of our tenants. (Then found out that no phone calls had really been required on our part!)
56. Set up free stuff outside on the driveway and watched things disappear. (How very satisfying! I didn’t need to haul ANYTHING away.)
57. Banged my head against the wall… a few times.
58. Moved from one unit to another so that a tenant could move in early. (We had been living in one unit that had been empty for the past year.)
59. Did the income/expenses projection for the next year.
60. Realized that for the first time, our units were going to pay for themselves!!!
61. A re-glued bathtub trim in one unit.
62. Went through one condo unit with the property manager to point out water damage that they had previously repaired (very poorly) or had new damage – coming to the very obvious conclusion that the water seepage was still an ongoing issue.
63. Finally found a solution to a very old problem. Old (read: no longer available) set-up for a shower in one unit. Has been leaking and were unable to find new parts. Accidentally fell into a solution which is genius, if I must say so.
64. Packed the car for the drive home – in black garbage bags. (lol)
65. Drove home with A. (22 hrs)

Organized and managed the following:

1. Plumbing repair in 2 units
2. Painting all exterior trim on our largest unit
3. Painting of 2 fences in 2 different units
4. Servicing of both furnace and hot h2o tank in one unit
5. Dealt with pest control for mice in one unit (aaargh!) – found out that they were no longer in the unit thankfully. (Still had to pay the bill though.)
6. Organized the replacement of one window in one unit – still to be done
7. Oversaw the restoration of the hardwood flooring in one unit – now looks lovely
8. Replaced the kitchen faucet in 2 units – helped A
9. Hedge trimming and mulch laying
10. Replacement of siding at the VERY top of our largest unit. – Blew off in a big storm.
11. Replacement of the eavestroughing at one unit. (Then needed to deal with the contractor’s boss who then tried to charge me an additional $500 for the job – he had added up his supplies incorrectly and had given me an inaccurate quote. This resulted in many phone calls from him, requesting an increase… we both compromised.)
12. Repair of said troughing when it rained and there was leaking.
13. Carpet replacement in hallway of one unit. (Terrible job.) Told the fellow that my preference was now that he reimburse me for the cost of the carpet. (He did.)
14. Got the window installers from last year to come back and recaulk a few places and put caulking in places that they had missed.
15. Yard clean up in our largest unit but with thankfully a small yard.
16. The replacement of underlay and the cleaning of the carpet of one unit. (Due to flooding.)

I would love to say that was all – but the reality is – that is all that I can remember. It was an insane month and while it was actually easier than last year (in that A was with me and took on a couple of the tasks), I still don’t wish to repeat it again next year. I think that I will start planning earlier, I will see if some things can be done before I even get there. I am going to change how things go. It was too crazy.

But…. here’s the funny part. Now that I can look back on it and review everything, I STILL don’t regret our decision to have rental properties and manage them ourselves (even remotely).

Whew!

KC