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Archive for April, 2015

A good acountant is worth their weight in gold! Tax refund and homes updates

April 22nd, 2015 at 07:41 pm

HI all

Been out for a while.. LOTS going on w Dad.. a little down. my speech (stutter) has taken a major turn for the worse.. and working on other stuff.

Anyway.. a good accountant is worth their weight in gold.

Worked with accountant (took some time) as this year was A LOT (lost the 2 flat, and refinanced my house twice after buying it in a hard money deal) and got a great refund coming.

Anyway.. refund $13,568. Crazy!

$4500 goes to the Roth IRA
$1000 wil go to regular investments (taxable)
Much (if not all) of the rest will fund this years 6 homes/3 units improvements.

We are working on tenants for both the 3 units places and will firm up tomorrow likely.. the 2nd person we were tossing moved on her own. Both have tentative move in dates of May 1 once signed.

Hopefully no vacancies there in a while! (but still have 2 more rents to raise)

Expecting the S8 lady to move out end of May .. along w the short term lease lady. so will have to fill 2 homes this year. Section 8 people generally stay a long time so when this one moves (7 year tenant) we have some updating to do and then hopefully can get another long term tenant. We took the short term lease lady because her lease bridged the gap between a bad time of year (winter) to early spring setting us up to re-rent it well to a longer term person. Also she paid like $300 more a month.

this is a BIG year for turnover though! Costly

and all the same time of year.

Hopefully next year will be much less.

Stock Market Question

April 6th, 2015 at 03:02 pm

Hi guys

I am trying to put as much as I can into investment. mostly (all) mutual funds. some health care. some balance retirement year funds. I keep hearing the stock market bubble is going to burst.

Are you guys pulling out of the market?
What do you recommend?
Do you think it is going to burst?

Seems like every time it went down it went right back up and if you stayed in (vs selling) you were ok.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Rent increases and other good news

April 2nd, 2015 at 05:48 pm

HI all

My rent increase with section 8 went through and all it took was an email, call and filing out a form. WOW. got almost a $200 increase on a long term tenant.

Getting lots of good showings on our vacant apartment and other person we are tossing did not qualify for enough disability so expecting her to leave shortly.. Both will go up to $650 so so far on the 3 units I will have raised the rents $205/month . and the 6 homes $186 a month since the start of the year. hoping for more .. I WILL likely take a cut when that short term lease lady moves out so can not count yearly totals til we are at the end of year. Goal was to raise rents $400 across the board across all units. I want to exceed that and stay within the maintenance budget. note: rehab and roof money does not come from my maintenance budget it comes from the rental long term/or emergency fund.. so that will need to be either built up now or replenished later so I end the year at $15k

In other news.

car paid off!
and another $350 towards investments today and managed to vacation for 6 days with no noticeable decrease ins savings.
and set up $50 Vanguard auto invest per month (difference in car insurance w dropping the Tahoe)

facing some big costs though

1. city inspection on the 3 units.. estimate a few thousand (new code rules regarding water heaters and furnaces across ALL units)
2. remainder of the city inspection on 2 homes. minor outdoor work
3. roof on one house
4. turn over one house that has a long term tenant. estimating at least 4k?

But as I turn over these long term tenants the homes are getting updated so the 'update/rehab the whole house' is not yearly expense. (thank the lord)

Onward!

Rachael