It's one of those weeks where I sit down at Starbucks with my laptop to write this blog, having no clue what I'm going to write about. I just start typing to see what happens. Sometimes some pretty good stuff comes out.
Probably the greatest thing is I'm sitting at Starbucks on a Friday afternoon during working hours sipping a latte and writing. I'm not working some job I hate just to make a few bucks to survive and pay for the health insurance. At least on this day, I am gainfully self-employed. Now I'll pause for a moment of gratitude for that freedom.
***
That felt good. I want to follow this gratitude thread. I think back on the events of the week.
I Am Grateful For Flood Insurance
A freak storm moved through the area on Monday afternoon, with localized flash flooding that inundated the basement of one of our apartment buildings. The road was closed – Steve couldn't even get to it to investigate for a few hours. When he arrived he found waist-deep water that stopped just short of the electric panels! This could have been a lot worse. He started the sump pumps and called the insurance agent. I have spent a great deal of time moaning about the mandatory flood insurance on this property. This damage will likely be under our $5,000 deductible, but it might have easily gone the other way, and I am grateful we have it.
Probably the greatest thing is I'm sitting at Starbucks on a Friday afternoon during working hours sipping a latte and writing. I'm not working some job I hate just to make a few bucks to survive and pay for the health insurance. At least on this day, I am gainfully self-employed. Now I'll pause for a moment of gratitude for that freedom.
***
That felt good. I want to follow this gratitude thread. I think back on the events of the week.
I Am Grateful For Flood Insurance
A freak storm moved through the area on Monday afternoon, with localized flash flooding that inundated the basement of one of our apartment buildings. The road was closed – Steve couldn't even get to it to investigate for a few hours. When he arrived he found waist-deep water that stopped just short of the electric panels! This could have been a lot worse. He started the sump pumps and called the insurance agent. I have spent a great deal of time moaning about the mandatory flood insurance on this property. This damage will likely be under our $5,000 deductible, but it might have easily gone the other way, and I am grateful we have it.
I Am Grateful for a Quick Turnaround on a Vacancy
Last week I wrote about a tenant who could no longer afford the rent and had to move: http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/more-musings-about-rental-vacancies
I let them out of their lease. They started moving stuff out last weekend. A quick free ad on Zillow Rental Manager yielded a massive response – 3 bedroom half-doubles near but not in Wilkes-Barre are hot properties! I had a deposit in hand by Wednesday. Assuming they pass the application, they want to move in a few days early and pay for the privilege! Higher rent, too, by $50/month. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for the Small Business Development Corporation
I wish I had a deposit in hand for my other empty over on West River St., but this one's a tougher sell because the rent is high - $960/month! However, that's a good value for a very large 4 bedroom with heat included, ample parking in a lot directly across the street and a location practically on the campus of Wilkes University. The kids are still off for summer. The prime time to rent to students is April/May but there may some interest next month as the fall semester starts around the third week of August. I spent quite a bit of time walking around campus this week putting up fliers. That's how I ended up walking into the Small Business Development Corporation.
The SBDC at the corner of South Main and West Northampton in Wilkes-Barre is run by Wilkes University with a big Wilkes logo on the door. I walked in to see if there was anywhere to put my flier and was told this wasn't really a place populated by students. Then I got to talking about our little business with the rentals and the flips and the construction company, our nine LLCs and my desire to redesign our business structure into something that makes more sense. The next thing I know I was being introduced to the Director of the SBDC, then setting up a free appointment with a small business consultant for next Wednesday at 10am. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for What I Can Learn From My Rental Competition
I ran out of fliers before I could paper up Stark Learning Center, one of the biggest classroom buildings on campus. That's okay, because I don't think my original fliers were eye-catching enough. The headline HUGE 4 BEDROOM APT NEAR CAMPUS needs to be bigger and brighter. Then I can put the details, some pictures, and then in more huge eye-catching font CALL OR TEXT (570) 733-4744. Millennials prefer to text.
As I logged onto Staples Copy & Print to design my new fliers, I saw they also do banners. Imagine a large 3 by 8 canvas banner stretched across that second floor balcony railing, simple black, white & red like an old school “For Rent” sign, proclaiming:
NOW RENTING
CALL OR TEXT FOR INFO
(570) 733-4744
I could use it on any of our buildings. I might get two. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for the On-Line Advertising Revolution - So Far The Winner is Zillow Rental Manager!
My system seems to be working as far as screening prospective tenants and scheduling showings. My friend Sherri checks the gmail account where all of our voicemail and texts from the rental phone number end up, as well as the e-mail leads from Craigslist and Zillow Rental Manager. Zillow is where we got most of our responses – much more than the newspaper, which we pay for. It even outdid Craigslist! ZRM lets you list your rental with pics for free across Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads and some other lesser-known rental sites. We only listed our half-double on ZRM. Steve put it up Saturday night and we had a deposit Wednesday afternoon. I didn't even get a chance to put it on Craigslist! I noticed the phones were pretty quiet on West River until Steve put that one up Saturday night, now we average about three qualified showings per night. Gratitude for Zillow Rental Manager!
Someone is going to see it, love it and take it. Renting apartments is a numbers game. Many will call. Few will qualify. Even fewer will show up for the appointment. And of those who show, at least one will be certifiably batshit crazy.
And... I Am Grateful For Prospective Tenants Who Screen Themselves Out So I Don't Have To!
“Jennifer” saw West River when we were renting Apartment 3 back in April. We had to remodel the kitchen and repaint the whole place, but it was certainly showable towards the end of that process. Since Illana was in there every day painting, we had her doing showings as well. Jennifer liked Apartment 3, but didn't want to make a commitment until she saw it finished. We told her we'd call her, but there was a good chance somebody else would grab it before then. We called Jennifer when the renovations were complete, but by that time it was a race between her getting back to us and the four college men who ended up moving in. Jennifer never even returned our call.
Well, Jennifer was back on the phone about Apartment 2. She seemed to think it was the same one she saw before, although Sherri and Illana made it clear to her this was a different unit, and it hadn't been sitting empty waiting for her the last 3 months. In fact, the current tenant of nearly two years was still living there, and no she would not be seeing a shiny ready-to-rent apartment. But Jennifer kept her appointment.
I'm not sure what Jennifer's motive was. To get back at us for not saving Apartment 3 for Her Royal Highness maybe? Illana did the showing - I don't do showings if I can help it, I'm creating Systems that farm out the tasks I hate to do:
http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/a-system-for-filling-vacant-units-rough-draft
However, this didn't stop me from getting an earful!
Jennifer showed up with a bunch of people. She walked into the apartment, was there five minutes, turned and said “we have to leave NOW.” When she got outside she told Illana she witnessed our tenant's 18-year-old son cutting up cocaine on the kitchen counter. Having known this family for almost two years, I find that awful hard to believe. He's a nursing student, so maybe that's how he was affording tuition? And if you were going to cut coke in your kitchen, you would absolutely wait until the third of three scheduled showings to do it, right? Because you love showing off your skills to strangers walking through your house!
Jennifer also told Illana the daughter had told her she shouldn't rent from us. Illana was there. No such conversation happened.
Well, Jennifer didn't get the rise she expected out of us, so she found my husband on Facebook Messenger and started telling him about our drug dealing tenants and how the mother bad mouthed us to her, even invited her over to her new house to give her the details. Mind you, this is not a woman who would invite a complete stranger into her home. Jennifer wanted to start some drama between us and our outgoing tenants, out of revenge for not holding Apartment 3 without a deposit, or maybe just for fun. Jennifer is a whackadoodle.
What's my gratitude here? I don't rent to Jennifer! I don't have to deal with her drama. And I never will.
It also confirms my suspicion that I should not show apartments myself if I can help it. It's so much easier to deal with this bullshit from afar. If you can, farm out the things you hate to do, or that you're not good at.
Being grateful is my way of declaring to the Universe that I believe it is abundant, that there is enough for me. It will send me the right tenant for West River.
Namaste.
Last week I wrote about a tenant who could no longer afford the rent and had to move: http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/more-musings-about-rental-vacancies
I let them out of their lease. They started moving stuff out last weekend. A quick free ad on Zillow Rental Manager yielded a massive response – 3 bedroom half-doubles near but not in Wilkes-Barre are hot properties! I had a deposit in hand by Wednesday. Assuming they pass the application, they want to move in a few days early and pay for the privilege! Higher rent, too, by $50/month. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for the Small Business Development Corporation
I wish I had a deposit in hand for my other empty over on West River St., but this one's a tougher sell because the rent is high - $960/month! However, that's a good value for a very large 4 bedroom with heat included, ample parking in a lot directly across the street and a location practically on the campus of Wilkes University. The kids are still off for summer. The prime time to rent to students is April/May but there may some interest next month as the fall semester starts around the third week of August. I spent quite a bit of time walking around campus this week putting up fliers. That's how I ended up walking into the Small Business Development Corporation.
The SBDC at the corner of South Main and West Northampton in Wilkes-Barre is run by Wilkes University with a big Wilkes logo on the door. I walked in to see if there was anywhere to put my flier and was told this wasn't really a place populated by students. Then I got to talking about our little business with the rentals and the flips and the construction company, our nine LLCs and my desire to redesign our business structure into something that makes more sense. The next thing I know I was being introduced to the Director of the SBDC, then setting up a free appointment with a small business consultant for next Wednesday at 10am. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for What I Can Learn From My Rental Competition
I ran out of fliers before I could paper up Stark Learning Center, one of the biggest classroom buildings on campus. That's okay, because I don't think my original fliers were eye-catching enough. The headline HUGE 4 BEDROOM APT NEAR CAMPUS needs to be bigger and brighter. Then I can put the details, some pictures, and then in more huge eye-catching font CALL OR TEXT (570) 733-4744. Millennials prefer to text.
As I logged onto Staples Copy & Print to design my new fliers, I saw they also do banners. Imagine a large 3 by 8 canvas banner stretched across that second floor balcony railing, simple black, white & red like an old school “For Rent” sign, proclaiming:
NOW RENTING
CALL OR TEXT FOR INFO
(570) 733-4744
I could use it on any of our buildings. I might get two. Gratitude!
I Am Grateful for the On-Line Advertising Revolution - So Far The Winner is Zillow Rental Manager!
My system seems to be working as far as screening prospective tenants and scheduling showings. My friend Sherri checks the gmail account where all of our voicemail and texts from the rental phone number end up, as well as the e-mail leads from Craigslist and Zillow Rental Manager. Zillow is where we got most of our responses – much more than the newspaper, which we pay for. It even outdid Craigslist! ZRM lets you list your rental with pics for free across Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads and some other lesser-known rental sites. We only listed our half-double on ZRM. Steve put it up Saturday night and we had a deposit Wednesday afternoon. I didn't even get a chance to put it on Craigslist! I noticed the phones were pretty quiet on West River until Steve put that one up Saturday night, now we average about three qualified showings per night. Gratitude for Zillow Rental Manager!
Someone is going to see it, love it and take it. Renting apartments is a numbers game. Many will call. Few will qualify. Even fewer will show up for the appointment. And of those who show, at least one will be certifiably batshit crazy.
And... I Am Grateful For Prospective Tenants Who Screen Themselves Out So I Don't Have To!
“Jennifer” saw West River when we were renting Apartment 3 back in April. We had to remodel the kitchen and repaint the whole place, but it was certainly showable towards the end of that process. Since Illana was in there every day painting, we had her doing showings as well. Jennifer liked Apartment 3, but didn't want to make a commitment until she saw it finished. We told her we'd call her, but there was a good chance somebody else would grab it before then. We called Jennifer when the renovations were complete, but by that time it was a race between her getting back to us and the four college men who ended up moving in. Jennifer never even returned our call.
Well, Jennifer was back on the phone about Apartment 2. She seemed to think it was the same one she saw before, although Sherri and Illana made it clear to her this was a different unit, and it hadn't been sitting empty waiting for her the last 3 months. In fact, the current tenant of nearly two years was still living there, and no she would not be seeing a shiny ready-to-rent apartment. But Jennifer kept her appointment.
I'm not sure what Jennifer's motive was. To get back at us for not saving Apartment 3 for Her Royal Highness maybe? Illana did the showing - I don't do showings if I can help it, I'm creating Systems that farm out the tasks I hate to do:
http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/a-system-for-filling-vacant-units-rough-draft
However, this didn't stop me from getting an earful!
Jennifer showed up with a bunch of people. She walked into the apartment, was there five minutes, turned and said “we have to leave NOW.” When she got outside she told Illana she witnessed our tenant's 18-year-old son cutting up cocaine on the kitchen counter. Having known this family for almost two years, I find that awful hard to believe. He's a nursing student, so maybe that's how he was affording tuition? And if you were going to cut coke in your kitchen, you would absolutely wait until the third of three scheduled showings to do it, right? Because you love showing off your skills to strangers walking through your house!
Jennifer also told Illana the daughter had told her she shouldn't rent from us. Illana was there. No such conversation happened.
Well, Jennifer didn't get the rise she expected out of us, so she found my husband on Facebook Messenger and started telling him about our drug dealing tenants and how the mother bad mouthed us to her, even invited her over to her new house to give her the details. Mind you, this is not a woman who would invite a complete stranger into her home. Jennifer wanted to start some drama between us and our outgoing tenants, out of revenge for not holding Apartment 3 without a deposit, or maybe just for fun. Jennifer is a whackadoodle.
What's my gratitude here? I don't rent to Jennifer! I don't have to deal with her drama. And I never will.
It also confirms my suspicion that I should not show apartments myself if I can help it. It's so much easier to deal with this bullshit from afar. If you can, farm out the things you hate to do, or that you're not good at.
Being grateful is my way of declaring to the Universe that I believe it is abundant, that there is enough for me. It will send me the right tenant for West River.
Namaste.