Balancing Act
Some of you know that Angie and I have several rental properties. Right now we have a triplex, a duplex, and a single family. We also have a house that we’re flipping (plus our own). We usually keep everyone on annual leases to minimize surprises and request that people rent summer to summer. Well, quite often we have tenants renew, however, right now it seems as though everyone is moving out. We have seven units to maintain and wow is it coming fast.
The house that we’re flipping is going slowly. The realtorthat we have is rather good in our community, but even with an assistant she’s swamped. It seems like she’s not following through as she should be. We’ve had some interest, but I’m starting to think that she lacks the ability to close the sale, however, she wouldn’t be top in the county if she couldn’t. Regardless, it’s sitting empty.
With our duplex, the upstairs tenant and downstairs tenant fell in love. Yeah, I told her not to do it! Anyway, he’s in the reserves and got called out, so we let him out of his lease to serve our country. Well, she got ancy to buy a house and her parents discouraged her from buying the duplex (which is also for sale), so they got a place in the country… The new/replacement tenant upstairs is also moving out to find something different. So it’s going to be sitting empty.
In our triplex, we have a 3-year tenant on the top who’s mother got laid off of work, so he’s moving in with her to help pay her house note. The middle tenant is moving in with his brother, and the anchor tenant is moving…somewhere. The 3-year tenant called back to say that he’s not going to move at this time. Now we went from 3 vacancies down to two.
We a have a single family house that we sold to a guy last fall on land contract. He got suprise custody of his two kids and said that there’s all kinds of stuff wrong with the place so he wants out of his contract. He said that the furnace and sewer don’t work so he’s moving out. I don’t buy it because he didn’t tell me until April that the furnace had a problem. Anyway, despite the arguments over who’s responsible for what, he’s moved out to find a bigger place for his new family.
So, we’re in a big rush to find tenants. Do you know of anyone who wants to live in a good house near Fort Wayne??? I’ll pay finders fees! Just kidding! (Kind of…email me if you know anyone and I’ll pay you cash!)
Yeah…we’re in crunch. I think we’ll survive just fine. It’s like investing in the stock market. If real estate was a sure thing I suppose everyone would play the safe bets. But like the stock market, you can make quick cash (i.e., Flip This House), or you can make your money over the long term (minimizing the spikes up and down). The reality is that regardless of the unemployment rate, price of crude oil, or interest rate adjustments by the Feds, people still need a place to live. The stock market dropped 400 points, oil is at $138 ($2.50/gal for crude oil), and the unemployment rate is spiking. People still need a place to live.
It’s a balancing act. Right now we feel like the clown spinning seven plates on seven sticks and it looks like we’re going to drop six plates. I think we’ll pull it off though. We haven’t failed yet and even if we do, we’ve had a great run in real estate. If something tanks we’ll make another shot at it. I’m looking forward to success over new adventures. I read a quote the the other day to the effect of, “If you start planning what you’ll say when you fail, you’ve already failed.” We’re stressing, but we’re executing our plan for success.
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