Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Delegating Is A Job Too

I called my property management company today and my contact person didn't answer the phone or return my messages. I started feeling like a crazy person for calling 10 times. Finally I hit 0 for the operator and told her who I was looking for. She asked what it was regarding so I told her and she transferred me to maintenance. I was sure the maintenance guy would be out maintaining stuff but he actually answered the phone and I told him that I wanted him to take care of the house issues for me. He was nice and said no problem. Their policy is to notify me of costs above $250. That's a relief. I could feel a huge stress cloud forming over my head yesterday and today it lifted. I'll let the professionals handle the jobs that stress me out and I will stick to trying to do my job so I can keep getting paychecks.

I showed my boss the house that I am interested in and he thinks it is a wonderful idea and suggested that I go get pre-qualified for a mortgage tomorrow morning. I was going to do it Saturday morning and bring 2 dogs with me but gee, if my boss wants me to do it tomorrow then I had better listen to him! I also asked my property management company about rents around the air force base and they said that 3 bedroom homes with large yards are renting for $1,000. Wow. That is hard to believe. I looked up the one that he mentioned and it looks just like the house that I want to buy except it is a little bigger. It is good to know that renting out the home is an option down the road and that the rent will easily cover the $450 mortgage. I also looked up the names of all of the people on the same street as the house I want and checked them out in the court database. It looks like everyone has a few traffic tickets but that is it. That's good to know.

6 comments:

Lizzie @ her homeworld said...

That's a pretty good rate of return. Can mortgage costs go up or can you fix them? It would be good to know that rental income can go up whilst the mortgage expenditure is pretty much stuck.

KoBold said...

Daisy the frugal property tycoon.
Sounds promising!

Dave said...

Daizy, something else to consider when you allow the property management company to handle the repairs and maintenance of your rental is that they may be able to get a better rate when hiring an outsider to do the work. This is because they handle many properties and can negotiate a better rate with their higher volume of contracts (i.e. economies of scale) than an individual such as you can.

Daizy said...

Lizzie, mortgage rates stay fixed once I get the mortgage. Rent rates can go down though but I don't think they would ever go lower than that mortgage.

Daizy said...

KoBold, I guess I take after my Aunt and Uncle. They collected properties too. Seemed to work out pretty well for them. Good thing I got my parent's handy genes too.

Daizy said...

Very true Dave and they can fix little things without calling a trade guy to come out and avoid a service call. I just don't have enough experience with them to know if I trust them or not.