Sunday, April 17, 2011

The housing sitch

We are landlords xtimesx two. Cedar and Provo.
We did not plan on this happening, and we're not especially enjoying it.
At the time(s), buying instead of renting seemed like a good idea. And since we had the 20% down saved, we thought - good investment, lower mortgage payments than renting costs, interest tax deductible, personally satisfying, etc...
Now I'm thinking... pain in the rear.
We hired a property management company for our Cedar place, and they think it's a good idea to spend all our rental income on overpriced unnecessary repairs. If they weren't doing that, then our rental situation would be golden - we got our place rented out the day we left, to an ideal individual, with a payment that lets us break even.  So I had a very unpleasant confrontational conversation with them recently. I strongly dislike those kind of conversations, but I'm not one to back down from them. Brian's the passive, maybe passive-aggressive type... I am not. So after calling them out (the prop management co), things should be ok there. But man.... I hope the market improves and we can sell the sucker. Soon.
Backyard in P-town. Good memories there. Wish we could move back!


Provo.... our renter there is moving. I guess. Someday. We had our 30-days-notice like 2 months ago. She's buying a home and I guess it's taking longer than expected. So I'm now taking down the ads I put up, because it's driving me nuts to be talking to potential renters and not give them the availability date.
The whole thing gives me total anxiety, cuz I'm just worried about finding new renters and having a lapse in between where we're paying our rent here plus the mortgage there. We'd love to sell this house too, but unfortunately the darn neighbors just did a short sale, so our place will likely appraise for less. And I don't know the first thing about how to sell a house. I only know how to buy them and regret it later.
But maybe we'll just keep these houses forever. Maybe our kids or their cousins will want to go to BYU or SUU, and we can let them use our homes.
So the burning question that hurts my head to think about too long.... what do we do NOW? Keep renting? I hate renting. I feel like it's throwing away money. Buy another small townhouse? Right. So then Brian's job will take us somewhere else and we can have three houses to rent out. That would be FUN. But maybe his job will keep us in this area for the next 5 years. Then we should definitely BUY something.... and the sooner the better.  A crystal ball? Anyone? PLEASE!

2 comments:

Michelle {Fun On a Dime} said...

Oi! What kind of repairs hare they trying to do? At our place I think the owner denies a lot of "fixes", but it is nothing major.

Megan Smith said...

I'm late coming to this party, but I just have to say that I'd really hate that too. I'm no good at confrontational conversations, I agonize over them for days it seems like. Be happy that atleast your homes aren't in CA where you could have lost 1/2 of their value down the toilet.