"You gonna get another job?"...

[jack]

I've been a renter my whole life. Never looked back. Banked the taxes and difference in mortgage and repairs I would have had to put out and have a lovely nest egg. Some of the CD's I invested in early on were when interest rates were in the 17-21% range. I maxed out the investment when covid started at Schwab and just recently sold all my stocks

So yeah, I pay the rent on time every month

 

[Volpone]

Approaching time to get another rental. Only there's less than 1,000 houses listed in the MLS for the metro area--including surrounding counties. But I digress. The important point is a sad setback on my sex dungeon. Washing machine hookup is in the basement. Since water doesn't flow uphill and the house was on a septic tank, they decided to just run the washer pipe to the sump pump and pump the laundry water out onto the gravel driveway. Not really an optimal solution. Since I'm now on the city sewer, most of the plumbing is in the back of the house, and the main is in front of the house, my plumber saved me around $5,000-10,000 of trenching by running the pipe along the wall of the basement. As an added plus, this just about left enough slope to hook up the washer without having to put it up on a pallet or add a "crock" and a pump or anything like that. But the key is to keep the pipe as short and straight as possible to get the best possible flow. This means I now have a bunch of PVC piping running right in the middle of the stairs to the sex dungeon.

I've got a workaround plan, but it will take some time... (Not that I have any time for years and years before I get around to building a sex dungeon.)

 

[Volpone]

Holy crap. I maybe figured out how to get my next house. It's completely crazy and totally hippy-dippy, but it could work, in theory. Except that my aging dog would have a rough time with it.

To recap, my current home is on over an acre of land. Long narrow lot. You go to what you think is the end of it and there's a whole other lot behind that. Basically a grown-over pasture. Hard to subdivide because there's a 1 lane narrow gravel driveway. Too difficult for a renter to properly maintain. And there's enclosed parking for 6 cars, plus a rusty tin "yard barn" that is big enough for a riding lawnmower. Or a motorcycle.

So. Rent out the current house and the 1 car garage (or however many spaces the renter wants to pay extra for above the 1 car garage). Build a 1980s geodesic dome home in the back pasture and live there. Or a more conventional little cottage. Either way. It's so crazy it just might work.

 

[Oerdin]

Getting it to code will be expensive even if you save money doing diy.

 

[jack]

Buckminster Fuller approves.

 

[Oerdin]

Is it south facing? If so you could build an earth ship. Actually that is a stupid idea as ever earth ship I have ever been in (namely two on the same property) smelled like sewage and didn't work as designed.

 

[FBI parte due]

Unsure what a "greywater planter" entails, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want one in my bedroom.

 

[Oerdin]

The gray water planter is what made it smell like sewage. I know most of the plans call for a leach line to dispose of sewage (assuming that is allowed in an area and the soil passes a percolating test) but the gray water quickly ended up smelling funky especially if they put fish in it to try to run a hydroponics set up. It turns out it is pretty hard to get the balance right especially in a small enclosed area.

 

[Volpone]

Made a big dent in my bookkeeping. All my personal stuff is in the system (Microsoft Money). Now for my business stuff, which goes in Quickbooks. And before you say it, yes, Money is an old program, but it isn't anywhere near as old as my version of Quickbooks. Seriously, I'd update it, but my version is so old the programmers didn't account for broadband. Since I don't have a phone number from my ISP to dial in with, I need to know my default gateway and all that other stuff from Long Ago in the Before Time to connect to Intuit's site, which I'd bet money has changed URL's since this software was mailed to me on a CD. I may still find a newer copy I can buy somewhere that will get me to where I can get to The Present, but right now that's such a low priority that it isn't even funny. Well, off to walk The Dog, because it's a nice day, it's time for her afternoon walk, and my brain is fried on bookkeeping. I do kind of understand why more people don't do real estate investing. We like to say it is easy, but it isn't *that* easy. I'm a pretty smart guy and even so, my ability to do it is close to maxed out. Guys that can buy 100 homes in a year and manage 50 properties while working a full time job? More power to them. I think 3 will about keep me as busy as I want to be (when I can finally get another one).

 

[Volpone]

This is totally not appropriate to this thread, but it is too sensitive for Facebook and I want to share it soooo....

Today was a warm day. And I needed to do desk work, not work-work. So I put on clothes that would get ruined by work-work. I mean not super-nice clothes, but brown slacks and a khaki button-up--my Hannibal Smith cosplay. Of course I promptly got black shit all over the shirt after walking The Dog by clearing away some bamboo (that's another story) but I've got, like 5 of these shirts, so I threw a new one on.

Well by the time of the evening walk, I was wearing the safari jacket in the house and it was warm enough out to wear it for the walk, so I strapped on the M-1911 and the spare mags, pulled on the black gloves, and headed out for the full cosplay experience (I mean minus the Awesome Van, which remained in the garage, since The Dog hates it and anyway it defeats the whole purpose of walking). True, my hair is too long right now, with the pandemic, but the big problem came a block into the walk, when I realized I did not have an appropriate cigar to chomp on.

OK. All that said, I will say a decent holster and mag pouch rig makes a full-sized service pistol much more pleasant to lug around, but even so, I'm glad I'm not a 21st century cop. I totally relate to Sheriff Andy in Mayberry. A big pistol, 25 rounds in 3 clips, and a Leatherman tool is not a trivial weight to be strapped to your waist.

 

[Volpone]

A little after 9pm. I *should* be filling out the tax stuff my accountant sent me back in January. But that doesn't seem like a good way to get ready for sleep.

That's the last time-sensitive thing on the To-Do list that was getting put off while I was getting the houses ready. Then I need to make a new To-Do list for a new phase. I've got some yard work to do on the newest rental. I want to get the other place set up with a functioning fireplace. Because I know the renters want to use the fireplace. And I mostly trust them to not use it because I've said not to, but if they do use it, they use it like cavemen. There's no grate and because the glass is painted black, they just leave the glass open. And they poke at the logs with a stick. (I said they could use the fireplace during the cold snap when their furnace went down).

I've got to see if I qualify for a VA mortgage and if I can afford another rental with the money from it. And then there's the truly overwhelming list of things that need to be done on this place. Shoot, I could spend a year just getting all the brush and weeds and detritus under control.

 

[Oerdin]

I believe VA requires you to, at least officially, to live in the house as your primary residence. No problem as long as they don’t find out but potentially a problem if they do find out it is a rental.

 

[Volpone]

Ah, but that shouldn't be a problem. I just get a VA loan to finance the house I bought for cash and then use that money to buy another house. I'd just be taking my equity out of this house and using it to buy another house. It *should* work.

If I were braver or more experienced, I'd have gotten a loan while I was living in the other place because it is nicer and can probably get me more money (truth be told, I worry that inspectors won't qualify this place for a VA loan until I'd done more to fix it up). But then I'd definitely be playing the tricksey game. "What's that? It has to be my home? It was my home when I got the loan. Do you want me to keep making payments or would you rather call the loan, try to foreclose during the 'rona, and then have a house you need to sell? Your choice."

Not that the VA is allowed to use common sense. They'll give you a loan if you have a part time job mopping floors at McDonald's--where you could get fired or quit tomorrow--but they won't give you a loan if you can show them that you have enough money in your retirement account to buy the house for cash. But that's another story. I call it "The Time Fox Cashed out a Big Chunk of His Retirement and Bought a House For Cash Because the VA are Tools--But it's OK Because He Sold it Seven Years Later For Almost Three Times What He Paid For It."