Category Archives: real estate

End of week update!

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I’ve been unwell the last few days, painful feet from arthritis and not sleeping very well.  Had to travel for work and did a few teaching sessions where I was on my feet for several hours. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with really bad arthritis pain in my feet and ankles. So I was off work today and will probably just go in for the morning tomorrow.

Is frustrating as when I get a flare up I can’t take any medications for it, I just have to rest. I haven’t walked all week and I haven’t eaten the best as I’ve been so tired after work. This is the cycle I don’t want to be in again. I need to get myself back on track over the weekend with eating better and sleeping better.

On a positive note our tenants have cleaned the house properly. We’ll go and have a look on the weekend and see if we need to do any small repairs before renting it again. I’m excited to see it!  I’m going to take photos and measurements of all the rooms so I can plan what furniture will fit.

I received a bank statement today which is a bit confusing. If it is correct it means that I have a large sum of money owning to me from my time off work. But it seems like an error that big is unlikely. I can’t contact the bank directly – have to go through the pay office so I’ll be on the phone to them first thing tomorrow morning. I really hope I am owed this money – it would really make a big dent in the mortgage – so fingers crossed!

Mortgage & tenant update.

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We got a letter from the bank about our mortgage payment yesterday. They have reduced our monthly payment by $33. It says that each year they review loans to see if payments need to increase, decrease or stay the same. In 30 years of having various mortgages I’ve never had a letter like that before!

DH spent 20 years working in banking. He said they are worried we are increasing payments and will pay it out early so this is a recalculation to encourage us to pay less. Of course we won’t reduce our payments, in fact I’ll keep trying to increase them and this reduction just means more goes off the principal each month.

In an interesting twist, our tenant has up and vacated over the weekend after initially protesting that they would be unable to move out when the lease was up at the end of the month. Its all very odd! They have paid up to date but said they didn’t have time to clean thoroughly. The agent is inspecting today and fingers crossed theres no damage. If its not properly cleaned it will come out of the bond.

When we lease it are planning to increase the rent by $20/week so that is an additional $1000 income each year from this IP. Can’t wait to get the keys and have a look inside again!

Problems with tenants

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We’ve had some problem with our ‘good’ tenants this week, which came as a real surprise as they’ve been good up until now. Its a strange situation that ended up with us giving them notice to move out. They got caught out in a lie which was designed to steal money from us. I don’t want to say more than that but our agent is also pretty shocked at what they tried to do.

A sudden change in behaviour like this really concerns me but the one thing I will NOT tolerate is being lied to. And if they got away with it then thats theft – I don’t have any time for thieves either. I’m not giving them a second chance as they cannot be trusted now. We’ve been very good landlords, always getting repairs done immediately, cutting them some slack when they had trouble paying the rent for a short period. No rent raises for several years. I’m annoyed that they thought they could take advantage of us when we’ve treated them very well.

We’ve owned this property for almost five years now and only had one weeks vacancy. This is our first tenant problem so we’ve been pretty fortunate. We will probably have a few weeks vacancy this time as we’ll see if it needs painting or any other repairs etc once its empty.

This will also put a bit of a dent in the budget which will slow down the mortgage payoff next month. DH and I are looking forward to going back inside and having another good look. We’ve only actually been inside twice. We inspected it and made an offer to buy it and it was leased straight away. We went back to see it again in between tenants so thats about four years ago. I’m looking forward to seeing it again – its where we will move to when we sell up here.