Johnny Northsides just dropped me a message saying that he posted his own Stupid Property Repairs entry. You can’t help but get a laugh here.  Love it.

It got me thinking that is has been some time since I posted a Stupid Property Repair.  Maybe it has been because I am becoming numb to the stupidness.  Maybe it is because I am so engaged with my customers that I don’t notice the repairs.  Or maybe it is because I am talking so much that I am light headed and can’t see straight (this one is my best guess).

Well I came across a nice one the other day.  Here we go.

Cute 1.5 story, 1950s house in a quiet North Minneapolis neighborhood.  I have seen this exact floor plan probably 500 times.  Walk in to the long family room, kitchen is on the back of the house straight ahead, dining room/bedroom/office off the kitchen, plus 2 other bedrooms on that floor and then a steep staircase to a big room upstairs.

This house was on the market for $79,900.  Decent price for this neighborhood as it was a foreclosed property.  It gets interesting as the moment you open the front door, where you are expecting hardwood floors, you are hit with an entire living room of white-ish tile.

Ok.  Well, not my preference, but I understand people in Florida put tile everywhere.  What I started to realize is that this must be one of the worst tile jobs I have ever seen!  Clearly done by a weekend warrior.  They simply put the tile down and never even attempted to close the gaps around the trim.

Even I can do a better job than that!  Plus, then the tile in the kitchen was completely different than the tile in rest of the 1st floor.  Again, OK, maybe they did the kitchen first and then they got a great deal on this other tile.  But look at the seem in between the two tiles.  You must have a 1″ gap there.

Now I am just lauging and hacking on the poor guy that put this tile in.  I go into the kitchen and check out both the counter top and what is mounted above the sink.

A hand soap dispenser like you would find in a restraurant bathroom.  Huh.  Odd.  By the way, nice counter pattern.  See what the rest of the kitchen looks like.

And then just for the cherry on top, I go upstairs and see this odd install.  I must have spent 5 minutes trying to understand why they would put 6 registers on the wall into the attic space like that.

It turns out (the picture did not turn out) that there was a bath fan mounted in the attic space behind these registers to suck the hot air out of that 2nd floor room.  For the amount of money and time they spent on engineering this one, they could have gone to Home Depot and bought a $89 air conditioning unit and put in the window there!

And this house can be yours if the price is right!

Are you searching for investment properties on your own and running into similar properties?

Scott Ficek is a Minnesota Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Advantage Plus in Minneapolis and helps new and seasoned investors buy and own Minnesota Investment Property. He owns and manages almost 30 investment property units from single family to multi-family. Find his website at www.minnesotainvestmentrealestate.com or use it to search the MLS for Investment Properties.

Community Crime Prevention/SAFE of the Minneapolis Police Department and Minneapolis Housing Inspections are providing this workshop. Attending the workshop provides owners and managers with valuable information, resources and opportunities to network with other property owners. Workshop topics:

• • The ABCs of property management
  • Working with the Minneapolis Police Department
  • Working with Housing Inspections
  • Tenant behavior issues
  • The risk of lead poisoning
  • Hennepin County Housing Court / mediation
  • Networking opportunities

DATE: Thursday, October 23, 2008
WHEN: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
(Registration at 4:30 p.m.)
PLACE: St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church
3450 Irving Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Cost: $20.00 — checks payable to City of Minneapolis (Includes cost of workshop, materials, DVD on Hennepin County Housing Court, and box meal.)

Pre-registration is required. RSVP by Thursday, October 16, 2008. (registration limited to 100 participants). REGISTRATION AFTER OCT. 16 WILL BE $30.

Return the registration form (http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/outreach/docs/RPOW2.pdf)  $20.00 check payable to the City of Minneapolis by Thursday, October 16, 2008 to:

RPOW
Community Crime Prevention/SAFE
4119 Dupont Ave. N.
Minneapolis, MN 55412
Questions? E-mail ccpsafe@ci.minneapolis.mn.us or call the message line at 612-673-2812.

It is funny how this is really a small real estate world, especially in North Minneapolis.  Johnny Northside wrote a new post about the North Minneapolis T.J. Waconia houses where he actually made a mention of my post about one of my customers wanting to buy a T.J. Waconia House in North Minneapolis.

Here is where it get’s circular.  Jeannie Hoholik, from Keller Williams, comments on this blog.  In fact, she commented about my above post.  She is also the main character in Johnny Northside’s post.  Got all that?

I encourage you to check out those other posts.

Scott

I try to ask lots of questions when I meet a prospective tenant.  This will usually allow me to ferret out any problem tenants or issues.

There are so many examples of interesting tenant screening discussions that I have on a monthly basis.  I thought this one was worthy of posting, not because it was funny, but for some of the subtle red flags, that I was hearing while talking to this prospective tenant.

This prospect called about a 2 bedroom apartment in an investment property in Crystal, that I own.  It was recently renovated and is priced at a below market rent of $765.

Me:
So where do you live now?

Prospect:
I live just down the block in Crystal.

Me:
Great, why are you moving?

Prospect:
The landlord is going into foreclosure and he won’t fix anything and we can get in touch with him.

Me:
How about sending him a letter with your rent?

Prospect:
Oh, we haven’t been paying rent there since March (8 months).

Me:
Really! And no one has contacted you about that.

Prospect:
Nope.

Me:
[Joking] So you should have all kinds of money saved up for the damage deposit and first month’s rent on my apartment, right.

Prospect:
No, I am going to need to get my damage deposit and probably my first month’s rent from emergency assistance.

Me:
OK…………[explained my screening process] Do you have anything on record that I should be concerned with?

Prospect:
Well, I have an eviction from 2 years ago and my credit is bad.

[Thinking to myself-I saw that one coming!]

Informal tenant screening is nothing more than carrying on a conversation with some subtle questioning.  I was just asking questions to understand more about where she lived and worked and such.  As I heard a red flag, I steered the conversation that direction.  While I did this in person, it is a great way to weed out bad tenants on the phone, saving yourself a trip to the property.