Two short months ago we were enjoying our vacations, going to the beach, having family BBQ’s, and working on our tans. It happens every year when we say it in September, “The Summer went by so fast this year”. This week I have already been stopped in traffic by local school buses loading up sleepy-eyed students in disbelief that they are on their way back to school. As much as I hate to admit it myself, the days are getting […]
Read more
Your property should not be a revolving door of bad tenants coming in and going out. The number one cost you cannot ever recover from a property, is a vacancy. When you are not collecting rent you cannot cover your debt for the property. You cannot pay your contractors; you cannot pay your mortgage taxes and insurance. The worst of all is that you cannot make repairs and your property accumulates deferred maintenance issues. This is the slow death of […]
Read more
Know your State Sanitary Code, Building Code and Tenant/Landlord Laws in your local market. I see it happen all of the time in our local Northern Worcester County Landlord Association. I call them Lone Rangers. Some would-be-hopefully-landlord reads a book or attends a weekend seminar. They have stars in their eyes with visions of grandeur. The see the big picture as a full-color dream laid out before them of riches and fortune because they are going to buy their first property […]
Read more
The Setting The following story is true. This story has a background to it that is critical to the events as they unfolded on that cold March night. In 2006 Massachusetts passed legislation to make CO detectors mandatory in ALL residential buildings. The law was named after Nicole Garofalo, a young 7-year old girl who had died from CO poisoning. It happened when the snow piled up so high in the back yard that it blocked the ventilation from the basement […]
Read more