We have been delayed for a few months now. There was a construction change for the roof on the garage conversion. The architect had drawn up a “California Roof” for the second room which used to be a laundry room with a flat roof. When I looked at the plans, I didn’t realize that the existing roof on the main building would need to be modified to accommodate the roof. The contractor built a flat roof anyway and it didn’t pass inspection because it wasn’t what was in the plans. Hence, the construction change. The change required a structural engineer which took additional time. We finally have approval on the change and work should continue next week.

On top of the construction change, we are waiting for approval for a Right-of-Way permit which is needed to upgrade the water meter to a one-inch service. The irritating part about this is that this process should have been started at the beginning of the project. Our contractor is not very organized and we need to keep on top of him. He’s an excuse generator. If he could make a living generating excuses, he’d be better off.

We are modifying the way we manage our properties. I read “The Self-Managing Landlord” written by Amelia McGee and Grace Gudenkauf. I didn’t realize how much stress being disorganized and unprofessional in terms of our rental business. We weren’t running it like a business. The book is a great reference for setting up our business so that some things run on autopilot. One addition was setting up an account on RentRedi. We can list our properties, collect rent and late fees automatically, handle maintenance requests, among other things. We also opened a Google Workspace account which allows us to have email addresses that have a business name rather than @gmail. My business email address is brian@rentamericasfinestcity.com. We now have standard operating procedures stored on Google Drive that outline procedures for all aspects of our property management. We don’t have to remember what we need to do every time a tenant moves out or handle maintenance requests and every other management responsibility. We also started a subscription with Stessa for our bookkeeping. We used to use spreadsheets to track income, expenses and improvements. This will come in especially handy when tax time rolls around. I think our accountant will be happy as well.