DIY Apartment Maintenance

As a landlord or property manager, maintenance will ALWAYS be a priority for your property. And property maintenance has its headaches. To assess how hard or difficult maintenance can be, just multiply the number of potential headaches you will have for a unit and multiply that by the number of units. Some handyman tasks are fairly easy: patching up cracks, repainting window frames, replacing light switches, unclogging drains and so on.

So why do it yourself? The reason, is obvious – time and cost. Why pay a contractor big money to do a job you could do yourself, or find an inexpensive handyman to take care of, or even leave to the tenants? Doing it yourself will also save you stress from tenants if you can do the work quickly and efficiently.

However:
  1. Does the idea of repairing something yourself turn you off?
  2. Afraid to get your hands soiled with grease, dirt and oil?
  3. Averse with power tools and other handyman tools?
Then hands-on apartment maintenance may not be for you. If you can't do this work yourself, then you’ll be better off finding a good handyman. A good handyman will go a long way towards apartment maintenance (and lesser headaches!).

 

Make Money While You Sleep

"Make Money While You Sleep". Hmmm, this might as well be the title of this blog, don't you think? Or, in the context of this blog, make money while you and the city sleeps. Sounds really tempting to say such. I mean, my friends and co-workers, typically say that I've got it all too easy and that I only wait until the end of the month and, presto, moolah! Well, yes and no, actually.

"Yes" because as in most other streams of passive income, income is derived from the service. And that's given by way of the shelter provided. And most of the time, since this is property rented out, there's hardly anything that needs to be done on a DAY-TO-DAY basis - in other words, no "daily operations" as what other businesss would have. What's passive income, anyway? Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Passive income is a rent received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.

Some examples of passive income are:
  • Repeated regular income, earned by a sales person, generated from the payment of a product or service that must be renewed on a regular basis, in order to continue receiving its benefits - also called residual income.
  • Rental from property;
  • Royalties from publishing a book or from licensing a patent or other form of intellectual property;
  • Earnings from internet advertisement on your websites;
  • Earnings from a business that does not require direct involvement from the owner or merchant;
  • Dividend and interest income from owning securities, such as stocks and bonds, are usually referred to as portfolio income, which can be considered a form of passive income;
  • Pensions.

So, from the examples given, passive income isn't just rent. We're all familiar with interest and dividend income. We practically don't do anything there. But rental property? Nope, and that's why I say "yes and no" to my friends - that I just wait for the end of the month for income to come in. There's a slew of activities that need to be done. There's contract management, property maintenance (biggie here), rent management, business licenses and permits, and actually, so much more!

 

Very Long Hiatus

The last time I updated this blog was geez, a few years ago! Anyway, I'm now ready and raring to resume blogging. So, what's been keeping me away?
  1. Until recently, work, work and more work.

  2. Another thing that distracted me was my family's transition into our newly constructed house in December of last year. This meant packing, moving and finally settling in.

  3. Until recently, I had flaky internet connection at home. I had to wake up really early to get a sure connection and then it was a slow one too. Arrgh! Now, I have a more stable connection at home after the DSL was finally installed last March 13. This after repeated follow-ups to the phone company for 3 weeks.

Now that I'm more certain of the months ahead, I'm now more comfortable in my situation as a blogger. And with this the belief that I can give an (almost) undivided attention this blog deserves. So there you have it. The long hiatus is now over and it's now "back to your regular programming."