35. Rental Property Problems We Didn't Expect: Landlord Problems

What happens when tenant drama, property turnovers, and financing challenges all hit at once?

In this laid-back catch-up episode of Real Estate Chisme, Violeta and Lindsay share the real-life ups and downs they've been navigating behind the scenes as landlords and real estate investors. From vacant units and tenant conflicts to ADU expansion plans and creative financing strategies, they pull back the curtain on what’s been happening in their portfolios over the last month.

Lindsay provides an update on her 12-property portfolio, discussing vacancies, turnover season, water-related maintenance issues, and her plans to potentially build a second ADU in California. She also opens up about the challenges of securing financing while balancing W-2 income, self-employment income, and future plans to leave her corporate job.

Meanwhile, Violeta shares lessons learned from self-managing her latest duplex renovation, including handling tenant disputes, setting boundaries, coordinating junk removal, and preparing for a new tenant move-in. She reflects on how these experiences are helping her build valuable property management and communication skills.

They also discuss:
• Managing vacancies and rental turnovers during peak leasing season
• Financing challenges and creative ways to fund real estate projects
• ADU expansion opportunities and long-term portfolio growth
• Tenant communication, conflict resolution, and property boundaries
• The realities of self-management versus hiring property managers
• Family real estate challenges, including inherited properties and difficult decisions

This episode is an honest conversation about the everyday realities of real estate investing—the wins, the setbacks, and the lessons that come from learning as you go.

Tune in for a casual behind-the-scenes catch-up filled with landlord stories, investing insights, and plenty of real estate chisme.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hola, hola. Today's real estate cheesement is going to be more laid back. Lynn and I we're just gonna be cheese about things we have dealt with with tenants, with our rental properties. Just really kind of like Lynn has been away training with her husband, her husband, boyfriend. Was training for a marathon, and so she was helping out. And so we just kind of wanted to do a laid-back episode and just kind of catch up, talk about things that have been happening, things that I've been learning with this rental property, things that she kind of has dealt with or learned throughout the way her time as well, and basically just a catch-up episode. So welcome back, Lynn.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah, no, I've been gone for like almost a month, which is crazy because I obviously I still work my Dolly too. So I have like a full-time job, and then I also work for myself, and then I do the real estate, right? So I had a couple conferences stacked back together for my own career, and that was took over two weekends, and my boyfriend brought a marathon, so I had to like be supportive, and you had to self-reveal it that you had to be here by yourself. Yeah, and it was on my early, yeah. And then we had like a trip to New York because I do have family there, and I actually didn't even meet. I have a couple friends and real estate investors in New York, and I didn't even meet them because my family took over so much of my time, which I kind of regret not meeting them because I feel like you know, not a lot of people on the real estate space that I talked to on a regular basis that you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, that's been uh it's been just yeah, a month went by quick. A lot has been happening. I've been fixing up this duplex that has been so fun that I'll dedicate a I think we are planning to probably do a live. We're going to hopefully have Martin back. If you haven't seen his episode, it'll be linked down below. That was a good episode, so make sure you check it out. He's a flipper, and so since this is kind of like my first rehab, like light rehab for my rental property. Martin's a flipper. Lynn has done rehabs for long her rentals, and so I wanted to do kind of a live where they kind of just kind of I guess rate my rehab, I guess. So that'll be fun. So make sure that you are subscribed to Lynn's channel, to this podcast, so that way you could see it pop up whenever. And I'll try to put it on Instagram once we plan it out. But finish line is coming around the corner. I have like one more week left. I have several things to kind of like finish up. I have a tenant that moves in this Friday, which by the time this episode is aired, you know, he'll be moved in. So that was a lot of fun things. I'm managing this property myself, so that's kind of like one of the things that we're going to talk about, too, is like dealing with the tenants because I've had a few little things pop up recently of dealing with tenants, not even just with this rental property, but with my other one that actually has a property manager. Like I had a tenant reach out to me personally, and it was just kind of like a lot of drama there. Not necessarily too bad, but it was just kind of interesting. But yeah, I think I'll let Lynn go first, see what she's been doing. You had a conference. Well, that was for your career stuff, but want to see what what you've been doing this past month on the real estate side since I haven't been able to chit chat, not even on Instagram. She's been booked and busy, and I've been booked and busy. So we haven't even like I think we've like texted a few times, although we do send TikToks to each other on Instagram, so that's kind of like where we've just been at.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, we sent a bunch of TikToks like because we're like, oh no, I'm busy. No, I mean, since last year, I mean, I talked about this that I just want to optimize my portfolio, and so I have 12 properties, and right now two of them are empty. One of them tenant moved out in May, which I am turning over that unit. It's already marketed. So we're hoping to get that was a small, a small house that I have to better win that. So I have that on the market right now for the last two weeks. So we're just hoping to fill it. Thankfully, it's June and of the winter, so I'm hoping like it gets filled right away. And another one that have an interesting case that I could talk about, but I'm not gonna talk about it right now because I'm not out of the woods. But that one is supposed to be empty in the next two weeks, and yeah, those are two things that I've been dealing with currently. Everything the other houses are rented out, like in Texas and Indiana, it's been raining a lot, so there's been a lot of water and a lot of things that they're trying to like fix, but no manager, like major capital expenditures whatsoever. So just like things, water-related basements and stuff. But I am crazy, no, just kidding. So I think that people know that I built an ADU on the back of my house, right? And I've been going strong since September of last year. But there is another house down the street that has built an ADU on the front of the house, and in my layout in my house, I still have a lot of like grass and the head died actually because I had to dig down sewage connections for the ADU. So they had to like basically dig up all the grass and they died. So I was like trying to debate if I was gonna put a dryway on the front of the house or I could do something else, and so I sold a house and my street putting an additional ADU in the front of the house, and they made it very seamless, like it looked like it was originally part of the house from the beginning. So I started looking out to see if I can do that too, and I got my architect to come back and then basically tell me, and I had to get rid of a tree. I got rid of a tree. It was surprisingly lower cost than I thought, and like it was a huge tree, and it was $1,100 to like take it off. Which I was just like, I like ask everybody, is this like too low? Because I never had it to take a tree before, but I do a lot of landscaping instead of have a lot of grass, and that's expensive. So I was just surprised at taking a tree out, anyways. We did that, and then so now technically we can see the whole layout, and then my architect is working on like how much can we build and how much does the setback need to be put on the front of the house and the center of the house because I do have a corner lot, so he said that I could do a two-story. Wow, and but he's like confirming the heights that it has to be or something like that. But I was just like, oh well, I can just tow-story, but I don't have money for a two-story, what did I do? Like, because I did if you guys haven't seen my video on the ADU that I built in the back, it cost me a total of $110,000 to build. So plus furniture, that was like $120,000 so all all in $120. So a two-story, I'm thinking it's going to be between $250 to $270,000 to build. And I don't have that money. So what am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Well, the the California, because I remember a while back. Now this was like back in like 2021 when I had bought a house in California, and I was looking to build an ADU. The only reason I didn't was because like it was just a weird layout, and I was like, how are they gonna whatever? But I remember looking up that there was like grants and stuff for that. Is that not available anymore? Or maybe because you already have one, they're not gonna give it away.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

They're in base, so I don't qualify for some of like the grants. I have a HELOC right now, which I was looking into, like increase the limit on the HELOC, but because I'm still fairly new at real estate and I haven't filed my taxes from last year, and I have done so much burst, like on my Schedule E, which I is I think what it's called, it means that I'm at a loss from real estate every year. So they don't count that income, right? And then so I'm limited to like what I bring as a W2 employee only. And because I'm working for myself, but I don't have two years of tax returns, that income also doesn't qualify. So I have like two different streams of incomes that currently don't qualify to see my income to debt ratio make it less, right? So to the bank, at least the conservative bank, which I use PenFit, it's a federal credit union. To that bank, it's still pretty much I'm like over my income to debt ratio. So that's the that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

But would they finance well if you were like positive, would they finance like an ADU? Because that's what I'm kind of like similar, because with this rental property that I bought, it's on a 0.34 acre lot, and so the front's way at the front, the prop main property, and then in the back, I would like to squeeze in maybe two more units back there, maybe like just one bedroom ones, I think. And so my thing next, I haven't really took the time to kind of do research or do too much yet because I've just been focused on finishing this project. But I'm like, okay, so how am I going to fund this ADU? So yeah, that's why I was asking. I was like, you think they'll they'll fund an ADU?

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah, I know I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I'm gonna figure it out because I'm gonna find money somewhere. But I'm trying to figure out the best way because I also have plans with leaving my W too, right? Like, yeah, so I love that like coming together kind of thing here, like, oh, sure, I do this thing right now. So we'll see. I might ask you for money. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

I'm trying to find somebody too because this guy said something of money, whoever's watching this. Yes, give us money, and like there's I sent Lynn a property recently, and it's right down the street, it's like 10 minutes away from my house, and it's like a mixed type of properties, it's kind of unique because you don't find them too much. But it has like an RV park, it has a commercial building, and then it has like a small storage unit. I think it's like 90 units, I think it was. But it's like three million dollars, and I was like, somebody give me somebody. It's the okay. I was trying to convince my husband's boss to kind of like bring some investors because he's really good at finding investors. His boss can find money, and he was interested because uh, you know, there was some stuff that he was interested in doing with it as well. So I was like, I'll just give me the RB air section and I'll manage the commercial, like y'all can have the mini storage unit because that's what they were interested in. But yeah, we'll see. I'm gonna keep an eye on that property. Um he thinks it's overvalued, which I could see that too. But yeah, that's the thing where we're like we want to do things, but like we just need the money, even for this rehab. It's my credit cards that I've just been using and paying as I go and stuff, which is nice because I've been racking up points in cashback, in cash back, but I've been just funding this whole rehab by myself so far, and then once I'm done paying this off, now it's like okay, now to the next project. So that's been interesting to kind of like I bought this property using my credit cards, and then yeah, and then just paying them off so this property will just be paying off my credit cards, which I've been using my income just to kind of like pay them off. So so far I haven't been hit with interest, so thanks. That might be a play as well. But I'm trying to figure out, like, you know, I was gonna try to see if I could get like a personal loan for a down payment to do a hard money loan. I don't know. I haven't sat down and figured all that out, but yeah, I'm trying to get another project in August. I'm not gonna take one in the summer because my stepson's here and all this stuff, and I got uh vacation next month, so like I don't wanna be stressing about it. But so I got two months to find some money.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Uh find some money summer.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Like one of my friends are like, I need rich friends.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Like, where do I find y'all?

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, we need we need to start finding some money. It's just like at the beginning, once I've been finding that as you go and as you start building this experience, and like money's a little bit easier to get. You start networking and finding people with the money, but we're kind of in the middle, like right now, I feel of finding people with the money. We have some weird, like cool different ways, like me using my credit cards, you doing creative financing and stuff, but now like we want to do kind of like bigger things, and it's like uh okay, now we gotta start finding these private investors and things.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

So and it's like a little what nerves as well too, like the fear of because I feel like you and I were like extremely conservative, and you're you're a mom, right? So you have to like everything is for your daughter almost, right? It has to be can be stupid, like when we're 20, like yeah, um if I lose five thousand dollars, I'll be five thousand dollars like no. Now if you lose fifty thousand dollars, it's like your daughter's future kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah, yeah, like trying to like assess what the rest dollar is, how it is moved now, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, because definitely when I was younger and single, like I could definitely recover so easily and still kind of have a nice buffer because, like, you know, my husband takes care of a lot of the stuff with his nine to five, so I do have a little bit of leeway to play with the income that I get, but still I don't want to kind of like overstretch us as well. And then with you, you're planning to like leave that W2 and be on your own, so you kind of a little bit have to be a little bit more cautious as well, yeah, and and figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

So, yeah, we'll see what happens, guys. Stay tuned because it's up in the air right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah, that's the thing. I did have to section off, kind of going a little bit with the tenant side story that I had to deal with, which was kind of that wasn't a bad necessarily a bad experience, but it was another uh skill that we developed. We just finished the uh episode, which will be after this one about the skills you need as a real estate investor, so that's still on my brain, and so that was another skill of like the people skills and talking to them and stuff. My husband did a lot of the confrontation though, but I dealt with like a little bit of the firm and all that stuff, so because again, this property is on a 0.34 acre lot. They knew the previous tenant, the unit that I'm fixing up right now, and so they had kind of like you know, free range of the whole backyard, so they had stuff like everywhere, and so because I knew it was like okay, they knew this tenant, so that worked, but now it's gonna be somebody else that they probably don't know, and I don't want fighting or whatever. So the first thing I did was put a fence down the middle, and that caused a little bit of a headache because again, they were used to using the whole yard, and they had stuff over there, and I had junk removal come, and they were told several times to move their stuff, which they did for the most part, but then they forgot, even though I sent a reminder the day before, and I guess the Spurs were playing that night, and so they had kind of like a little watch party or whatever, and so all their stuff got spread out again, and they didn't communicate that or nothing. So the next morning was when junk removal came, and I had told them from this line to the left side is all junk removal, and also I had told them, like, hey, since I'm having junk removal, like this is your chance to get rid of things, right? That you don't want, just move them over to this side. So I'm assuming that that's stuff that they didn't want, and they just whatever. So junk removal took it, and there was so a little bit of drama with that because they're like, Where's my stuff? and blah blah blah. Because they try to say that their stuff was not on that side, that junk removal had gone to their side and got some of their stuff, and so there was some drama, but the junk removal people had a video, and sure enough, the video showed and I knew because the junk removal guy FaceTime well, Facebook video, whatever it's called, and showed me, and I was like, Yeah, you know, that from that line to that line, and I saw some of the stuff on that side, right? And so, and I remember because I was actually gonna keep one of the carts that had like a broken wheel, it's like that's easy fixable, so I could fix that, and it's a garden cart, and uh you know, I have a garden, so I was like, Oh, that'd be perfect. So I I had original say, like, oh, just don't take that one. So luckily they like doubt that I was going to keep that one because at least they kept their cart, but yeah, they had it showed that they had their stuff, and then that got squashed. And after that, they took us more seriously. We divided the yard, and now we haven't had really any issues after that. They realized, like, all right, serious. The only thing right now that is the last thing is that they had a shed which was from the previous tenant, and I guess he gave them the shed, and I'm like, so are you gonna move it or what? Because the new tenant is gonna want to put their own shed there. So I was like, maybe y'all could work something out, like sell them the shed, and you use that money for another shed. I don't know, like something like that. So that's gonna be the next kind of little battle with them, and so but it's been fun. I still have a positive, like I've yeah, because I see it as a learning experience, like I'm learning new skills, new management. I've been working with the management app I use is rent ready, and so I've been using that, and then the banking, like so, it's been a whole learning process, and I like learning, so it's been enjoyable to me, even with the kind of frustrations, because now I know so many more new things on how the management works, doing a lease, using DocuSign to get them to sign it, blah blah blah, conflict resolution, all that.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

So it's been fun. Awesome, awesome. I was gonna say before you you mentioned it earlier, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Like in California, so why one eight hundred junk removal, right? In California, they have this service through the trash service, it's called 311, if I'm not mistaken, but it's online too. So, like it's called bulky item pickup. So when let's say you have mattresses that you don't use, or I don't know, like a lot of furniture that you don't use, you can ask the county to pick it up and not fee. It's like a one thing of the trash service, like another service from the trash service. So you can schedule that once a week. So I don't know if the Texas has something like that that you can look into because it's like technically part of the fee you you pay for trash already. So they can take out electronics, they can take out like furniture, mattresses, trash, and it's just called bulky item pickup, and then it's later the trash service picks it up.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, I'll definitely check that one out because this last piece of junk removal is mostly trash, I feel like. So maybe I'll do that. And the because yeah, it's mostly like stuff, like cardboard boxes, a few old flooring that wasn't because it was underneath the fridge and stuff, so doesn't get didn't get pulled out. Oh, the old cabinet from the bathroom, so things like that. So I'll look and see if it's doable because that'd be I know they just recently passed, which I wish I would have known because I didn't see the notification until like too close to when they were gonna do it. I didn't have time to cut down some of like the trees. I wanted to cut the tree in the front because it's like touching the house, and that would have been but they were doing brush pickups, so they did that. So I missed that one. Maybe they'll do it next month, and then I could plant it. Because there's some trees that I want to kind of chop down a little bit, which you mentioned about tree removal, because there's a whole bunch of trees, and I think there's one that's kind of old that I might ask to see what's up, yeah, and stuff. So yeah, that's what I've been up to. My other properties are doing okay. I had one move out, which was the other tenant that you know contacted me, but there was just they just had like some drama. They were fighting with the downstairs tenant, which they had been living together for like about almost three years, right? They were long-term tenants, and so I'm thinking it's just from her boyfriend that she tried to move in, and like he just started them fighting with each other, and so it kind of like she was like, I don't want to be here anymore because it's you know hostile and blah blah blah. And it's like, all right, well, go. Like, I'm not gonna hold you. So I just let her break the contract basically, so I wouldn't have no, but she was like, you know what, it's gonna just escalate because they were getting like the police involved, like each one was trying to put like a restraining order on the other one, and I was like, Okay. And so so now I have a vacant unit again, and so doing a turnover on that one, and again summer, so I expect it to get filled as soon as uh the unit's done. Yeah, so that that's the other just drama, but it was kind of crazy that they called me and they tried to and I got mad at the property manager, and we talked about it, and they're like, you know, sent me all the information, like, no, they've just been fighting, and it's it seems like stemmed from the boyfriend causing issues because I don't know, there's like stuff, like he was just not being considerate of the lower tenant, and just you know, and so the course lower tenant got mad and stuff. So, but that's taken care of, and the other properties are so far back on track, and yeah, always one like you're never again, you're never going to be one hundred percent full, like always something something that you just learn to go with the flow, fix the things you fix, and then it's like okay, and stop having. That expectation of that all your units are going to be 100%. It's very rare now that I've looked back, I think we've only had them like 100%, maybe a few months, and that's it. And then it's always someone moving or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

I also have like undergrama in my family too, because I mean, I don't think anybody watches this episode, but from my family, but my parents, so we're immigrants from Peru, right? So my dad has a house of Peru in Lima, and my now I feel bad saying this. My extended family have been living there for 22 years, free, right? Which is great because like it was my cousins, and so it's like a total of six people living in one house for free. But my parents now they're in their 70s and they're trying to retire. Well, trying, of course. It's hard for them because we do live in Los Angeles, and then so social security because we haven't been here for a long time. Social security is negligible. I think boy, my parents get like $700 a month for for social security. So not enough to survive. So they're thinking of possibly selling that house in Lima. And it's kind of like hard because like there are family living there, right? So my have like trying to like send a message since last year, like, hey, this is you know going to be you can buy it, you can go to the bank. You there's six people living here, you can go to the bank and get a loan and between all of you and purchase it. Like, I would love to sell it to you, but if you can't, then just know that sooner or later we're gonna like sell this house. And then now we're like at that juncture basically where they're like looking seriously. So that's another thing that's happening, like in the real estate world in my life. But then that they call me and then they're like, Oh, how do you think should we sell the house? And I was like, I don't know nothing. Like, we haven't been. I don't know, like if you tell me the market in LA, I tell you exactly how much that house needs to be sold for. But in my fruit, there's like no public information of like sole houses, kind of like non-disclosure per se. And I have no idea like what the market is like over there, and I know for a fact that the house that my parents want to sell, they're gonna knock it down 100% and they're gonna pay it up. So, because it's a very like commercial neighborhood kind of thing. So I know it's not the house that they're buying, it's a lot that they're buying. So that's like uh my mom's like, Oh, figure it out. I was like, What the heck?

SPEAKER_01 24:43

You figure it out, it's not like sell it to you, and then you could just build uh an apartment there, those small apartments.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

The problem is it's nine hours away, like I haven't gone in like 11 years more, bro.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah, yeah, that is a problem, and don't that's gonna be or anything. That is gonna be some drama because they could just sell it and let the new seller deal with them, which will add to like the knockdown, I'm sure. And they they're the bad guys, the seller, but it's still finally still gonna blame you like for selling the house and stuff, and everything. Like, yeah, that's gonna cause some drama, some friction there. So what's yeah, okay, yeah, that's gonna be interesting.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

So but they're putting me in the middle. Like, why do I have to be though? I'm just a cussing, like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Well, I guess we'll see what happens, but they are they gotta pull that band-aid, just rip it off and just go with it. And um maybe they'll get over it in a year or something, and whatever, but maybe reconocing after.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah, but yeah, that's what we've been up to, the our latest drama and stuff. So it was fun to just catch up and let us know what y'all have been up to for if you're investing in real estate, any drama, like tell us the cheese mate, right? And you know, ask this question too.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

We will answer any questions that you put on the comments or put any reviews on the podcast, and we're an open book, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yeah, and again, don't forget the community in school for Latinas. If you want to get into real estate investing, or are an investor already and just want to network and chit chat and cheese mead, the link is down there. Other than that, we'll see you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.