On Oct 11, 7:32 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"

wrote:
Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

But did they get you out of a jam you had talked yourself into??

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

I'm in a "WTF to do at the moment" situation. I'll tell ya...I looked at the
utility bills this morning and thought that if I considered ONLY the cost of
the windows, and installing them myself, I could've justified it NOW. I'm
positive they'd pay for themselves within a couple of years. But, for a
number of reasons, there wasn't enough time to do the job this past summer.
And, never having done it before, I'm nowhere near as fast as the pros. A
two day job for them is probably a week for me.

The other issue is the size of the windows here. They're weird. I'd have to
show you pictures to illustrate....

"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...
"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

I'm in a "WTF to do at the moment" situation. I'll tell ya...I looked at
the utility bills this morning and thought that if I considered ONLY the
cost of the windows, and installing them myself, I could've justified it
NOW. I'm positive they'd pay for themselves within a couple of years. But,
for a number of reasons, there wasn't enough time to do the job this past
summer. And, never having done it before, I'm nowhere near as fast as the
pros. A two day job for them is probably a week for me.

The other issue is the size of the windows here. They're weird. I'd have
to show you pictures to illustrate....

I got buddy buddy with the new owner of a local vinyl window supplier. Over
three or four years I replaced every window in the house save for a double
vertical single hung unit in my kitchen and three small fixed 'piano style'
windows.. 2 in my living room & one in my main bedroom.
(will probably do those next spring) I get the owner to come out and measure
the windows. I also have them weld on the wide j trim to replace the
original 5 inch pine boards framing the old windows. What a
difference...more comfortable in the house, electric heating cheaper and the
windows don't frost up on me.
Our handyman and I do the installations. (his day job is with the medical
insurance company my wife does contract work for)
All the windows he measured fit perfectly, the one I measured & ordered came
about 1/8" too wide and I had to hack at the shingles a bit to fit it in.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:48:33 -0400, "JimH" ask wrote:


wrote in message
roups.com...
On Oct 11, 7:32 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"

wrote:
Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

But did they get you out of a jam you had talked yourself into??

Owning and managing a small apartment complex has to be a nightmare.
Unless the property is in a hot real estate market for rental property I can
think of many ways to get a better ROI.

In some ways, it was but that was more related to my own inability to
do certain things like climbing 50 foot ladders and not being able to
redo the roof by myself which in days of old, I would have done. It
stopped being fun.

All things considered, we were very careful with the tenants and as to
repairs, that's all a part of doing business.

We also made a ton of money off of the four out the six that we owned
- it got to the point where I had to sell them otherwise we would take
a huge hit when the Dems get their 30% capital gains tax. For
example, that one we just discussed sold for two and a half times what
we paid for it six years ago. Subtract the repairs and it came out at
2 times what we paid for it. Subject the capital gains and I'm still
WAY out in front of the cost of ownership.

The other two we own we bought cheap enough that even at 30%, we're
still ahead by 100% profit.

Multi-family homes aren't all that hot, but good ones are in demand -
in particular when they are maintained properly.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:39:49 -0400, "JimH" ask wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

Your tenants do not pay for their heat and AC??

Nope - it's in the rent.

Expenses are controlled by usage. We allow a certain amount of
kilowatts and gallons of oil. If they stay under that amount, they
are golden. If they go over, there is a rent surcharge for what they
used plus 5% for the annoyance factor although it's not called that in
the rental agreement. :)

You don't make your money on rents I'll tell you that much. You need
to have a lot of apartments to make money. We make tenants pay for
rental insurance for example while we carry the overall fire and
liability insurance. They have an option of riding on our policies or
getting their own. And with taxes, town usage taxes like water and
sewer plus property taxes you are lucky if you make a couple of
hundred dollars as "income".

For investors like me, it's more about improving the property and
making the units pay for themselves waiting out the enivitable
increase in property value. People have to live somewhere and it's a
good business if you can make it pay for itself and we've managed to
do that.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:47:12 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

I'm in a "WTF to do at the moment" situation. I'll tell ya...I looked at the
utility bills this morning and thought that if I considered ONLY the cost of
the windows, and installing them myself, I could've justified it NOW. I'm
positive they'd pay for themselves within a couple of years. But, for a
number of reasons, there wasn't enough time to do the job this past summer.
And, never having done it before, I'm nowhere near as fast as the pros. A
two day job for them is probably a week for me.

The other issue is the size of the windows here. They're weird. I'd have to
show you pictures to illustrate....

The house we're in now have odd sized windows - when it was built, the
builder did some hinky things and one of them was purchasing odd lot
windows for a development. We managed to get the house with all the
left overs.

It's not hard to remove and replace. Do one and you've got the
technique down for the rest - it's just a question of measuring
properly when you order the windows. Once you've got that done, piece
of cake.

I did this house, 13 windows, in one day - 10 hours of work.

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:47:12 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

I'm in a "WTF to do at the moment" situation. I'll tell ya...I looked at
the
utility bills this morning and thought that if I considered ONLY the cost
of
the windows, and installing them myself, I could've justified it NOW. I'm
positive they'd pay for themselves within a couple of years. But, for a
number of reasons, there wasn't enough time to do the job this past
summer.
And, never having done it before, I'm nowhere near as fast as the pros. A
two day job for them is probably a week for me.

The other issue is the size of the windows here. They're weird. I'd have
to
show you pictures to illustrate....

The house we're in now have odd sized windows - when it was built, the
builder did some hinky things and one of them was purchasing odd lot
windows for a development. We managed to get the house with all the
left overs.

It's not hard to remove and replace. Do one and you've got the
technique down for the rest - it's just a question of measuring
properly when you order the windows. Once you've got that done, piece
of cake.

I did this house, 13 windows, in one day - 10 hours of work.

The measuring would be the first challenge. Never having seen this house
"naked" (framed, without coverings), I'm not sure how to measure. In my
son's harem is a girl whose dad is a carpenter. I may see if he's interested
in a teamwork situation, like the one you described.

Speaking of teenagers, my son just left with a friend from his dorm. The
friend tried to get out the door ahead of my son, and took 45 seconds to
open the screen door. My son's enough of an observer that he didn't say a
word while this went on. He turned around and gave me this "I wonder how
long this will take" look. The friend finally figured out that the latch
needed to be turned instead of pushed.

His friend's a physics major. NASA beware.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:12:23 -0400, "JimH" ask wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:39:49 -0400, "JimH" ask wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:15 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

Never mind. The other option is to just let the windows go to hell, and
replace them with modern ones sooner than I wanted to.

Best move I ever made.

I replaced 31 of them in one of our apartment houses to the new vinyl
type.

Saved me a ton of money on heating costs.

Your tenants do not pay for their heat and AC??

Nope - it's in the rent.

Expenses are controlled by usage. We allow a certain amount of
kilowatts and gallons of oil. If they stay under that amount, they
are golden. If they go over, there is a rent surcharge for what they
used plus 5% for the annoyance factor although it's not called that in
the rental agreement. :)

You don't make your money on rents I'll tell you that much. You need
to have a lot of apartments to make money. We make tenants pay for
rental insurance for example while we carry the overall fire and
liability insurance. They have an option of riding on our policies or
getting their own. And with taxes, town usage taxes like water and
sewer plus property taxes you are lucky if you make a couple of
hundred dollars as "income".

For investors like me, it's more about improving the property and
making the units pay for themselves waiting out the enivitable
increase in property value. People have to live somewhere and it's a
good business if you can make it pay for itself and we've managed to
do that.

Rising fuel/oil prices as well a big jumps in your property/GL insurance
rates had to take a major hit on you.

Actually, it wasn't as bad as you might think. I belong to a fuel
co-op. You buy in with $10K investment and all purchases after that
are at wholesale. If you get out, you roll over the $10K to somebody
who wants to buy in only now it will cost $16K to buy in. The co-op
keeps $2K and I get the rest. I joined years ago and it's more than
paid for itself.

Same thing with gas. While there is a savings for gas, it's only
about .40¢ a gallon and you are limited in the amount you can remove
at any one time because of associated storage and environmental
problems. I think the gas co-op is going to collapse because of
ethanol anyway - it's harder to store than just straight gas. Which
is fine - we won't lose the initial investment and it worked for a for
a long time.

Having your tenants being able to piggy back on your commercial insurance
with their tenants insurance *may* be costing you. The norm is for them
to get their own coverage separate of yours.

If you have not had your insurance prospected (sent to bid) recently by your
agent this is a great time to do so....it is a buyers market. Unless you
have not already done so you may also want to see what the difference in
premiums would be with the insurance package split with a personal lines and
commercial packages, even if it means different insurance companies.

Been there - done that. All the commercial insurance is posted for a
two year contract bid - full replacement policy with built in
inflator. The odd thing is that over the past five years, our
insurance costs have gone down slightly instead of up and we offer the
same contract every time it comes up.

The renter riders almost always come up cheaper than what the tenants
can come up with on their own - sometimes they don't. The caveat
there is that all possessions have to be documented and videotaped to
be covered. We have a very smart lawyer who handles all this and he
does an outstanding job.

I've found that the key to insurance is having the units inspected
yearly for structure, function and bugs. Once that's documented, the
rest just seems to fall into place.

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:20:00 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...

If your daughter was raped and you started talking to her about
statistics, I wonder how she'd react.


See? The rape thing again.

Eisboch

It's important because there are cults which think they can dictate the
options available to a rape victim. You can't exclude inconvenient facts
from the discussion, unless you'd like to say it's over for now.


My point is that the majority of abortions, I believe, are performed not
because of a rape, but because a resulting pregnancy following voluntary sex
where no precautions were taken happens to be embarrassing or inconvenient.

Rape is a different issue and much more difficult to resolve in my mind,
although I'd probably go along with having abortion a legal option in it's
case or in the event of a problematic pregnancy whereby the mother's life
may be in danger.

But to give everyone via legalized abortion, (call it pro-choice or
whatever) a free pass because they didn't act responsibly is not right in my
mind.

Whatever happened to the fathers with shotguns?

Eisboch

I do not understand that response. Either the fetus is a human or it
isn't. If it is not a human, but simply an accumulation of cells like
an appendix or a mole, then why would you be against abortion? Clearly
in that case it is the woman's right to decide what to do with that
inconvenient lump of cells. You don't need reasons to admit to that
right. Whether there was a rape or not is immaterial. Whether the lump
of cells is wanted or not is immaterial. Whether the lump of cells may
some day be retarded is immaterial. However, if it is a human being
then what does the rape of the mother have to do with it? If the baby
had already been born and the mother said she had been raped would you
allow her to kill the baby? There is only one question surrounding
abortion in my opinion. That is whether or not (and possibly at what
point) the lump of cells is a human being and not an appendix. The
answer to that question fully drives the answer to virtually all
subsequent abortion questions. My problem with defining my own
position on abortion is trying to come to grips with the "when"
question. Clearly it is a human a second after delivery. I can find
nothing that changes that 5 minutes earlier, 5 hours earlier, 5 days
earlier or 5 weeks earlier. Yet by the same token I can accept that
upon fertilization but before attachment to the uterine wall it is not
human (which conveniently allows me to fully accept the Pill which
keeps a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall) but I find
myself without any rational basis for making a distinction past that
point, as much as I want to.

What I do know, for reasons I won't go into too deeply, is that if
abortion was legal and readily available for rape victims in 1928, I
would not exist since my mother would have been aborted. I also know
that if abortion was legal and readily available in 1957, I would not
exist as I was a bit of an unplanned inconvenience. Obviously then my
beautiful children and grandchildren would not exist. Some may say
upon reading this that my non-existence would have been a boon to
humanity - oh well. Enough from me.

Dave Hall