My husband and I bought a fixer upper. Nothing major needed to be done, but it needed updating. We painted and put in new carpet and update the appliances. That is where we ran short on money, but we knew we would be there a while and would do what we could as we could. Then 9/11 happened. About a year later, the Army called and my husband was being called back to duty. We rented the house out thinking we were going to be gone a year. We were gone 7. The first renter, burnt the new carpet, and broke our new faucet. The property manager we hired got sick and they found a replacement that was awful. She used a cheap faucet to replace the old one and it had a small leak. After the renter moved out I flew back and bought another new faucet, new carpet, and new kitchen flooring because the leak had caused wood rot.
Shortly after I get back we received a phone call from the property manger to let us know she had to fire the handyman and was looking for a new one, so the house would be empty and extra month. Shortly after that we get a letter from the handyman's lawyer. He is suing for non-payment and wants all the money for the job that wasn't completed. We found from him that the cops were called when the firing went down and heard a whole different story from the handyman. We then asked for a copy of what he was contracted for and how much he had finished. We called the property manager nd got her side. We figured the truth was somewhere in the middle. We sent an offer to the lawyer who basically laughed at us. That was when my husband informed him that because of some act dated back to WWII you could not sue someone in the military while they were serving during a war. We informed them they could take the settlement or they could wait at least another year, as my husband had signed on for another year. They took the settlement, and we fired the property manager and found another one.
The new one was better, and our renter stayed in for the remainder of the time that my husband stayed active, which was another 6 years. We gave him the option to buy or to move out so we could sell. He couldn't get financing so he moved out.
He never mentioned the water leak at the washing machine waterline to the property manager. The wood rot was so bad I have no idea how a full washing machine did not fall through the floor. We were just going to slap some paint on and put new floors in and sell. HA!
The wood rot from the washing machine went through on the subfloor under the wall and into the family room. So the laundry room and 1/4 of the family room needed new floors. There was mold on the walls in both rooms so we had to redo the dry wall. The tile in the shower in bathroom had come loose so the whole shower had to be redone. We get up to the kitchen and notice the first property manager didn't properly replace the wood rot up there and that it actually went under the cabinets. Kitchen was a total gut job. Up stairs master bathroom had another water leak an we had to replace the vanity. Tiles were cracked. So we had to replace the flooring. So what we thought would be a $10 k remodel, turned into a $40k. (We knew the fireplace needed work.) We barely broke even on what we owed and what we put into it.
