Whew! We had one tenant move out today, we did the walk-through with him and had the new tenants show up approximately 20 minutes after he left to sign the new lease! It has been quite the whirlwind. We are pretty happy with the new tenants and hopefully everything goes well with them. We were able to get almost $100 more per month and we have some better terms in the lease that we’ve learned over time as landlords to add.
Saw this as we were driving around Greeley -winner, winner (chicken dinner?) indeed!
So…we’ve managed to stop feeding the alligator, add some much needed cash to help us when we close in PR in three weeks, and killed a huge zombie that was lunging at us. We still have a few bugs to work out (a few minor repairs/cleaning that needs to be done). But overall, we are tremendously relieved. The timing of this has been so strange and so perfect.
Hooray for the weird, little-known under-workings of the universe!
I had to do some work out in Northeastern Colorado. So after I got done with my work, Britton and I were able to hang out in the Sterling, CO area. Sterling is about 100 miles away from Greeley. It is such a strange place. Going there was almost like traveling in a time machine. Everything seemed outdated and like we were revisiting the 80′s. From the music on the radios to the furnishings and style of the hotel, everything around you made you think you’d stepped back in time.
Northeastern Colorado is more like Kansas and Nebraska than what most people would first think of when they think Colorado. For people who are unfamiliar with Colorado, the first thing they think of is skiing and the mountains, which is half our state. The other half is prairie lands. For hundreds of miles it is nothing but sage brush and tumbleweeds. If you drive from Nebraska into Colorado, you wouldn’t even see the mountains in the distance until you hit Greeley -and some of them are 14,000 feet high!
So going out there was quite the experience. Driving is a breeze, if anything it can be too monotonous and boring as there are few cars and few turns. Here are a few pictures (click to enlarge) of our mini-adventure to Sterling and into Northeastern Colorado to give you a feel for the area:
Lots of Windmills -many were functional to water cattle
A long neglected weathered old barn on the other side of the railroad tracks
The biggest variation in topography were a few softly rolling hills
Huge Grain Silos show what most people do out there
All the chemical fertilizers used in the (conventional) farming have caused some unwanted consequences, such as nitrates in the water. This can cause major health problems, especially for what they call “blue babies”.
A huge feedlot outside of Greeley near Kersey
Raising cattle and bison makes a lot of sense out on this dryland prairie because they will eat the dry grasses that nothing else can. However this easy solution -grazing animals on acres of grassland- is turned into a problem when condensed into feedlot operations where all the waste is concentrated. In the olden days, cowboys were used to round up the cattle on these grasslands. Now they have shifted into this feedlot system instead. This requires extensive feed inputs in the form mainly of (subsidized) corn. Corn, unlike this prairie grassland, is highly water intensive. The close proximity of the animals and the fact that they are standing in their waste also causes them to get sick more often. So, they are given prophylactic antibiotics in their feed, which in turn the general public soon eats.
With all the open space out here in Northeastern Colorado and little rainfall, using this water-intensive and condensed system seems completely counter-intuitive. This un-natural, and ultimately unhealthy system only runs on food (corn) subsidies and (cheap) petroleum. If you ask where all the real cowboys have gone, here’s your answer.
Long ribbons of empty road unfold in front of you
Grain prices -wheat, corn, millet
This bumper sticker is reflective of the thoughts on beef in this region: Eat Beef: The West wasn’t won on salad.
A visual reminder that all of this is currently possible only because of fossil fuels. It will be interesting to see how agricultural areas like Northeastern Colorado adapt -or possibly revert back to the tried and true ways- when fuel prices rise
We went out to eat at a place in Sterling called TJ Bummers. They had lots of old antiques including this old tractor out front. It reminded us of the way it must have been out here in the wild west days.
Overall, it was a nice trip. Going to Northeastern Colorado is not generally thought of as a destination in Colorado, but it is a reminder of what a large part of Colorado is all about. Agriculture is a vital part of our Colorado economy and if you ever want to see that up close and personal, this is the area you should visit.
Besides our regular 40 hours a week jobs that both Britton and I have, we also have our rentals in the Greeley/Evans area. We have four rentals that are single-family residences and we also rent out our basement bedroom/bathroom a few months out of the year.
(For illustration only. Not one of our properties)
Really, being a property manager (I like that term better than “landlord”) is like any other job with ups and downs. The only difference is that in this job, our business is the keeping of homes and so when someone’s home life gets chaotic, it affects us as well. So to be an effective landlord/property manager, we have to have a very stable and financially secure home life ourselves.
Our home life is sort of the foundation for all the others. If we couldn’t manage our home life, how would we pay our mortgage? And if we couldn’t pay our mortgage, you can bet that the other rental mortgages, insurance, taxes, repairs, etc would be the last to be taken care of. Therefore it would create an unstable home life for the tenants residing in the properties. So we take on a great deal of responsibility and obligation to maintain not only our home, but the homes of all of these people who in a contractual way rely on us as much as we rely on them.
And so, it saddens us when we hear that one of our rentals -our first!- will more than likely be vacated soon. It’s too bad because they’ve not only been great tenants, but are also our friends. And for that reason we’d rather they stay. They’ve lived there going on 4 years! But sometimes, that’s not up to us. No matter how stable and settled our home life is, we can’t make everyone’s that way.
We’ve been thinking about whether we want to sell the property or rent it out again. Because it was our first, it was also our most expensive. When we bought it, it was in move-in condition. Which was great to get our feet wet in the whole rental business, but not so great for the cost because the mortgage is more than we get in rent. So, especially as we are trying to save up for Puerto Rico, this is not very good timing when our basement apartment will be empty, too.
So we feel a little less stable than usual. A little bit edgy. A little anxious. But, you know what? We will be ok, no matter what. We always are. We have our great paying jobs, we have substantial savings and we’ve never had trouble renting any of our properties within just a couple of days of posting them. What I’ve learned in life is that even the weirdest most obviously “bad” things can actually be seen as an opportunity if you let them. We built this foundation strong after all. It can handle a few good shakes.
Britton said he had a moment of clarity as he was flying 30,000 feet off the ground on his way to Puerto Rico a few weeks ago. He was listening to the song Drive by Incubus. As he listened to the lyrics, he realized this is exactly what we are trying to do. We are trying to let go of the fear that holds us back from living fully the life we want to actively create. With Puerto Rico we are ready to take the wheel and steer our lives in a new, exciting direction.
Property through the trees
So, we have put an offer in, and received a counter offer on the property in Isabela near San Sebastian. It has a lot of potential and we can afford it. We are now ready to accept that counter offer and get into the nitty- gritty of buying a property there. We are hoping to avoid the mortgage process, but that means scrounging together enough through our various resources to close. So we are hoping to push the closing out a few months if possible. We are super excited, and more than a little scared.
But today at work I realized how much more I want to take the wheel and steer. Fear holds us back, but our drive moves us forward.
Britton made this video of the property, the drive there and of pictures around the western part of the island. Enjoy the ride and feel free to sing along to the lyrics (below)!
Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It’s driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I’m beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
I’ll be there
So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
It’s driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
But lately I’m beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
I’ll be there
Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
I’ll be there
Our momentum and progress to get to Puerto Rico seems to be slowing down. I think there are a variety of reasons for this. For one thing, my dad’s death has made things just a little harder to work through. For another, we are still uncertain of what we want in a place out there. Do we want a vacation home? Do we want to live there permanently? If so, what should we do with all our properties here? We aren’t too concerned about this one because we can always hire a management company, but it is still something that we’d have to think about down the road.
The other factor is that Britton just got a big promotion at work, and the fact that my work, while the funding is never stable, seems to keep on a-going. So this definitely good news. Britton is pretty excited about learning his new role, not to mention the larger paycheck and it is always hard to turn away from a good job. But it is sort of bad news because it makes it harder to move on…Britton calls it our graduation from Greeley life.
So we are just kind of stuck. We’ve been looking at properties online and have found a couple that we like again. A similar pattern seems to emerge. We like both the quaint -and cheap!- country-side fincas (farms) but we also like the ocean-view villa types where we could rent out rooms and be closer to people.
A serious consideration -a house with 11 acres
After Awilda’s deal went south and another property we had been seriously considering was sold, it put a damper on some of our plans. After all, it is a lot of effort to start over: search out places online with multiple realtors and multiple web sites, fly down there, figure out a time to meet with each of these realtors, negotiate a deal, sign a contract, find a bank, handle all the paperwork from 3,000 miles away since you HAVE to deal with a Puerto Rican bank (for some reason U.S. banks don’t deal with PR eventhough it is part of the US…), then -and this is the part we have yet to do- fly back down to close on the property.
And then what? Do we wait a few months and move there permanently? Do we just live two lives here and there (like snow birds)? Will we have enough income from our properties or should we also do job hunting? All of these questions get exhausting.
We really want to get there…but there are so many things to consider. So we’ve just slowed down. We are taking it easy. We just continue to save money, as that always makes doing whatever you do a little easier to transition. If it comes quickly, it comes. If not we are not going to force it right away. We will get there one way or another, some time or another. The hardest thing of all is to be patient. Especially for me.
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