Here’s something that I’ve been oddly resistant to but it seems more frequent our guests are requesting that I provide them a check list of things to do before checking out.
I guess after about 18 months, I have to wonder how all our guests survived without a checkout list and so I have to wonder.
I would imagine it can be pretty stressful if you don’t know to what standard the host will hold the guests to in terms of the condition of the house. And if you don’t, in some cases, though rarely, people will feel like it’s permissible to leave some greater mess that what we would expect.
I believe we start each new booking with such a clean house, people naturally (most of the time) obligated to do a decent job of keeping things in order.
So, okay, here’s a draft of some of the things I thought of for our place, maybe it’s help both hosts and guests alike. Your place may be different and may have more or less expectations.
GENERAL GUIDE FOR PREPARING THE HOUSE BEFORE CHECKOUT
Put garbage in a trash can, but not necessarily in the bins outside (we often use used trash liners in the process of our cleanup). If it’s full, you can take it outside to the bins.
Wash Dishes, or rinse off chunks (and empty out into compost bin under sink) and wash in dishwasher using the supplied soap tablet.
Cleanup any spills anywhere at anytime.
Do not leave towels on floor, leave on the towel racks or the supplied dirty close baskets okay.
Do not need to take sheets/linen off beds.
Leave any used blankets on the beds (normally stowed in a package in the closets), do not put back in their plastic storage cases.
Not necessary to restock food you have eaten.
Turn off and unplug coffee makers and hot water pot, blender, and other countertop applicance.
Clean top of stove (mainly wipe up spills) but not with anything abrasive.
Do not flush garbage down any sink or toilet (toilet is used for only what is normally expected).
Do not leave unwrapped food out, especially candy, best to dump out garbage in compost bin outside and best wrapped in a compost bag to reduce chance of attracting pests. Similarly, Seal up used diapers, especially the #2 kind, and put into garbage bin outside.
Turn off water faucets, shower, bath
Shut garage door, make sure garage door opener is in its wall-mounted location.
Turn off heater, air conditioner, microwave, stove top, oven.
Turn off lights and shut windows.
Shut and lock doors on the way out
THANK YOU FOR STAYING AT SWEET, BRIGHT, FRESH
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In your efforts to secure a property for your BNB you may run into a situation where you are selling an investment property to obtain a replacement investment property.
For those of you who do not understand what a 1031 Exchange is, here is a brief summary.
You can defer capital gains on selling an investment property if you set up a 1031 carefully (adhering to all 1031 rules) pipe it to another investment property of equal value or greater.
It can be any kind of real estate to any kind of real estate, anything from undeveloped land, to commercial property, as long as both are qualified Investment properties.
Normally, you sell an investment property, use the proceeds from that sale to fund the purchase of your new replacement investment property.
WHAT IF, you need to purchase the replacement property (i.e. with cash) before you can sell the relinquished property to fund the new acquisition? You are totally screwed, right?
What I discovered, someone in their infinite wisdom created a 1031 instrument called a “REVERSE” 1031.
This way, the title to the replacement property is held in a special Exchange Accommodated Titleholder (EAT) until such time you can close the sale of your relinquished property thereby accomplishing the desired deferring of capital gains.
Please speak to a qualified 1031 Exchange Intermediary or Agent to get the full details as there are different costs involved and other requirements that I have not covered in this blog article.
Good Luck.
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Hey all, Just a short accounting tip for your BNB and to let you know that we are still alive and running our BNB.
In the meantime, here’s an easy accounting tip.
If you are making mortgage payments for your property, it helps cleanup your accounting if you do not make your payments before the 1st of the month that your payment is due for.
In other words, if you need to make a mortgage payment for April, make the payment April 1st or sometime after that and before the date that you will get charged a late payment. If you want to make January’s payment, do it in January.
For example, even though you might get anxious and send out some kind of bizarre positive thoughts into the netherworld of computerized mortgage transactions, maybe trying to earn some kind of imaginary digital karma, better not to make the payment on March 29 since your accounting software may want to apply all charges to the month you actually make the payment – this gets more complicated if you have any compounded charges on your mortgage like your landlords or flood insurance… and it looks goofy on your annual summary.
Essentially, this is helpful is when you do your tax accounting for the year everything just makes more sense. Your payments correspond to the appropriate month and if you’re talking about January’s payment, the correct year.
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My current work involves Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine to being an out to pasture IC Layout Design Engineer, and I definitely did not become a property manager by seeking it out – it unceremoniously yanked me in.
I was drawn into property management to save my mom from trouble and by extension, our whole family from trouble back in 2007. Sound melodramatic? It may have been dramatic, but definitely not mellow.
When I graduated from the Masters Program in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the Spring of 2007 from Five Branches Institute (Santa Cruz, CA) the last thing that was on my mind was becoming a property manager or dealing with problem tenants.
Part of my Chinese and Western Medicine library
The biggest thing on the mind of a TCM graduate is studying to successfully pass the California Licensing exam for Acupuncturist. I had self-sponsored my way through this multi year process and just had about two months to prepare and with hopes of being able to focus on my studying to take that exam in Sacramento. I was ready to embark in my dream of a new life’s work.
I had left my Silicon Valley engineering career on the last day of 2002 and I had completed my Master’s! It was… awesome! It was a mountaintop experience, just having spent 4 years with some of the most kind and amazing people who were the students and teachers. I thought I could just begin a life of a health hermit helping people with their health problems and put the stress of Silicon Valley life behind me.
But NO, fate had another deal waiting for me.
Little did I know that in the previous couple months before my graduation, my mother who managed her own investment properties, was having problems obtaining back rent payments and then received a letter from the tenant complaining about the condition of the property.
Mom, who was about 83 years old at the time, was a kind landlord, though a bit too trusting in her tenants to help take care of her properties, and things were looking a little too legalistic in this one tenant’s written complaint that was carefully worded with some nefarious implications. In other words, it wasn’t just a simple, “Hey, our hot water’s out , could you send a plumber?”
The week after I graduated from Five Branches, I was set to study for my Licensing exam, so I did not go with my mom to visit the property and the tenant. She asked me if I wanted to go, but I wanted to begin studying. I wanted focus, be at one with my studies 😉
To cut to the point, when I heard how the visit went I was bothered. I knew just enough about how things should go to agitate my concern.
Having spent several years working with my parents, helping them with their businesses, full time in the late 1980’s and on my free time in the 1990’s. Spiritually and emotionally, I hardly had time to breath the fresh air, it felt like I was being recalled to military service. (C.K. YEE, we need your ass back out in the front lines, forget your Zen Meditation crap. You better get your seabag loaded on the boat, we’re getting underway) ;(
Considering I was not into property management before this event (though in 1989, I almost went for my real estate license), I am not sure why I was so willing (albeit a bit grudgingly) to take up the burden of dealing with this tenant for my mom but I immediately made clear that I would deal directly with the tenant. I wanted to make sure that my mom (and our family) would take this situation more carefully and so I took the matter into my own hands.
Looking back, I cannot tell you what I saw in myself, to think I was any better qualified to deal with this except, maybe, I would be willing to sit an listen to the tenant like I had practiced so many times with patients…. It’s not that simple though.
Over the next 5 months, I worked with the tenant. Ultimately, they understood they had to move out because we planned to work on the house, which was in need of repairs and that for their safety, they needed to vacate the property.
In the process, I developed a close relationship with a local realtor, who is the most savvy realtor related to East Palo Alto that I’ve ever known, as well as an eviction attorney’s office whose paralegals were God’s gift to mankind, all of who I received valuable advice on landlord-tenant rights and property management.
It was not an easy process. Somehow, I figured out how to navigate the problem which included a few face to-face meetings, many attempts to communicate and even an offer for them to purchase the house, which they chose bail out of the opportunity.
The repair process took over 6 months to finish.
In June 2007, when I graduated from Five Branches, I weighed 150# and by August 2007 , when I took my Acupuncture licensing exam, I weighted 135#. I lost 15 pounds from anxiety and depression at the same time I was studying and managed to pass my Licensing exam. When I learned I passed the exam, it should have been a big-time celebration for me, but it was overshadowed by the ongoing tenant situation.
I received my Acupuncture License in October 2017 and soon began working out of a clinic in nearby Los Altos.
As I recall, there was talk by the Acupuncture Board that we might have to retake the exam due to some alleged cheating by some fringe group, but fortunately, I was saved from that insanity.
Not quite the way I would have planned it but I did it. I DID IT.
Ever since that time, I have been involved in property management. However, due to the hard times of 2008 had to (and was able to) reenter the market as a engineer for several years more (while pursuing Chinese medicine part-time), but that’s how I get started as a property manager.
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Palo Alto BNB 