Landlord check list for renting house

When my wife and I got married, we each owned a house.  We moved into one and started renting the other.  Eventually we moved to another house and started renting both of our original ones.  Now that we have rented them out a few times, I wanted to make myself a check list for doing it again.  Decided to post it online in case its helpful to others.  Here are the main steps that we take.

1) Advertise house on Craigslist with rent, square footage, pictures  deposit required. We don't allow pets, so we emphasize that too.

2) Clean house.  Identify anything that needs fixing and schedule repairs. 

3) Show to people for about 1 week.  We've averaged about 6 parties looking at it.  We try to pick some week night or weekend to show to as many as we can so we can save some trips.  Ask people about when they would plan to move in. (UPDATE: on our 4th time renting, the house became vacant in early December. There was virtually no interest from anyone to see it until January, then it still took us another month to get an interested party)

4) After showing to several parties, pick the one party that seems the best of those that still want to move in.  We sometimes have 2 or more parties who want to move in after they look at it, sometimes just one.

5) Ask the people you chose to fill out applications, one per adult.  Email them application and document about credit rights. Tell any people that you didn't choose that you're going forward with someone else but will call them back if the first choice doesn't work out (which has happened twice).  NOTE: applicants should not send their SSN by email, for security reasons.  If they are scanning and emailing the application, then have them tell you SSN over the phone instead of writing on application.

6) For each adult applicant, do: credit check, employment verification with employer, residence verification and referral with current and past landlord.  All of that should be on application.  For credit check, must have SSN, DOB, and signature giving approval so those also need to be on application.  We also do background checks because my wife is a private investigator, but those can be expensive otherwise.  If you do that, then you should  get permission for that too.  We charge $20 per application to pay for credit checks, but only if we pick them to move in.

7) If you want to accept them after that, then let them know right away.  Get deposit and have them sign lease soon if move-in date isn't for a while.  Otherwise, get deposit, application fees, and pro-rated rent and sign lease at walk through time right before move in.  Set time to meet for walk through and transferring keys.

8)  Create lease agreement and send to tenant for review, along with EPA Lead pamphlet (only for old houses).

9) Send tenant phone numbers to change utilities into their name and explaining trash procedure.

10) Make sure you have enough keys for them.  Bring keys, garage door openers, camera, lease, and walk through check list to final walk through.

11) At walk through, review condition and any special instructions for each room.  Take broad pictures to document general condition of each room.  Takes 20-30 minutes.  Go through lease together explaining every item, 20-30 minutes.

12) Sign lease, get check for deposit, pro-rated rent, and application fees. Give keys.

There are lots of templates for applications and lease agreements, so find the ones that you like best.  In my opinion on the lease agreement, the more detailed the better to minimize misunderstandings or disagreements on responsibilities.

UPDATE: Regarding signing lease on move-in, we had a case recently where we had 3 people who said they wanted to move in, then we ran the applications for them, then they changed their minds.  So we spent $50 on application fees for nothing and had the property unlisted a few days.  That made us think we should get a signed lease and deposit earlier.  Or rather than signing the lease up front, maybe get the deposit and have a separate paper that says deposit will be forfeited if applicants back out.

Eddy-Ballentine Trail

My wife and I went hiking recently on the Eddy-Ballentine trail in Kansas City, MO.  I used my  MapMyFitness phone application to track our route via GPS, and that map is below.  We loved the terrain and wildlife.  There are lots of rock features, some hills, and some creek beds.  And we saw a deer and a turtle during our hike.

The wild life that we didn't appreciate were all the ticks.  Luckily my wife thought ahead of time that we should take precautions so we wore long pants and sleeves and hats.  When we finished hiking we checked each other for ticks and we literally had about 10 each!  Most of those we found on the outside of our clothing, but we both did also find a couple inside our clothing.  This was mid-Spring, which I think is a prime season for them.  But regardless, cover your skin when you hike there.

The other issue that we had was following the trail.  It is marked in many places, but the markers are just pretty small orange dots or arrows.  No real signs after the trail head.  You can see by the map that there are some loops. At one point we were on the northern loop and realized that we recognized the terrain and had missed the cutoff to get off the loop.  Then we back tracked and found the cutoff, but then we missed the next part too.  We had to check the MapMyFitness map on the phone to see where we had gone wrong.  If we hadn't have had that, we may have ended up at the golf course to the east, or somewhere else, I'm not really sure.

But again, it was a really nice trail, so if you're careful about the ticks and are careful (or familiar enough with the trail) to not get lost, then its a great hike right in Kansas City.



View Eddy-Ballentine Trail in a larger map

Trader Joe's High Brow Chocolate Chip Cookies serving size discrepency

I decided to send this email to Trader Joe's recently regarding one of their products.

"Admittedly, this is a fairly minor issue...but my wife and I noticed what seems like an inconsistency on the box for the Highbrow Chocolate Chip Cookies.  On the front panel, there is an arrow pointing to four cookies with a note that says "serving suggestion".  But on the side panel in the Nutrition Facts it says 'Serving Size 2 cookies'.  We're wondering if one of those is a mistake, or if the suggestion on the front is that a person eat two servings of cookies.  The latter doesn't seem to make sense, and actually seems a little misleading as a person could easily think that 4 cookies was the serving size and see the Calories per serving of 140 calories, and accidentally eat twice the calories that they expect.  So we hope that you will change one or the other to make them consistent.  Thank you."

Pictures of cookie box are below.  Here was their response:

"Hi Eric,

Thank you for contacting us and sharing your feedback! All of our Trader Joe's products will have the statement 'serving suggestion' next to the picture on the packaging. This is because the pictures are only a suggestion on how to serve, therefore it does not represent the number of cookies inside the package.

The serving sizes on our products are always considered according to their nutritionals. Our customers make the decision as to how much they consume.

Thank you,

Trader Joe's
Customer Relations"

thebli - ball made from inner tube strips

I have a Tibetan monk friend, Palden, who lives in India.  We write letters to each other and he was telling me about how he and the other monks at his university make a rubber ball out of strips of bicycle inner tube tied together with string.  Then they play a game where he said that they try to bounce it in the air with their feet and get it past the opponent's goal or line.

I couldn't imagine what the ball looked like, but the game description reminded me of what we call a "hackey sack", or foot bag, in the United States.  I'm used to just seeing people pass it to each other in a circle, not competing as teams. But it also reminded me of a game I'd seen played before in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where players were kicking a hackey sack over a net.  I never knew what it was called until I looked on YouTube.  Looks like what I saw was called footbag net (I think this video is even in Golden Gate Park).  But it looks like a more worldwide version is Sepak Takraw. Amazing how good these players are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9W5ZBZW8C8&feature=related

Still, those were different balls.  So I asked my friend to send me a picture of the ball that they made.  Instead, he actually sent me one of the balls!  He called it a thebli, and he also spelled it thebbli.  Here is a picture of it:

I searched online for those spellings, and I tried tebli and tebbli, but didn't find anything.  (If you want to make one though, I did find this instructables post to make something very similar).  It may be a made-up spelling of a Tibetan word.  He said they also just call it a Tubeball.

Parallel Kingdom

My latest game addiction is a fantasy MMORPG game that you can play on your phone, iPhone or Android, called Parallel Kingdom.  But its not just any fantasy MMORPG game.  Its a location-based game.  What that means is instead of the game taking place in a constructed fantasy world, like Middle Earth, the game takes place on a real world map via Google Maps.  So instead of killing wolves in Middle Earth, you're killing them around the block from your house, in Kansas City, for example. And you can plant flags to claim territory.  My whole neighborhood was already claimed by Rokbot and Coco444, but I sent Coco a message and she was nice enough to give me several of her flags so that now I own several blocks around my real-life house.

You can initially teleport 3 places in-game:

1) your current out-of-game physical location

2) the town center of your nearest town

3) random places of unclaimed territory

So I was initially teleported with my pet dog to an unclaimed area of central Missouri and I now claim vast amounts of territory near Waverly, MO (real world population 800).

So the real world map and territory claiming features make it fun, and its fun to be able to play on the phone when you're somewhere and need to kill time by killing giant spiders.  Graphics are very basic 2d, but that doesn't make a difference to me when the game is fun enough.  

If you want to play, then the sign up process allows you specify a referral code to get extra gold.  I know that all referral codes give the same amount, 1000 gold.  So please sign up with my referral code with this referral code, then I get extra food.  My Parallel Kingdom referral code is: zldjcy

ceramic monkeys dressed in human clothes

i used to have a fairly large collection antique tapestries. i started that collection back in 1988, finding a rug every few years of that particular style. but they were a bit bulky, and once ebay came around, they were too easy to come by, so i lost interest. i've now sold most of those.

now i've started a new collection. the collection is of ceramic monkeys that are dressed like humans and doing some kind of human behavior. i hope that this collection is specific enough that the pieces will be harder to come by. i like it that way for two reasons. one, i really don't want to acquire too many so that i don't have to have too much space to display them and/or store them, like i needed with the rugs. and second, just makes it more fun to have a very specific and unique collection.

so far i have all of two items in my collection.

1) this one i got at an antique store in san francisco. its a monkey smoking pipe with a serious face. the person at the store said that it was meant to poke fun at the idea of evolution.

2) this one i got at an antique store in kansas city. i think its even funnier because its so ridiculous. it is a monkey dressed like mozart (i'd say its mozart) riding on the back of another monkey and playing a miniature piano. i call it monkey mozart.

barefoot walking

i read an article in backpacker magazine about hiking barefoot. it claimed that walking barefoot had many benefits for the foot and lower leg. basically, the idea is that if you're foot isn't supported then it needs to work harder to give you balance, which builds up your foot muscles. it made sense to me, and i like the naturalist aspect of it. so although i don't plan to ever backpack barefoot, i decided to try some barefoot walks around the neighborhood.

for my first outing i walked in shoes and socks to a nearby dirt and gravel trail. i walked barefoot maybe .25 miles on the trail around noon time. it was a little hard on the feet, but i honestly couldn't tell if it was heat from the gravel or the sharpness of the rocks that was causing me discomfort. when i got home, part of the ball of my foot was sensitive, maybe blistered. i rested it on an ice pack for a while. i think it was blistered from heat, but still not sure.

so next time i only went maybe 1/8 mile on the trail barefoot. that was fine. next time i tried walking on grass instead. it was on a big greenbelt between two directions of a large parkway road. the black asphalt was very hot at each cross street that divided the greenbelt, so i had to keep putting on my shoes, crossing the street, then taking them back off to walk. so the 4th time i went out to try it, i finally realized i should wear sandals so that i can easily take them on and off if i need to switch back and forth. i found that i could even tuck my sandals in the waist band of my shorts so that i didn't have to carry them. that day wasn't as hot though, so it turned out i could walk across the greenbelt cross streets that day anyway.

so today i went for my longest barefoot walk yet. i went for 2 miles total, barefoot for probably 1.75 of it. that meant i stayed barefoot on a lot of sidewalks and street crossings. not as fun as to walk on the cement and asphalt as the grass, so lots of times i would step off the sidewalk and just walk in the grass of people's yards. again, the ball of my foot feels a little sensitive afterwards, but hopefully that skin will toughen up over time. i've still managed so far to avoid any glass, prickly plants, and dog poop. knock on wood!