Landlords - Pay Up!

That was just a little tongue-in-cheek title just to get your attention. Landlord Land Mines, the book with advice for all landlords all over is in its finishing stages. John Lockwood of Sacramento-Home fame and I are collaborating to get on various writing projects and this is our very first.

Interested in getting into real estate investing? Or are you already a landlord and want to brush up on the basics? Or perhaps you're a Realtor who works with real estate investors. Well, this might be just the e-book for you! Buy one for yourself, or package it to your clients with your custom imprint.

Here's what John has to say about it:

"As a real estate investor herself, Purva and her husband, James, went through their share of landlord horror stories. Landlord Land Mines is the book Purva wished they’d had when had when they were getting started. Landlord Land Mines is written both from her own experience and from the experience of many other landlords who she interviewed for the book.

"Forget the theory and the spreadsheets — Landlord Land Mines puts together decades of collective experience and stories from real investors, who teach you what you need to know and what you need to avoid."

Why not subscribe to Sacramento Real Estate Gal today so you're the first to know when the book is out?

Ask Sacramento Real Estate Gal Answers!

I received this email the other day and thought it would be interesting to answer it online. I know the recent foreclosures have created this problem for many tenants in the Sacramento area and all I can say is that my heart goes out to them. I have always emphasized that landlords treat their rentals as a business - an ethical business - and this is obviously no way to do so. Read on:

Sacramento Real Estate Gal,
We are renting a house in Fair Oaks. The mortgage went into default in December, but we continued paying rent through February. The landlord has denied any problem every time we ask her. My husband decided to withhold March rent because she definitely won't refund our deposit. She served us with eviction papers March 10th, we received a Notice of Trustees sale on the door March 11th. The sale is scheduled for April 1st. We have been told we have to pay rent, don't pay the rent...what should we do? - S.P.

S.P.,
My recommendation to you would be to start looking for another place right away. Serve the landlord with a 30 day notice and pay the rent. Then you can pursue your deposit in small claims court. California has very strict laws about returning a tenant's deposit. You can read about them here.

To the landlord involved: shame on you. It's landlords like you that give the rest of us a bad name. Unfortunately, you are who the tenants think we all are and so it seems to make it okay for otherwise law-abiding tenants to want to steal from their landlords.

For the rest who are considering becoming landlords, you might want to head over to Landlord Land Mines regularly to make sure you're not blowing your leg off!

Have I Forgotten the Landlords?

Nope. In fact, Im spending the day working on that Landlord e-book I promised to get out this year. I'm still very excited about it.

I might even have some great news about it this week!

Landlord E-book going Swimmingly Well

I've caught the "little project" bug lately - you know - the little project here and the little project there. I guess that's what happens when you're between escrows. Showing lots of homes, but between escrows.

But this week I've decided to get done with at least one project, mainly the advice for landlords e-book. John has been helping me with setting up the website for it, but I was the one who promised to write the book first! So be it. Landlord Landmines will be the name and you can see the blog associated with it here.

We both agreed that since the Sacramento Real Estate Gal Blog is directed more toward Sacramento (although it definitely has a bias towards real estate investing) that Landlord Landmines should be geared toward a larger audience. While we do have quite a few landlords and property investors in Sacramento, this book would make good reading for all landlords everywhere.

I'm making some real progress and should have a first draft of about 75 pages done by the weekend. Look out!

Advice for Landlords Evolving!

Remember this call for submissions for the upcoming e-book for landlords?

Well, the project seems to be getting bigger by the day and so I've decided to dedicate an entire blog to it. Be sure to check out Landlord-Tenant-Advice as well every time you stop by here.

In Real Estate, There's Always More to Learn!

The last two days have been some of the more interesting days of my life. Since I'm playing interviewer for the new e-book with advice for landlords-to-be, I've taken the opportunity to call on some people I've known for a while to share their stories.

It's all very enlightening. Now you should know that I can't share them all with you here because then you won't buy the book (wink, wink!) but one that stuck with me had to do with a mother and daughter-in-law pair that I met yesterday.

I couldn't believe how much fun they were having. They had being a landlord turned into a game which included sleuthing after potentials tenants after they had filled out an application, collecting rent and so on. They enjoyed the process and here I was thinking this was supposed to be boring.

However, they did emphasize one thing - paperwork and logs. No matter how much fun they had, they did record everything they spoke with their tenants about recorded at the end of the day. Read more in the book!

Call for Submissions!

SACRAMENTO REAL ESTATE GAL NEEDS YOUR HELP!

I am currently working on an e-book which will contain axioms for landlords to follow and anecdotes to back them up. If you currently own investment property and have advice, stories (real, not made up), please submit them as comments to be featured in this exciting upcoming e-book!