The Rental Plan

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The House in Question

Well, we met with our real estate agent and the news wasn’t very good. She thought we could sell it for about $10,000 to 20,000 less than we paid for it. If we finished the basement she thought we could sell it for about what we bought it for. We estimate it needs about $5,000 to finish the basement. (The basement already has a finished bathroom and bedroom and is fully framed and wired.)

So…I think we are going to rent it out again for at least a year in which time we can slowly finish the basement and keep contributing equity to the outstanding mortgage. By this time next year we will have another $6,000 paid toward the house that doesn’t come from our pockets (hopefully that means equity). So even if we spend the $5000 to finish it we’ll come out ahead and we’d be able to either charge more in rent or sell it for more.

It’s not ideal, but for the timing of this (being right before we buy the place in Puerto Rico), I think it will have to be. We don’t want to have to shell out such a large sum in PR and have an empty rental that we are paying for and waiting to sell for a low amount on top of paying back the short term personal loans we got to buy the Rincon property.

We are ok with this. If our current tenant had wanted to stay we wouldn’t even be having this conversation and we’d let sleeping dogs lie. We thought if it played out right that this would be a good time to walk away and sell, but it just isn’t quite yet. So, that’s the plan, for now anyway. We hope to start showing it to prospective tenants this upcoming week and get them signed on the same week our current tenant moves out.

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Week Old Chicks

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The chicks are about a week and a half old now. They grow super fast. They are already trying to fly out of the box. They’ve grown feathers on their wings and tails and the rest is filling in too. It’s fun to watch them grow and change.They are a little hardier too, so I am not as worried about them. As they grow feathers they are not as vulnerable to chills.

One day when it was really warm in the room when they were just a couple days old, I turned off the heat lamp for a little while. When I returned they were all huddled together, and one was in the water dish shivering. I had to hold her and fluff her up under the heat lamp to get her back feeling good. I was scared there for a moment! But everything’s good now and I am not quite as concerned. Each day they are a little stronger and more independent. Right now, they are peeping contentedly behind me.

Just thought you might like a “little” chick update.


Hanging out in their box under the heat lamp


Britton holding them

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Hospice Act of Grace at the Candlelight Playhouse

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Yesterday we went to a fundraiser for Hospice called An Act of Grace. It was a showing of The King and I at the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown just off of I-25.


At Candlelight Dinner Playhouse

I love going to dinner theatre and this was for a great cause so it was win-win all the way. My mom, grandma and aunt all came out with us as well. It was a nice event and they also had a silent and live auction. The meal was good and the acting, singing and dancing were fun. Our favorite part was the play within the play about “The Small House of Uncle Thomas”.  The actors who played the King of Siam and Anna were great.


At the table

My mom really liked a huge watercolor painting that was for sale of some  parrots in tropical foliage. She was the winning bid in the silent auction at $400 of this painting that was valued at $3000!


With some of the young cast members and the painting

Hospice helped out a lot when my dad was in his last few months of life. So it was nice to get out and show some support and have a nice meal, watch a live play performance and have a fun night out with my family.

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To Rent or To Sell…

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…That is the question.

We have a rental that we were anticipating would become vacant soon as we mentioned before. Well, we did receive notice that he will indeed vacate by the end of April. This leads us to a few choices. The most obvious being, should we rent it out again or sell it?

There are pros and cons either way. This house was our first rental property and we bought it with a mortgage. Currently, the mortgage slightly exceeds the amount we get in rent…what they call an alligator. All of our other rentals are cash flowing.

We do have a fair amount of equity built in it, that would be useful in our new endeavors in Puerto Rico. Renting it out would be easier and we could continue to sock away equity with each rental payment…but are we up for that again? We are kind of in the mind set that we would like to tie up the loose ends here in Colorado slowly so that we can transition to Puerto Rico. But in order to make a big decision it’s good to make a pros and cons list.

Pros of Selling
We would get rid of the alligator in our bunch of rentals
We would net some money from selling which would help replenish us after spending a bunch in PR
We would have one less thing to worry about in Colorado once we do move
We will be selling in spring/summer which is a better time to sell/more buyers

Cons of Selling
Still a down “buyers” market
We’d be lucky to get what we paid for it
We will have to pay a pretty high mortgage (relative) without income until it sells
After commissions are paid out we will have put more money in than we get out (even though we’ll walk away with money in our pockets -still capital losses)
We’ve never sold a house before so it’s uncomfortable
May need to finish the basement to help it sell (which means more $$ and time that we don’t have)


It would be nice to stop feeding the alligator

Pros of Renting
It’s pretty easy; we know what we’re doing
The rental market is pretty strong
Have had some initial interest already
We could increase the rent slightly to make it cover the mortgage and stop feeding the alligator
We can improve the language of the lease
We would be able to pay down the mortgage more so that when we do sell, we’ll walk away with more
People like to move in the spring/summer time -more interest =better rent
Could wait a little while longer for the housing market recovery

Cons of Renting
Another thing to take care of/worry about
Will need to save longer to be able to move to PR with a large enough savings
Lots of unknowns about new renters
Not much wiggle room for errors or expenses (so close to the mortgage cost)

We initially bought this house with the intention of paying it off completely. That’s why we got a 15 year mortgage and why the payments are so high comparatively. When the housing market tanked we were able to afford those other houses more easily and so it made sense to put our money into those instead of this one. I think that was a smart move, but it still leaves us with this house that is not paid for. I personally think it would be a burden off our shoulders and we could start building cabanas that could be rented out in Puerto Rico instead. A sort of slow shifting of resources from here to there. On the other hand, we could get it rented out pretty quick. Set it and forget it.

I’m not sure. If you were in our shoes, what decision do you think you’d make? We are going to meet with a Realtor this weekend to see what she thinks we might be able to ask price wise. That will also help us to determine our decision…

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