Aug 10
5
The Tree that Just Shouldn’t Be!
by Julie Broad
Are you doing regular tours of your rental properties? And by regular I mean at least once a year if you have a property manager in place and once every 2 or 3 months if you don’t have a property manager?
If you’re not doing regular walk throughs you might be in for some pretty big surprises when tenants move out or when something blows up and stops working.
Expect the Unexpected with Real Estate
And even if you are doing regular walk throughs of your properties you really never know what you might find. For example, you just never know when a tree might decide to spring up from underneath your house and grow between the walls and pop out a window in search of sunlight.
I know … the picture doesn’t make this house look very pretty but it’s actually a pretty great home we have in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It’s old and still has it’s old windows which is why this makes it look a little rough but it’s a really great positive cash flowing triplex in an awesome area.
We lived in it for a few years, and friends of ours lived in it for nearly five years. It’s a really great place to live but we’ve definitely had some challenges with it.
One of the things we dealt with a few years ago was the destruction of our old clay pipes thanks to a bunch of tree roots that had taken over. We had to excavate the entire front yard and dig up inside the basement of the home to replace the pipes.
We had to put our tenants up in hotel rooms while we did the work!
Here’s what that looked like:
That was about five years ago. We actually got a lot of the expenses back a year or so later because it was a City tree that caused the problem in the first place but it was a really big pain in the butt!
And apparently that tree did not die. It kept on growing all the way to the other side of the house in search of light, water and a new place to grow. And it’s sprung out the back side of the house!
We’ve had leaking problems in that back room where the tree has appeared, but it’s also beside the laundry room where the washer has had some issues as well. Whenever there was a leak it seemed that someone could attribute it back to the washing machine but as we took a close look at what was going on during this visit we could see clearly that the entire wall needs to come out and be replaced!
How we ever ended up with a tree growing out of our house is a mystery.
And we’re pretty sure we’re going to pay quite a nice chunk of money to get it dug up and the wall fixed but the good news is that the new tenants don’t move in until August 15th so we have a couple of weeks to resolve the issue before they move in.
This is why we have a contingency fund set aside for each and every one of our properties. Usually we try to have at least 3 months worth of mortgage payments in a bank account to cover short falls and surprises like this one so that it doesn’t have to come out of pocket. Unfortunately, with this property, we just purchased a brand new high efficiency furnace so the short fall is coming out of our pocket, but at least it’s a tax write off! Yes – I am working hard to see the bright side. 
It’s the tree that just shouldn’t be … but looking at that window I guess it’s over due to be replaced anyway.
