I have sold my properties in Winnipeg but the closing date is the end of this month and in the meantime I am still getting bills. This is a great one, I got a nice bill for broken windows. All I can say is Thank God that money pit is sold. You would think you could make good cash with a 4plex you bought for $108,000 that rents for $2200 right? No………….. If you buy real estate in the wrong place all your profits go into fixing problems, such as broken windows, drywall damage. So your positive cash flow can turn into negative cash flow really damn fast. Learn from my mistake, sometimes cash flow numbers are deceiving. I recommend buying in local markets unless you have a TRUSTED source that can give you honest information about the area you are buying into. If these sources lie or skew the information, then you are into problems when you own any property out of town.

Property managers are a another problem. They are there to take care of your investment. Usually they get 10% of gross rental income. Here is the problem, they usually do repairs when your building needs fixing. This is another way they make money off of you. So, it is in their best interest to have repairs to do on your investment property, they make more money this way. So I don’t really trust property manager 100% for that reason. And……… You have to go on their word, if they are lying about damages how do you know? For all I know they could have gotten friends to break windows or damage drywall. Then they need to fix the drywall and windows using their own people to fix these repairs, and they can get cash kickbacks for choosing certain contractors to fix your property. You will never know, so trusting your property manager is important. Obviously not all property managers are the same, but you can see where the problems can happen. Your investment income can go down the hole if you run into greedy property managers very quickly. You can always switch managers, but you need to find out who the good property managers are and that seems pretty tough if you don’t live in that particular city.

Oh well after this month no more broken windows bills. I have spent almost $5,000 on broken windows in a 1 year time span, is that insane or what? I am just grateful both properties have been sold, very, very grateful. Now I can focus on building my real estate portfolio once again, but here in Vancouver for now.