Hi All,
Thanks for reading and I'm very grateful for the MMM website-- so many helpful and wise members on here. I am looking for insight and opinions on some problems I have with owning a two family unit.
I feel like this will be a long post but I will try to keep it short.
I bought a duplex a couple of years ago. I rent the bottom floor to friends of the family and second to family members (my parents and my siblings). I do not make money from these units which in the short term is fine-- I pay 350 out of pocket each month + about another 130 for water/sewer. I plan to pay it off in the next five years and start recouping money at that point-- at least $1,450 a month (current rent I collect).
There are a couple of issues in the past months that have been slowly driving me nuts. The first is that friend of the family has two teenagers that have become really disrespectful -- having their friends park in the parking lot when they are not supposed to (blocking my family's cars), punching a hole in a door, and a variety of small annoying things. Their mom has also started staying over her bf's house more often and the teenagers are left alone a lot of times. I feel bad for them but at the same time I worry that they will do something stupid in the house (mainly, get drunk and mess up the house). The teenagers' behaviors have created a lot of tension for my family.
The other issue is that I have squirrels in my house. I have not had any luck getting rid of them-- calls to pest control have not been returned. I have to admit that I am not persistent on this issue and should call until I get a real person on the phone but I am very business at work and have to sneak and find time to do this during the day. This is an issue I will keep working on but in the meantime, I have been getting calls from the family friend about the issue and it is driving me up the wall.
At this point, I have to ask myself whether I should just give up landlording. I just want to kick them out and move into the apartment myself. Except my living expense will probably go up by about $600 dollars a month and my commute to work will increase by two hours. Is it worth it?
Additionally (because I'm crazy, clearly), I was looking to buy another property (either a single home for my family to move in so that I can rent out the second floor of the current house or another two family). However, after all this stress, should I just buy a single home for my family and sell the current house?
The current house is now worth 270K, about 70k more than when I bought it. The remaining mortgage is 157k at 3.875% and if everything goes as planned (i.e. I don't get fired, I always have renters on the first floor), I plan to pay it off in another 5 years. The single home I was looking at could probably be had for 220k. It is very tempting but I guess I am wondering if I need to not give up so soon and try harder at landlording? And if I don't give up, should I buy a single home for the family and rent out the current duplex? Or buy another multi-unit?
Lastly, I don't know how helpful this piece is but let me explain why I went into this in the first place. The most important is that I needed to provide for my parents, the second is that I was trying to build equity and have streams of income from these investments by the time I'm 40. I live well below my means and the grand plan was to buy a house every 5 years and pay one off every ten years so that those houses will produce my current monthly income by the time I'm 45 at which point I would like to go into early retirement and spend the day reading and baking. If I continue on with landlording (renting out the current as is, buying another rental), I think I will be able to get very close to my goals. This is why I don't want to give up now. But I really don't know if I have the guts to keep on dealing with these issues.
I apologize if this post is all over the map. So many issues keeping me up at night! Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.