Rental Property Series: Finding Hidden Treasures

We are getting very close to being finished with our rental property, at least for the time being. This week we found some hidden treasure. If you are new, you might want to start by reading the previous posts in this series.

Rental Property Series: Buying Our First Rental Property

Rental Property Series: Renovating Our Rental Property

Rental Property Series: Overcoming Setbacks

If you don’t feel like reading my amazing real estate posts, as a brief recap:

• We purchased this property on August 24, 2012 for $63,000, with 25% down.
• We plan on spending $3000-$5000 on renovations.
• We hope to be done and have a renter by October 1.
• We are using a property management company and are asking $750/mo for rent.

This property has a pretty large fenced yard. There are two sheds in the yard that have been locked. We didn’t have the keys to open them when we originally viewed the property, but the realtor said they had been full of afgans (the knitted ones, not people from Afganistan). Apparently, theprevious owner enjoyed knitting in addition to her other hobbies like cooking bacon, smoking, and collecting dryer lint. The sheds were supposed to have been cleaned out, so we didn’t put too much thought into it.

Since we were having a yard sale last weekend, my husband and I thought it would be a good idea to take a peak into the sheds. If there was some yard left, sewing goods tend to move well at yard sales, and we needed to make sure there would be no surprises for the tenant. We had a ring of keys from the closing that was bound to open something, so we went over the night before the yard sale to take a look.

With all the setbacks from last week, imagine our surprise and delight when we opened the first shed to find it stocked full of tools and garden equipment. There was a relatively new push mower, two weed eaters, an electric hedge trimmer, three shovels, two rakes, four garden hoses, many lawn sprinklers, a barbeque grill, a Hibachi grill,  a power jigsaw, a wheelbarrow, about 20 flower pots, tons of hand tools, a garden bench, a rock fountain, and my two personal favorites: a handicapped portable toilet and a bowling ball, complete with shoes and a hard case! I felt like those people on the Storage Wars show. We sold about half of it at the yard sale (including the potty) and will keep the rest for our own use. We plan on having several rental properties eventually. Although we are using a property manager on this one, we hope to manage them on our own someday. Having an almost new push mower and all those tools is a great score.

The second shed had been set up as a workshop with vinyl flooring, a workbench, and shelving. It is in much nicer condition than the house! This gives us another positve when marketing to potential renters. I can’t believe we waited so long to open the sheds, but we honestly thought all we’d find was yarn, spiders and maybe a mouse.

I wondered at first if we got to keep all this stuff, but our offer on the property included all contents. We were mainly concerned about the appliances. The seller only wanted a freezer that was in the bedroom (why didn’t I think of that, ice cream in bed!). Everything else is all ours.

The past couple of weeks have been a bit discouraging as far as being over budget and not getting things done as fast as we’d like. It was really great to find some hidden treasure this week. We should be done with all the renovations by the end of the week, and are still hoping for a renter by the first. Neil at First Rental Property tells us not to rush in real estate, but, dang,  it’s hard to be patient!

Have you ever found hidden treasure? Would you buy a used potty chair at a yard sale?

Written By

Sydney White

Sydney White is a Texas-born stay at home mom who enjoys spending time with her family, bargain hunting and, hiking.