Sell out

!'ve decided to sell the place after June 7,'7. That will be 5 years. That way ! won't have to pay tax on any of the capital gains to Colorado. Any capital gains now are long term so the most ! would have to pay would be 15% to the bastards @ irs. Except for the capital gains due to depreciation taken. That is capped @ 25%. W/ the new boiler and all the vacancies last year my loss came out to be more than the $25,000 maximum allowed so ! had to eliminate most (almost 75%) of the depreciation that ! would have taken. If my tax rate in '7 is 25% or higher that will save me $1,700 in tax. ! just hope the housing market stays strong for 3 more years. Maybe the rental market will firm up some this year so ! can actually almost break even. ! hope to sell for $1.2 million or more to make it worth all the trouble and expense. The tenants who call whenever something goes wrong and expect me to hustle over there to fix it. Then they leave whenever they want to save $10/month rent. That's 1 or more months of no rent, advertising and cleaning and maintenance, zipping up there 30 time/month to show to people who aren't really interested. That doesn't even include the weekends ! can't even consider leaving town or the work ! have to miss to show or the 2nd jobs to pay for the shortages every month or the lost earnings on the money ! took out of mutual funds that are now returning 30% w/out me and the risk that the market could tank leaving me owing a big chunk of money after years of paying to work my ass off. !'m thinking of doing a condo conversion. That may be the best way to maximize the selling price.

New Roof and gutters (finally)

Last September the tenants that bailed on me called to announce their ceiling was collapsing. Denver had been in a drought for a year when ! bought the place and that continued until mid-2004. We had just had a couple days of torrential downpours and there was a leak in one of the troughs in the roof. Water dripped through and settled on top of the ceiling until it finally caved in that corner. ! had to roofers come out to do an estimate and patch the hole. There were 3 layers already so they all had to be stripped off. Another 2 days of labor to pay for and a big mess to clean up later. That's the way my luck goes. Everything ! do has to be as difficult and expensive as possible. 4 months later they finally show up to do the work. They told me Wednesday they should be done Saturday. They finished Friday. The Friday after that Saturday. $9,060. That includes new gutters and downspouts. It looks good. The shingles should be good for 20 years.