Can you throw a girl a bone?

So Davy and I started investing in rental properties about a year ago. You always hear of people that make a lot of money by investing in properties, so since we are still young we thought now would be a great time to start. My sister and her roommates were looking for a house to live in off campus so we felt like we couldn't go wrong. Guaranteed rent paid for by my father. We bought her house at the end of July 2006. We have had relatively few problems with the house and feel very lucky that we got the house for so cheap.


So in January we got the itch to buy more properties... We sold our house and we are now currently living in half of a duplex (we loving call it the "Dew") we own in Chattanooga. Then we decided that wasn't enough and bought two more duplexes on April 1st. We have been feeling quite lucky until this weekend. I think everyone is out to take as much money as possible from us.

Friday afternoon Davy calls me to let me know that the other unit in the dew is having air conditioning problems and that is blowing out hot air. I then called about 15 HVAC companies to see if anyone could fix it that evening. I finally find a company that is willing to come out for $59.99 to diagnosis the problem. The repairman comes and within 4 mins he tells Davy that it is a broken condenser fan motor and that he would get the part in the morning and fix the air as soon as possible. Saturday morning the repairman calls to say that he won't be able to find the part today an there is no way to get it fixed. Well that wasn't good enough for me. My bleeding heart felt bad for my tenant and I really wanted it fixed that day. So I decided to call a large supply group in Cleveland that carries a large selection of HVAC parts. Sure enough they have the part we need to fix the problem. So we call the guy back from the night before and he says "Well I quoted $350 to fix the condenser and that's if I buy the part or if you buy the part." Davy responds "So you are saying if I go buy the part you can't charge me an hourly rate to install it?" He replies "No sir, it will still be $350 so you might as well wait for me to get the part." At this point I am pissed. What a little bastard. I thought the service industry was built on client relationships and referrals. If the guy at Universal Heat and Air didn't want to work on a Saturday he should have said that the first time he came out, instead of saying that he just couldn't find the part.

So I decide to call one last guy that we used to use in Cleveland and see if there is anyway that he would drive to Chattanooga and fix the condenser fan motor. I call Matt Decker tell him the situation and he says "Of course I can get the part and fix it today." So five hundred and some odd dollars later, my tenant next door has air again. When Matt came out and looked at the unit there are other things that were also wrong that he had to fix hence the reason it cost so much. He also informed us not to get too attached to the units we currently have, because they are going to go at anytime. He nonchalantly told us that it would be $4400 for each unit. Wow I love being a landlord.