I’d see. Being a distant landlord sucks and it means you’re paying a plumber when a toilet flapper needs to be replaced, rather than spending $7 on one and fixing it yourself.
Between that and the likely future assessments, I’d sell while you still have equity.
Profit maximizing thing to do is see what rent net of costs (property management, expected assessments, mortgage interest, taxes) yields against your $50k equity less commish. If it’s below 5% or if you need the $50k, sell it.
Otherwise, might I direct you to the landlord thread, where posters will be happy assess whether you should be spared or sentenced to the gallows.
Gallows.
So, I’m willing to be convinced about poison, but I’m using it right now because my understanding is that most baits nowadays have low enough concentrations that secondary poisoning isn’t a huge concern. If this is incorrect, somebody please link and I’ll reconsider. I did read the audubon article that crash_face posted, and I’m using a first-generation poison.
In my situation, the mice are mostly hanging out above my ceilings in the insulation. I actually haven’t seen any signs of them in the main living area so far, which is incredibly lucky. I’ve put a bunch of snap traps in the attic and garage where I’ve seen droppings, and they’ve killed exactly 0 mice. I’ve also put bait in those areas and around the property and I’ve killed like 10 of them that way. I have no idea why. My only guess is they’re pretty well fed already (there are a shit ton of acorns here), so they don’t take the risk with the traps, but they like the safety of the dark bait boxes so they still go inside them.
(I’ve had like 4 of them die in the ceilings, and yeah, it smells pretty bad for a few days, but I’d rather they be dead in there than alive.)
My house also backs to a school with a heavy brush area, so I’m almost positive they’re coming from there. Baiting seems like the best way for me to keep the population under control since I can’t clear the brush myself since it’s not my property.
Anyway, I agree that traps should be the first line of defense for most people, but they just aren’t working for me. And this shit is seriously driving me crazy. It’s definitely my #1 stressor right now. Open to any suggestions/alternatives!
Are you able to place the traps under the insulation in the attic? I had an older house, and mice in the ceilings. I went up and lifted up some corners of insulation and left traps there. That worked much better than leaving it on the joists or plywood above the insulation.
For me, my success level has always been poison traps>>>glue traps>regular traps, and glue traps seem super gross and inhumane, so I gave up quickly on those. So poison it is. Agreed that if mice die in the wall they don’t smell much or at all due to being tiny, so I deal with it.
Seems worth a try! Thanks for the suggestion.
Yeah, glue traps are beyond what I’m willing to do.
Trap placement is key. Mice prefer to scurry along walls and in close areas so put them there (the under the insulation suggestion is good). You can create a sort of funnel with boxes/plywood so they can’t run around the trap.
Also, I’ve read that mice can smell human scent, so I always wear gloves when touching the traps and bait.
I cam home to what felt like an obscene amount of mouse droppings on my kitchen counter a couple years ago. Found droppings in like 5 different spots. First time ever seeing evidence of mice in 20 years. I put out a bunch of these types of traps on the counter. Caught one mouse the first day in the white version then nothing more, and never saw any more droppings, so I think it was just a rogue dude that got in from outside and went wild shitting all over the place.
We’re having a new roof put on today, it’s not a huge or difficult roof, 2k two story house with a 2 car garage attached, but I had them replace all the plywood as it was noticeably spongy when I was up there. They’ll still get it all done in one day. A lot faster than when I did a couple roofs in my early 20s.
My wife really wanted bog standard grey shingles. I wanted something with a little color, now it’s grey house with grey shingles, boring. Couldn’t get her to budge. Maybe we can compromise and I can paint the house something different.
I thought you guys had 7 or 8 assault rifles per capita - should sort any mouse issue
I’ve been wondering how much you save in energy bills with white metal roofs.
I did a little research on this, but I’m not an expert. Black shingles get to 150 degrees, white shingles get to 115. I didn’t look at metal as that was a non starter for my wife - I understand, they don’t look as nice.
From what I read, the attic would be a little warmer with black shingles, and that would affect the rest of the house, but it’s not a huge difference if the insulation is good. We actually don’t have AC (live in New Hampshire), but it might make the house a little cooler during the summer.
We at least did go with a lighter grey shingle, not black or the darkest grey. I think this roof will help with the summer as the prior roof didn’t have the right gap for venting. The garage didn’t have any venting at all.
Now that we replaced the roof I’m going to look at solar - the roof faces south, but the second story is a gambrel. It may only make sense over the garage.
Looks are all subjective, but standing seam metal roofs are a higher end and considered more trendy than shingles.
For heat, the venting probably matters more than the shingles. We built out our attic (which blocked the vents) so we had to get these solar powered vent fans installed in the roof to vent the unfinished roof space. Not having it vented and letting the attic get up to 150 degrees or whatever is bad for the longevity of the roof.
This is the same message we got from multiple roofers, having just gotten our roof replaced (with a lot better venting now, too).
I love the metal roof look and would defintely consider it, not sure how they do in a place like MN but I have to imagine they’re great for preventing snow buildup and ice dams.
Our asphalt shingle roof is fine but the insulation is awful and since we have vaulted ceilings there is no attic and no access to replace the insulation without pulling the roof and decking off. It sucks, if we stay here were going to have to just go for it eventually.
Like a lot of people, I feel locked into my house right now because I’m sitting on a 2.625% fixed rate mortgage. I can’t stomach the idea of giving up that rate, even if I desperately wanted to move. Matt Levine recently talked about this, and how great it would be if people like me could monetize my mortgage, since I effectively have a large unrealized gain due to the big jump in rates.
He has an interesting update today:
Apparently a lot of the readers of this column are Danish? Or I suppose my readers are just very up on international mortgage market structure. Anyway I wrote yesterday about the fact that US homeowners have something like $1 trillion of mark-to-market gains on their mortgages, but that you can’t do anything about it. “Really,” I wrote, “the tempting product is:”
You have a $500,000 mortgage that is now worth $287,000.
You go to your bank and say “I’ll give you $300,000 for it.”
The bank is like “fine okay that works.”But, I said, you can’t do that: For one thing, your bank probably sold your mortgage; for another thing, this trade would crystallize a big loss for the mortgage owner that it might not yet have booked; for a third thing, US 30-year mortgages don’t really last 30 years, so no bank would be willing to accept the discounted value of the mortgage cash flows over 30 years.
Quite a lot of readers pointed out that, in Denmark, you really can do this. Here’s a New York Fed report, and here is a Carsted Rosenberg client briefing:
Borrowers may redeem their mortgage loans at any time without negotiating the price, as prepayment may always take place at the prevailing market prices. Danish mortgage borrowers may terminate their loans by buying back the mortgage bonds in the bond market and delivering them to the mortgage bank. This option is referred to as the delivery option or the buy-back option. The buy-back option applies to all mortgage bonds whether callable or non-callable.
The buy-back option is a special feature of the Danish mortgage finance system, and borrowers therefore always know the ISIN code(s) of the bonds behind their mortgage loans. The buy-back option constitutes a significant difference between the US and the Danish mortgage finance system. The US system only allows mortgage loan prepayment at par (100).
Well that’s nice. Obviously if you translated this to the US system, and you had a 3% mortgage and rates are now 8%, you’d be buying back your mortgage at some market price that is lower than par but higher than the value of your mortgage cash flows over 30 years discounted at 8%, because the US mortgage market assumes that 30-year mortgages have an average life that is much shorter than that. Still! You’d get a big discount.
Several other readers emailed me to say some variation on “I tried this on my bank but it did not work.” Move to Denmark I guess.
I just ballparked what I would earn, and it’s a lot! If I assume a market rate of 7%, my ~$360k mortgage at my current rate is only worth about $226k. I would love to pocket that $134k gain, but unfortunately do not live in Denmark.
so SVB essentially went bankrupt because they had a bunch of losses on long dated bonds that they had to realize because all their customers wanted to take their cash out, what’s stopping the same thing from happening to the Danish banks?
Without knowing anything on the subject I’d assume much better risk management.
