How much?

It’s been about seven months since I’ve been out of my condo.  That means that I’ve basically thrown away almost $8K on a mortgage for a condo that nobody lives in.  Eight thousand dollars!  How ridiculous is that?!

I do have good excuses for having it sit empty for so long – I got married, I had foot surgery, I was laid up for 6 weeks after the surgery, I’m still limping as a result…  But the fact is that these truly are just excuses and we all know what they say about excuses.

Well the past month or so I’ve really been pushing to get the condo ready to try to rent.  Yes, I’m going to try to take on the role of Landlord.  I’m not too excited about this new adventure, but I also know that with the house market in its current state, I will lose even more money if I try to sell right now, so my only other option – other than let it sit empty – is to rent out this puppy.

Anyhow, about a month or two ago, I put an ad out on craigslist (love you craig!)for someone to come help load up boxes and carry shit out and basically get the condo all boxed up.  $70 later and the condo was boxed up and stuff that was trash was in the dumpster and stuff that was being given to Goodwill was brought there.  The following weekend, we rented a storage unit and moving van and emptied the condo completely for about $100.  The weekend after that, I hired a cleaning lady to come in and deep clean the place for $75.

 Now all that’s left is for it to be painted and for another ad to get placed on craigslist for renting it.  We’ve been putting off the painting and putting it off.  First we were going to paint it then we were going to hire someone.  Then we went back to doing it our-self and now we’re back to hiring someone.

My problem is I need to pay by credit card as I’m tapped out of cash.  I know, not wise, but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

So I made some calls yesterday and had someone come out to give me an estimate to paint an empty, 1 bedroom condo, excluding the bathroom and closets.  The estimate? $1200!  One thousand two hundred dollars.

Are you funking kidding me? 

Looks like we may be painting it after all.  Ugh.

Nothing like trying to rent out a place in the dead of winter.