14: Rental house criteria and how to inspect it

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey, everyone, it is Saturday morning. It is 6.30am yes, I'm still waking up early on the weekend. I wake up early every day. I do the same routine that I've been talking about. I do the red light, I do the vibe, I do the oral oil pulling. I do all that stuff. But.

All that said, I'm excited to chat with you guys today. I don't normally record these on the weekend, but yesterday was the day that my wife and I went and checked out a potential rental house for us. And I wanted to share what I saw, what we did, how I looked through the house, kind of that whole process. Because I know a lot of you guys are renters just like we are. And you're trying to figure out, like, where's a safe place for you to be, right? So, so anyway, so I thought that might be helpful. So, quick backstory. My wife and I have a little girl. Her Name's Kensington. She's 18 months. Some of you may have seen pictures of her on Instagram. She's very cute. And we're planning on having more. At least one, maybe another one. So we need to have a place that's big enough for us to grow into. We're currently in a two bedroom apartment. It's a really nice place, but I already feel like with all of Kensington's toys and everything, it's just like overflowing us. We kind of feel like we're tripping over everything. It's just time for us to get a new place. We also have a dog who's a 70 pound Labradoodle and he's awesome, but the poor guy needs some space. So we go on long walks all the time. But especially since quarantine has happened until very recently when the dog parks opened again, he wasn't able to like get out and really run. And he needs to kind of get up to full speed when he's out. It helps him release his energy. He's in a better mood. You could just see, you know, you could just. You could just tell in them. So anyway, so we wanted to play. So our criteria, and this is stuff that I typically look for. And I'll tell you that this house did not have all of these things. And so I'll share my conversation with my wife before we went. What I'm typically looking for, just basic baseline. I want a place is three to five years old.

I know it's pretty hard to find in rentals. A lot of those places that are newer people are actually living in, so it makes it more difficult. Typically you're going to find that more in, like, apartment buildings, and you will in houses. So I knew that was going to be a challenge for us because we're looking for an actual house that has some space for us now. So I was willing to at least go and look at things that were outside of that range. But I had to kind of temper the expectations of my wife because I was I in a house that old. There's going to be some problems. I mean, that's just how it is. So we're going to have to try to find something that doesn't have a whole lot going on. So. So that's the age range I'm looking at.

No crawl space. Again, I'm like anti crawl space. I feel like it should be something that I like, hang on my, like, tattoo on my face. No crawl space. No basements. Biggie, regular pitched roof, no flat roofs. That's a biggie. Nothing that's been, like, recently renovated. So this house is newer. So there hasn't been any big renovations, which means that they haven't disrupted any hidden mold problems and kind of aerosolized them all over the place. So that's a big thing, too. So. So this. Check that box. And then other things for us that we were looking at, we needed a big yard. We needed to have a place for our dog to be able to run. And we want to have a yard in the back for our daughter to be able to go back and play. And as she gets a little older, we'll get some playset or something like that. So we want to have some space for that aside from the rooms and different things that we need in the house. So that's what we were looking for generally. So my wife has been looking and looking for rental properties for months because we knew our lease was coming up. And she keeps showing me stuff and showing me things. She's on Zillow, she's on Redfin. And so she found this place and she really, really likes it. And she's like, I made an appointment for us to go see it, which was yesterday, and I had to tell her I was like, listen hon, it looks good from the pictures too, right? But here's the thing. The pictures were an empty house and there's currently a renter living in it right now. So, you know, the pictures aren't recent. If someone's living in it right now, they've been there at least a year, could have been there longer, we don't know exactly. And so we're looking at pictures that might be a year, two years, three years old, depending on when they took them. And there are a lot of things that could happen between, between now and then in a year, in two years in a house. And so even as I'm like zooming in on pictures and just looking for basic stuff, stuff.

It doesn't matter because those are old pictures. So I just told her, I was like, listen hon, I know it's a newer place, but you know, it's 12 years old and things happen in 12 year old houses and we have to look. Now I understand going in that for a house that is that age that there's bound to be something. And honestly, for our goal of trying to find a house instead of an apartment like where we are now, we know that that has to be a little older. Like I said, typically you're not finding that, that newer three to five year old house. And so, you know, I was open to looking at it. And so we're gonna see what happens. So. But I told her not to get too excited until after I'm able to go through it. So we went. And I think for some of you who have listened to who. So those of you who are on the live mold Q and A on Thursday, I told you how we go through all a house and oddly enough, we just did it. So I'll share it again. I think I mentioned this on an earlier episode too, but the way that we go through a rental house when we're looking is that I need to be able to look at stuff without the realtor or the leasing agent really seeing me. And the reason is that I don't want them to think that these guys are going to be a hard time because they're actually looking at things, right? Because that gets back to the landlord or the, you know, the leasing office, wherever, whoever is going to actually rent you the place. And it may make you seem like that you're somebody who's going to be a hassle for them, right? Like, oh, if he's looking in the cabinets and looking at all these places, that guy's going to be trouble for us. Because he's going to. You know, he's going to. He's going to want us to fix things when they break, right. So I really try to limit how much the realtor has exposure to me looking around the house. So the plan that we've. That we've come up with over the years, because we've done this a few times, is. Is my wife starts a conversation with the agent. I don't really talk that much, and I look like the guy that's just kind of cloud in the sky, looking at the ceilings, looking at the walls, wandering around, not really paying attention to the conversation. And then I kind of come out and say, oh, I'm sorry. I. I get caught up in, like, imagining where I'm going to be or, like, what's going on and. And thinking about what rooms are going to be what, and, you know, kind of stuff like that, right? So it's not like I'm not paying attention. It's like this is my process of myself kind of digesting what a house has to offer for me, right? So that's kind of like how I try to present myself to them. So I let my wife handle all of the talking and the discussion. And my wife knows that her job is to basically lead the realtor or the leasing agent away from me, right? So the way that this works. So let's say we walked into the house. They had, like, an entry and a little, like, front, little living area, and then we walk in a little further, and then there's your kitchen, and it's, like, open to the living room or to the family space, and, you know, kind of like a typical, like, modern open sort of thing. And so while we're in that area, I take a quick look in the area, right? So it looks like that I'm at least getting the introduction that the leasing agent is trying to give me. And then I just kind of wander off into rooms that are next to it. What I'm looking for are all the bathrooms first. And then in the bathrooms, what I'm doing is I'm. I'm looking under the sinks, under the cabinets. So this was a little tough because this wasn't an empty house. There's people stuffed there. Luckily, they didn't load up their cabinets like crazy, so I was able to kind of look around in there. I'm looking for water damage in the cabinetry, right. Is there any bubbling or buckling or staining or cracking or anything that's going on under there that makes me think that there's Been a water leak. I'm doing the same thing around all the baseboards in the bathroom. Any staining, any bubbling, buckling, you know, warping, anything like that, especially by the tubs and behind the toilets, because those are common places for that to happen. So I'm doing that in every kind of adjacent bathroom space, at minimum, while my wife is distracting the person in the other room. And then while they're still going, if I still feel like I have time, then I pop into the next bedrooms and I start looking at, like, the. Where the ceilings meet the walls, and I start looking down at the base of the walls and the baseboards around the windows. I'm looking at all these places where there's, you know, typical water damage or mold issues that you find. And I'm sweeping the whole house like this, and I'm doing it kind of on. On the sly, right? Where, like, where nobody can see me. And then I come out of the area when I'm done, and I kind of give her, like, this head nod where I'm like, all right, okay, I'm good. And then she'll take the agent in. Into the area that I just came out of. So now the agent isn't around me in. In the previous space. And then I start that process all over again. So in that example, what we left over was the kitchen. So my wife moved the agent into, like, the. The bathroom and the bedroom. And then I go into the kitchen and I open the sink. I look under there, I look around the refrigerator. I look in some different places. Right. And so we do this throughout the entire house. And.

And I pop back in occasionally and make sure that I'm making, you know, an appearance with the agent and everything. But ultimately, this is our plan on how we, like, divide and conquer when we're in the house. So I just want to share that with you guys because it's been very helpful for us to be able to actually get a look at stuff and feel like that it's not hurting our chances. I did the exact same thing in the apartment that we're living in now. And look, we're in the apartment, so it didn't scare anyone off. So that was good. Okay, so that's the process that we do when we're doing the look through. So just to tell you a couple things about this place, what I found, and what we're thinking. So oddly enough, there was not one cabinet under a sink that had any sort of water damage, which blew my mind. Like, this, like, never happens. Typically, there's something, right? Even if it's minor, there's something going on. And even if I found something that wouldn't be the end all be all to say we're not taking this one place, right? But I just kind of expected there to be a little something, but I didn't find anything. And the other thing that I wanted to bring up is in the kitchen specifically, and this is something I'm planning on doing in my next place, is they had a. On the cabinet floor, they had like a metal kind of covering on the cabinet floor. So, like, you would put your products on top of like this metal, this little metal piece that was down there. It took up the whole bottom of the cabinet. And this is awesome. I plan on doing this in all my cabinets. And the reason is that if you do have a water leak that comes down and it drips, you know, onto the cabinet floor, it's going to be dripping on a metal, which means it's not going to be soaking into all of the cabinetry. You know, it could increase the humidity down there and it could cause a problem. But if you're being vigilant and being on top of what's going on in your house, and every month pulling out the stuff under your cabinets and looking under there and just making sure there's nothing in terms of water damage, then it's an awesome, awesome protective measure down there. I've seen people put like those water sensors in their cabinets, but they still leave the cabinet floor open, so it's still wood. And even if the sensor goes off, the wood will have been impacted. Right. And so for me, I think the sensor idea is cool, but the whole goal is to try to protect it from being impacted in the first place. Right. And so one really easy preventative thing you could do in a kitchen cabinet is to put like a. Like a metal sheet down there. They have like these little metal. They almost look like trays kind of. And you set them under, under the sink and you could do something like that, and it helps protect it from that. So they had that under the kitchen. They didn't have it anywhere else. But I was like, oh, cool, this is awesome. So that's just. That was one thing they had there.

Everything. You know, some of the window thresholds were cracked a little bit, but I wasn't seeing any water damage. I wasn't seeing staining or disc discoloration or anything like that. So it didn't look like to me that it was actually creating a problem where moisture was penetrating from the outside. It Kind of looked like the house was settling, but everything looked good from that standpoint. The only thing that I really saw there was really one thing, and it was in the master bathroom. The bathroom had carpet instead of tile, which is, like, not good. So the bathroom, you know, by the tub, by the shower, all these areas had carpet. So obviously, when we get out of a shower, we get out of, you know, the tub or whatever, we're going to drip water, right? It happens. Or when you're in the shower and you open the shower door and some water drips, because it was obviously in a shower, and the carpet soaks that up, and you can get mold problems in the subfloor and different areas. So that was one big thing. And before I even brought it up, I think the realtor saw me looking at it just as we walked in the room. I was kind of. I was almost kind of surprised. It's a newer house. For the newer house, to have carpet in a bathroom is kind of, you know, it's not like a normal thing that people do. And they had just laid that carpet two years ago, so it's not like the carpet was 12 years old. They actually replaced the carpet two years ago. I learned that the people living in the house moved in two years ago, so that's how long it had been that these renters had been in there. And so it was, you know, newer carpet. And I was looking at it, she's like, yeah, she. She just looks at me and she says, yeah, I know there's carpet in here. It's something that a lot of the people have. That have looked at the place, have. Have commented about. The owner is really heavily considering replacing this with tile. I'm pretty sure she's going to do it. And. And, yeah, so. So that was that. I'm like, okay, so that's kind of one big thing off the list, right? They'll replace the carpet. We'll get some tile on there. And listen, even if there was some water damage or a little issue under the tile, which is very possible when you have carpet in a bathroom. Again, I'm going into this understanding that we're not going to find a house that's perfect, because no house is perfect yet when you're renting, you don't have 100% control, okay? So you have to be willing to kind of concede on some things. And for me, if the concession is there's only one or two things in this whole house, then I feel like that's a good thing for us. Right? Like, in the grand scheme of things, in the little apartment I'm in right now, there's two things going on. So. And this apartment is less than half the size. Wait, more than. No, less than half the size. Sorry. That's my early morning math of the new house we're looking at. Right. So grand scheme of things having that one issue there. Even if there's a little problem on the subfloor from the water that got under there, they're going to replace the carpet, which will be retaining a lot of it. They're going to lay tile on it, which is going to create a new, more solid barrier on the top of it. And it's something that I'm willing to deal with. So that was one thing. The other thing that I saw again in this space was that one of the baseboards had water damage on it and it was the baseboard by the tub. And again, I think that it's for this reason. But when they pull the carpeting it, if we end up getting accepted, I'm going to ask them to pull that baseboard off too.

And so we're going to do that. Those are the only two things that I saw that were a red flag in the house. If there's a problem behind the baseboard, then obviously we'll have to have a conversation about that. But to go through a bigger house like this because we're looking to upgrade in size, the house is a 3,000 square foot house. So to go through a 3,000 square foot house and only see an issue in one bathroom, that's really, it seems, seems like is because of carpeting that was in the bathroom that the owner is. Is actually planning on taking out.

Yes, there might be a little residual that's left over, but like I said, grand scheme of things, that's a pretty good. Pretty good situation. Obviously, I wasn't able to go up into the attic. That I think is a little too weird. And I don't know if my wife can distract a realtor long enough for me to hike a ladder upstairs and open an attic and crawl around up there. So I didn't go in the attic. I also obviously was not able to open the air conditioning systems and look at them. So there's some limitations that you have when you're doing inspections in a rental. Right. So what I'm looking for in a rental, when I do that, I'm just looking for sources. I know if there's a lot of sources that all these other things are going to happen. Right. If there's a Lot of sources. Your attic more likely is going to have problems. If there's a lot of source areas, then your H vac systems are more likely to be contaminated. Only finding essentially one kind of source in the house, it's going to really decrease the potential of those other things. And so that is where we netted out on the place. So we walked out, I asked my wife what she thought. She liked it. She asked me what I thought almost with bated breath, and I told her. I was like, listen, for a rental, I don't think we're going to get better than this. I really don't. It was the first place that we looked at. It's all very strange. I almost feel like it's kind of meant for us to get, get this place. It's the first place we looked at. Not a whole lot of problems. Obviously they start looking at the other things. Has the space that we're looking for, has a, has a really big yard, has these other things that we're excited about. But obviously for me, the health of the house is the most important thing. We've got a toddler. We're going to be, think we're going to be having another baby that we're going to be working on. Cross our fingers, knock on wood. And you can't, you can't have these kids in, in moldy environments to grow up. It's going to cause them long term problems. So it's really, really important. So we like the place. What we'll do is that we're going to supplement with air filters and air purifier technologies. I want to do that in every place I live in, regardless if there's problems or not. Right. But even if there's a little issue in the master, typically what we do is that we have one, currently one filter in our bedroom in this place. I'm probably going to get a second one and I'll put it in the bathroom just as a secondary, just in case anything is happening down there. I want to have something as close to the source of where the problem is in terms of filtration technology. So I'm probably gonna put a second one in the bathroom which is, you know, connected to the bedroom. Right. But I'm gonna put one bathroom specific and then I'll put one in our bedroom. So I'll get an extra one for that and it'll help me feel a little better about that. And yeah, so we liked it. So today we asked them to send us the application and all that stuff. We're Gonna fill out the application.

One thing that I'm going to do in the application, nothing to do with mold or anything like that, but just something I've kind of. I don't know, I've kind of learned in life. My background is in marketing, for those of you that don't know. So I think of everything.

As, like, a sales pitch, basically, right? And so if we're trying to get these people to let us live in their house, we're selling them on us, right? And so, you know, we have the application, and I was telling my wife, I'm like, we need to do something more. She's like, yeah, I was thinking of, like, writing a letter, you know, where they can meet, you know, meet us and maybe send them some pictures. I'm like, yeah, I think we should do that, too. But what I really think that we should do is I think we should do a video that, like, introduces ourselves to them and tells them, you know, what we're looking for for ourselves and how this place is a perfect fit and how they've done a great job with it and have them, you know, introduce them to our. To Kensington and introduce them to Oliver, and then cut in other videos of, like, you know, where that. We have other videos where, like, we're playing together or whatever, right? And do some things like that that really give us a personality. Because, like, ultimately, what we're trying to do is stand out from the other applicants. We know there's one other applicant right now, so that's what we're going to do today. We're going to fill out the application. We're going to write this letter. We're going to put this video together that's basically, you know, meet the cars. We're going to introduce the baby, the dog. I'm going to cut in. I have this awesome video of my dog playing. Playing with a kitten. I know a lot of people have fear of, like, bigger dogs, like, they're going to rip up a house or something. And I think nothing tells a story better than my giant dog jumping around with a tiny kitten and being super, super gentle with it. So. So we're gonna post that video. I'm also going to post a video of Kensington's first steps and some of these other things so they can. So we could talk about imagining her milestones happening in this house and being grateful that they're letting us, you know, giving the opportunity for that to be us and all that stuff. So I'm really gonna really gonna attack their emotion, right? So the first Sell is gonna be emotion. That's how I'm gonna try to get the. Get them on board first. Then people that typically don't buy something emotionally will. Then they start looking at it logically. So then we're gonna start attacking the logical things, you know, about being able to pay rent on time and about, you know, being able to take care of the house and things like that. So now we're gonna go towards the logical piece. And at that point, you know, most people think in those two mindsets. So if we can attack both of those two mindsets in our pitch to get the house, then I feel like we have a pretty good chance. So it's. It's very well thought out. It's very structured. We're. We're putting a marketing plan together to try to get this house. So that is everything about what's going on with the house. I'll give you guys an update whenever we hear back, but we're submitting all that stuff today. So, anyways, this was my.

Review of our rental house process and everything that we look at. So I hope that was really helpful for you guys because I always get a lot of questions about, we don't own a house, we rent a house. How do you find a rental that's a good place to be in? Because not everybody owns a house. I don't own a house. Right. So I totally get it. And so this is our process and this is what we do. So thanks so much for listening through this, guys. It is Saturday. I hope you guys have a great weekend. We'll talk to week you next next week.

Hey, guys, one quick thing before I go. If you're listening to the podcast and you've enjoyed some of the stuff that's on here, I would love if you would just take a second and just flip over to your app and just give it a rating. It would be super awesome. You know, the more ratings you have, the more. The more the algorithm will show it to people. That makes sense. And the more people will start to hear the message. And ultimately, that's what's really important. Important. So if you could take a second and just give it, you know, give it a rating. And even better, if you could just put a little comments in there, that would be awesome too. Right? I want to know, obviously, that what I'm sharing with you guys is beneficial. Right. So it's going to help me. But also, this whole thing is about getting the word out to folks. And so if you guys wouldn't mind doing that and you feel like what I'm giving you here is a value for you guys, and the time that I'm spending is worth it, then I would really, really appreciate if you could just take a couple seconds. Seconds and do that for me. All right. So thank you so much. And again, we'll talk to you next week.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.

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