It definitely was not our first choice.
BUT, we were not willing to drop 5-10k to just sell the house.
Sooooo...
We became landlords.
And only 6 weeks into it we got the phone call no landlord wants.
It was Bev, from out realty company.
A pipe broke.
Which then flooded a couple rooms.
:(
Before we knew it, Beverly was off the phone with that little information she gave me and headed over to the house.
In the call however, she managed to dropped some pretty scary words like "Homeowners Claim" and even worse "Out of pocket".
I immediately called Eric to tell him the news. I tried to make it as light as possible.
"What I'm about to tell you is out of our hands and this is the exact reason we have savings".
Didn't matter- he was pretty shocked. I would be too, after all, we have only been renting our house out for 6 weeks.
Eric called me about an hour later reassuring me he realizes these things happen and for us not to worry about it as much as possible. That is until we figured the reason the pipe broke in the first place was probably due to Texas deciding to freeze and have temperatures in the single digits.
So then the question that really erked us was
How the hell do we protect ourselves from other peoples negligence?
Negligence in this case would have been the tenants not running the water when the temps are so so low to prevent the pipes from freezing.
Allegedly.
Well that question got us steaming a little bit.
But then time went by and we ventured BACK to reality and just have to suck up the fact that we are landlords and these situations happen.
Such bullshit. ha.
Fast-forward to 5 pm
Bev called us back and told us so far the only damage is the broken slab pipe (which turns out to be an expensive fix bc it's in the slab??) and a few hardwood floor slats are warped (but they put towels and something very heavy on top to hopefully they will soak up the last bit of water so maybe the warping will go down).
She then told us it's not good for us if it was a frozen pipe.
You see, when we decided to rent our house out, we knew we wanted a Home protection company to cover appliances/ac unit/ pipes/ garbage disposal/ water heater/ etc.
We pay $400 premium a year and we are covered in case Shiteth-hitteth-the faneth.
Which it did.
BUT come to find out our home protection plan doesn't cover if the pipe broke bc it was frozen.
YIKES.
SO we now are praying that it wasn't due to freezing or else out of pocket it is!
Home protection co will asses the damage and let us know today.
Best case scenario is Old Republic (the home protc plan) covers the pipe and fixes it only being a $4o co-pay charge for us.
If it isn't covered we are looking at $800 to fix this damn pipe.
Quite a difference I'd say.
We are relieved though.
Yes, we are.
Earlier we were thinking we'd have to file an insurance claim and pay our deductible of $1000 or worse pay even more out of pocket to avoid using insurance.
So yeah, we are grateful it is an amount we can handle.
*sigh*
The joys of being a homeowner.
BUT, we were not willing to drop 5-10k to just sell the house.
Sooooo...
We became landlords.
And only 6 weeks into it we got the phone call no landlord wants.
It was Bev, from out realty company.
A pipe broke.
Which then flooded a couple rooms.
:(
Before we knew it, Beverly was off the phone with that little information she gave me and headed over to the house.
In the call however, she managed to dropped some pretty scary words like "Homeowners Claim" and even worse "Out of pocket".
I immediately called Eric to tell him the news. I tried to make it as light as possible.
"What I'm about to tell you is out of our hands and this is the exact reason we have savings".
Didn't matter- he was pretty shocked. I would be too, after all, we have only been renting our house out for 6 weeks.
Eric called me about an hour later reassuring me he realizes these things happen and for us not to worry about it as much as possible. That is until we figured the reason the pipe broke in the first place was probably due to Texas deciding to freeze and have temperatures in the single digits.
So then the question that really erked us was
How the hell do we protect ourselves from other peoples negligence?
Negligence in this case would have been the tenants not running the water when the temps are so so low to prevent the pipes from freezing.
Allegedly.
Well that question got us steaming a little bit.
But then time went by and we ventured BACK to reality and just have to suck up the fact that we are landlords and these situations happen.
Such bullshit. ha.
Fast-forward to 5 pm
Bev called us back and told us so far the only damage is the broken slab pipe (which turns out to be an expensive fix bc it's in the slab??) and a few hardwood floor slats are warped (but they put towels and something very heavy on top to hopefully they will soak up the last bit of water so maybe the warping will go down).
She then told us it's not good for us if it was a frozen pipe.
You see, when we decided to rent our house out, we knew we wanted a Home protection company to cover appliances/ac unit/ pipes/ garbage disposal/ water heater/ etc.
We pay $400 premium a year and we are covered in case Shiteth-hitteth-the faneth.
Which it did.
BUT come to find out our home protection plan doesn't cover if the pipe broke bc it was frozen.
YIKES.
SO we now are praying that it wasn't due to freezing or else out of pocket it is!
Home protection co will asses the damage and let us know today.
Best case scenario is Old Republic (the home protc plan) covers the pipe and fixes it only being a $4o co-pay charge for us.
If it isn't covered we are looking at $800 to fix this damn pipe.
Quite a difference I'd say.
We are relieved though.
Yes, we are.
Earlier we were thinking we'd have to file an insurance claim and pay our deductible of $1000 or worse pay even more out of pocket to avoid using insurance.
So yeah, we are grateful it is an amount we can handle.
*sigh*
The joys of being a homeowner.
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