Good morning to everyone this is Amy Chaney with Chaney Construction, a Home Builder Amarillo, and today I just wanted to visit with you a little bit about one of our other businesses that we have this kind of the business that really is kind of mine, and it’s really more. It’s residential investment and so we own Chaney Rentals. And so, whenever my husband and I first got married. My husband had six properties, when we got married, we added the home that I was living in in as a rental property as well. And so that gave us seven. And then a couple of years down the road as a Home Builder Amarillo. In 2016, and I had the opportunity to purchase a package of rentals. And so we purchased 11, and from an individual who was looking to move out of the area he had gotten a divorce recently and he didn’t really want to stick around in the area anymore and so all the rentals that he had accumulated he sold us them for a super phenomenal price we couldn’t pass up.
And so we bought, like I said, 11 rentals from home in 2016. And from that point forward we’ve just been kind of adding a property here in there to our portfolio back last summer we had the opportunity to purchase a 15 unit apartment complex. Now I see apartment complex data, not your average apartments not like you would think like several stories and all of that. No, it was just, they look more like duplexes except for they might have four units attached side by side of it just makes a big square around the block and those have been absolutely phenomenal. They came about 80% rented we only had a few of the units that were vacant, when we purchased it. And we were able to get those rented pretty quickly we had a tenant. And we did have to get evicted because they were just kind of disturbing the peace, and those rentals have been absolutely phenomenal for us. We’ve really enjoyed them and we’ve really enjoyed the tenants. And this last year we did purchase and about three more rentals so now we’re up to 36 individual rentals that we manage ourselves I manage them myself as a Home Builder Amarillo here at Chaney Construction. And right now we’re at 100% vacancy. And although that I know is about to change because I have two tenants that are coming near the end of their year lease, and they are in the process of purchasing homes, which is fantastic.
We’re always excited for our sentence to be able to have the opportunity to purchase a home, especially when they’ve been good tenants to us, then typically you know we’re very proud of that as a Home Builder Amarillo. And so we will have some units that are available soon. And we have some units that we’re doing major overhauls on and so those are not even available to be rented yet but we have one that will be on the market very soon. And, but you know, I’ve always said that this is a very hard job it’s not an easy job, and eight people just think that we walk around with all this money in our pockets. Because we have these rentals but it’s the same as any other business we have overhead costs we have property taxes we have insurance. We have a lot of maintenance and different repairs that go into, not a lot but we do have maintenance and repairs just kind of your average rental property investment was and, but I’ve always said that someday I’m going to write a book and it’s going to be called the adventures and landlord name because some of the things that we’ve come across. So the things we’ve had to deal with some of the excuses we’ve heard from our tenants are absolutely comical. And so, and I have always said that, I’m just gonna rock this boat because it’s hilarious. You never know what somebody is going to tell you when it comes to land loading. We do very good job of screening, very good screening process that does not mean that we screen out all of the bad ones all the time as a Home Builder Amarillo, but for the most part we do pretty good job are very good to not just check the references that they put on their application because it’s the same as resume, and most of these people why, and that we do have what means to be able to find out who their landlord is and why they’re really moving out. So being able to know some of the other local landlords in town really helps.
And we kind of know you know look out for one another, if somebody calls and asks about a tenant, that wasn’t an ideal tenant you know I’m able to share that information with them and just let them know it’s not someone I would rent to again but you can do with it as you please. And I’ve had people call me and tell me the same thing look I had this tenant, I wouldn’t rent to them again but you can do whatever you want. So it’s been pretty, pretty fun go at it. Tony the stories that we hear pretty crazy though. I’m currently we’re dealing with a tenant who decided to try and avoid their electricity being cut off so they were going to switch the electric bill over into the other spouse’s name which is not allowed. And so in return they just basically asked them to shut it off. And in our state, we do have the ability that if a house becomes vacant they automatically turn the electricity background into our name so that there’s no damage to the property. However, this tenant did not know about. And so they’ve been living there for half a month for with free electricity and so we just recently found that out and so it’s something that we’re dealing with and I’m telling you, the excuses we hear in situations like this are always just absolutely comical to us as a Home Builder Amarillo. And so this is something that will have to get dealt with, and they do owes now money for the rent for the electric bill as well. They always have a hard time getting the money and paid on time for the rent so we know this is not going to end well. So we have basically given them a short term option to pay. As soon as the bills and hand, they have X amount of time out otherwise they’re going to be evicted. And so, it’s just phenomenal to me the things that people will do and say and come up with.