Section 8 in Cleveland

[Mark Welp]

Hello, I have recently bought a SFH investment property in the Cleveland area and my property manager has found a section 8 tenant at a good rental rate. However, it is taking forever for the Cleveland Housing Authority to come do their inspection (longer than a month). Is this typical? I just want to make sure my property manager is doing everything they can to speed up this process. This just seems very long. It is a lot faster in Columbus, where I have rentals and live. Thanks!

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Mark Welp:

Hello, I have recently bought a SFH investment property in the Cleveland area and my property manager has found a section 8 tenant at a good rental rate. However, it is taking forever for the Cleveland Housing Authority to come do their inspection (longer than a month). Is this typical?

I just want to make sure my property manager is doing everything they can to speed up this process. This just seems very long. It is a lot faster in Columbus, where I have rentals and live.

Thanks!

 This is the major downfall of the Section 8 program. Many people fear working with section 8 because of the tenants. They aren't really the problem. CMHA itself is a pain in the a**. What you are experiencing is normal. Other downfalls include the inspections themselves. What I see happening is one inspector will site a handful of items. You then fix them, wait another month for your re inspection & a different inspector comes out to site a different handful of items thus starting the process over again. Do this enough times eventually you loose out on your tenant as they've found another house to rent. Ya see most folks on section 8 don't have any money so collecting a non refundable hold deposit from them is not always possible.

Now if you can deal with all that bull above & actually get your tenant into the house it goes pretty smooth from there. If you have low end homes the hassles above are worth it to get that guaranteed rental payment. If your houses are in nicer areas where the tenant base has more than enough cash paying tenants you'd probably want to rent to them & deny all section 8 tenants.