Tenant-buyer wants "fairness"

[Bryan L.]

I've copied a facebook conversation below. This is the only renter or TB that I am friends with on FB - I normally don't do that. But, with this one it has given me some insight into their spending habits. The background to this is that I recently turned their account over to a property manager. And when I did, I increased their payment by $50 per month to cover my costs to the PM. Here's their response and my response below. I can't believe that she thinks I'm not "fair". If she wants's fairness, she would be out on the friggin streets.

Tenant-Buyer: Hey it's Joe, I was wondering why we are paying an extra fifty a month, if it's to cover your cost how is that fair for us to have to pay it?

My Reply: I'm sorry to have to increase your payment, but that's what my business partner required me to do. And, Here's how it's fair. You all are actually behind by over $1000. And you've been behind many times, and I've never charged you a late fee. When you get behind, it's a huge head-ache on me to keep track of it. And it stresses me out - a lot. And it causes me great difficulty to make my payment to my bank on the loan that I have on the house. And I don't need the stress in my life, so I turned your account over to a property manager. And that costs me more money. So, it's not fair to me to incur additional cost when the reason for those costs are because you all get behind from time to time. It's also not fair to me to be waiting on you all to catch up with your payments to me, when you all have the money to go to the beach on vacation and to build a nice new deck around your pool. I really didn't want this reply to sound mean, but I hope that you can understand. Also, the original land-contract that y'all signed with me had built-in payment increases after the 2nd or 3rd year (which you agreed to), which I also never enforced until now. When you can get a bank loan and pay me off, your payment should go down at that time.

[Bill S.]

@Bryan L. -I'm going to sound harsh here. You get what you require. I'm not sure of all the back story but my advise is you really really need to stick the rental agreement. If you have a lease (which would state the rental rate) then you should follow that, including rent increases. If a tenant is $1,000 behind and that doesn't count late fees the only one to blame is you. If they are late, you post notice and charge late fees. If you don't collect late fees, then you might have lost the right to collect them.

The tenant is right, you can't just increase rent because you farmed out the work to a PM. Perhaps you are within the lease to do so if you haven't previous collected the increase called for in the lease but you might also have lost the right to an increase because you didn't enforce it.

You mention land contract which is not a rental agreement per se. But again by not following it you are jeopardizing the agreement and it becomes up to a judge to decide what is what. 

I am surmising that you have a hard to rent property that you are trying to unload to a marginal buyer/tenant. The buyer hasn't performed but you don't want to move on so you have been allowing them to skate on a few issues in hopes that they will get their act together. This will only end badly for you in 98% of the cases.