Giving Tenants Control of Property Maintenance?

[Karen M.]

Hi BP Friends,

I am working to convince my husband to buy-in to real estate investing.  Ideally, I would like to find a property in the Milwaukee area that we can self-manage.  We would begin with one lower-cost house or duplex that makes sense financially and is in a neighborhood that we like, and then I would learn to manage it. 

My husband is open to supporting the project financially, but he does not want to be called upon to run the rental.  That is OK with me.  He is nervous that I will be asking him to go and fix things.  However, I could hire that out to a service person and budget for those things.

But also --- I could look for tenants who take good care of the property and who will ideally, do a lot of the maintenance. 

How do I do this?  I have heard mentions on several podcasts of landlords who, in their leases, give a lot of responsibility to the tenants to take care of the property, as a homeowner would.  

Could we please talk about this in very specific detail?  :)   If we begin with a single family home, I would want to have a tenant who can and wants to and even enjoys making their home a nice place.

How do you do this?  What do you put in your leases?  How do you talk to prospective tenants about your expectations?  Which maintenance items do you take responsibility for?  What is your maintenance schedule for your properties?

If anyone is willing to share with me their specific lease language via message, I would love to review your examples and learn from them. 

And how do you screen to find a person who will be caring about the property?  Do I ask something like -- do you own a lawnmower?  (seriously, I don't know how to address it!)  Have you maintained a house before?   

Do you give your tenants a chore chart?  (I don't mean like a mommy, I mean like a seasonal reminder kind of thing.)  

Honestly, in our own home, there might be some gunk in our gutters right now.  I don't expect perfection, but the property needs to be protected

I would also love to know, very specifically, how you do property reviews / inspections while the tenant is living there.  It sounds like many landlords do quarterly or semi-annual property checks.

Let me ask it like this -- I am going to take on a new job of being a property manager for our investments.  What systems do I need in place to be successful, and to have a good experience all around?  

Thank you so much!

Karen

[Mike M.]

It's your asset that you've likely got thousands of dollars already tied up in and likely are expecting hundreds of thousands out of it over the course of its life.

I don't do blanket statements, but this is as close as I'll come: most tenants won't care about maintaining your property properly, and 99% of the small number that do won't be appropriately qualified to do so.

This is not to say you can't have them do maintenance. I require mine to do lawn care and things like light bulbs. Just be mindful of abdicating responsibility of asset maintenance to folks with little stake in it. The last two houses I purchased were arrangements as you describe that had gone terribly wrong.