Asking them to leave...

[Account Closed]

I've owned a small rental property for 18 months now. One of the units is occupied by a low income family: two parents and their two teenage children. These tenants were in place when I purchased the property, and I kept them as month to month tenants without a lease since then. I know I can easily rent out the unit for 40-50% more of what they are paying, and without doing any renovation. I'm pretty sure they will not be able to afford the full market rent if I asked them for more.

Recently I've been thinking about the rent money that I'm giving up on every month. I'd really like the property to earn to its full potential. On the other hand, I'm thinking about the children, and about the fact that housing has become very expensive, so not sure where they could find a reasonably priced apartment if they moved out.

Was anyone ever in a similar situation? How did you deal with it?

PS - Although rent is about a week late every month, it is always paid in full. They keep their apartment and the common area clean. I can say that so far, they have been reasonably good tenants.

[Brian Wolfe]

I would also make sure that you have each of your tenants' full / accurate contact information and current job information, in case something goes wrong.  I learned the hard way by inheriting a tenant in a property I purchased, where I didn't receive accurate information from the prior landlord, and didn't push to get fully verified new information from the tenant - ended up having to evict the tenant.  It helps a lot to have that information, esp. if they have a longer term W-2 job, if for whatever reason you do have to move for eviction and/or they do a lot of damage to the unit on move out.