Getting started as a landlord - Cleveland Ohio

[Paul Shepherd]

Hi All,

Well, after a year or so of looking and analyzing and losing some properties to other bidders, my wife and I finally closed on our first rental units.  In fact, we closed on two separate houses on the same day (1 duplex, 1 single fam).  Exciting and scary at the same time.  Both properties are within 5 mins of our home, so we intend to self-manage.  I do have a couple of questions I'm hoping some of you old pros might be able to lend some guidance on. 

Do I need to register these rentals with the city of Cleveland and if so when do I do that? Are there inspections? Fees? Do you really need to do it? 

I understand Cleveland is a pain when it comes to water, sewer, trash and has o be in the owner's name. Are there any best practices for passing along the water/sewer/trash bill to the tenants of the single fam?  Write it in the lease saying they are responsible for all utilities and just forward them the bill.  Can they make payment directly to those entities or should I just give them a generic bill from me with copies of the actual bills and have them pay me?  I assume there is nothing I can do with the duplex other than pay the water/sewer/trash myself as there is only one meter. 

All units are on month to month leases.  I intend to keep both duplex tenants if they want to stay.  do I have them sign a new month to month lease of my own, or does the current month to month agreement they had just carry over and continue? It was a pretty slim lease agreement, so maybe better to ask them to sign new agreement. 

Any tips on how to best approach on telling the single fam tenants that we don't intend to renew their lease and will be giving them notice to vacate? They have been there 7yrs but paying $575 for a place that could easily rent for $950-$1050.  I don;t believe they would be able to come up with the extra rent to at least get us close to market rent. Even if they could, I don't know that I would want them to stay as they have 3 big dogs and a car hoarding habit... so many vehicles for 2 adults. 

I could probably go on and on with questions, but I'll stop there.  Any pro tips you can share regarding any of these would be much appreciated.  

Fingers crossed for a smooth transition into managing rentals. 

Thanks!

Paul

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Paul Shepherd:

Thank you both for the advice!  I guess I'll give Cleveland even more of my money. At least it's not too expensive. 

I just got the delightful news this morning from my agent that the sellers of the single fam don't have any keys to give me.  Apparently the tenants replaced the locks sometime in the past few years and the owners didn't get a copy of the new keys.  Who does that? So now I own a house that I don;t have anyway to get into with out the tenant letting me in.  I suppose I'll have to politely ask for a set of keys from them. 

No one said that this was going to be easy I guess.  

Q: Who does that?

A: A lot of people.......Not a big deal. Ask tenants for a copy of the key. Maybe they give it to you, maybe they don't. They did change the locks after all so they may not want to give you a copy. From there you can decide how you want to tackle it. You've got a few options of varying levels of aggressiveness.

• Keep collecting their rent and the next time tenant needs a maintenance request tell them to give you a copy of the key at that time if they'd like you perform repairs.
• Serve them with an Eviction notice. Maybe you win in court, maybe you don't. I give it a 50/50 shot. Almost 100% shot it gets continued at least once.
• Have their locks changed. Only give them a copy of the key when they pay you for said lock change.