Lease Renewal and Rent Increase

[Keely Aldinger]

Closed on our MFH in Chelsea, MA this past Monday. We have two sets of inherited tenants and will be occupying this property. The current tenant's leases end on 8/31/21.

Unit 1 - 3 bedroom 

• currently under market at $1850
• we intend to increase rent to $2100 (still under market, tenants were verbally told to expect this by the seller)
  We do not want to renew this to a yearly lease because we would like to/potentially need to get into this unit to update sooner. Inspector found some water damage and leak from bathtub drain etc that we don't want to have to wait a year to address.
  

Unit 2 - 4 bedroom

• tenant would like to move into Unit 3, also a 4 bedroom -- newly updated. Current rent in unit 2 is $2050
• Rent for Unit 3 will be $2500, still below market.
  
• Tenant does not speak English so communication is not straight forward. Tenant has stated they would find roommates.
  

We would like to move into/rehab unit 2 at the end of that lease. Then repeat the process in Unit 1 in a few months --we would like to be transparent about that to the current tenants.

Questions:

I plan to provide Unit 1 with a notice that rent will increase and following that, a new month to month lease. What is the best way to communicate this? (Everything I've attempted thus far feels clumsy.) They have been there 6yrs, would you re-qualify these tenants?

We are going to provide tenant of Unit 2 with rental applications to provide potential roommates so we can screen them. It is unclear if this tenant has e-mail access. Which is holding up proceeding with a fully electronic payment and lease situation. How would you proceed to make this easier?

Lots of moving parts here, hoping someone experienced can help me to simplify. Thanks