Any benefit to month-to-month lease for landlord?

[Edd Sylvester]

My tenants are wanting to switch to month-to-month, for their own flexibility, at the end of the current lease, ending 5/31. Any thoughts? As far as I can tell, this is only an advantage to the tenants. I could end up with an empty rental trying to fill it in December. But maybe I'm missing something. My thought is to offer them the same rent if they sign a 1year lease or some higher amount if they want to go month-to-month, to make it worth the risk on my end. Curious how others have handled this. 

[Mike H.]

I disagree completely.  I only do year leases in the beginning because lenders want to see that in case I have to refi or something.  But quite honestly, leases only restrict landlords.  They don't help us one bit.  

Once my leases are up, I let them all go month to month.  If I want to get them out, I can.

But tenants can break a lease any time they want.  Good luck trying to collect anything from them.  I even tell tenants that are having problems paying in the first year that I'll let them out of their lease if they simply move out.

Even if you could get a collection order for a tenant for breaking the lease, here in illinois the most you can get is the difference from their move out date til the date you had it re-rented.  So if they move out and you end up getting someone to move in there in say two months, the most you can get is two months of rent.

And while you'll get the judgement, good luck trying to collect it.  The collection system is an absolute nightmare and so heavily rigged in favor of the tenant its silly.  It costs more to go after collections than it does the amount you'd be collecting. And I just don't have the time. 

So I absolutely believe that a month to month lease is the way to go.  Having renters sign on for a year does nothing for the landord except prevents us from getting rid of tenant that we don't like.  They can break the lease whenever they want.  But we couldn't. So now we're stuck honoring a lease that they don't have to.