All Forum Posts by: Donald Crockett

Yeah early on I thought the screening company would verify all that. I now tell applicants I need a land line, a company phone, to verify employment, talk to a prior landlord, and so on. Prospects will say "OK" and still give a mobile phone number and later say that's the only number they have and they thought it was a LL. It's harder today because many companies do issue mobile phones to managers. I have in the past searched out companies phone numbers and called but that just adds time to researching applications. It kind of makes me wonder why I pay for tenant screening if I have to do it myself anyway!

edit; Ariel I just realized you do screening. I didn't realize that when writing the above. I will check out your website.

On a similar subject, we use a lawyer whom we like very much. Fortunately we don't have to use him often! I went to a talk he gave to a REI group about fair housing. One thing he said is this; the time is coming when a rental policy that excludes individuals convicted of felonies will be considered a racially discriminatory policy. The reasoning is, if one particular racial group has a higher rate of felony convictions as compared to another racial group, even though the basis for your policy is not based on race, the effective result is your are discriminating against a particular group. I'd be interested to know if anyone else had heard this.

Spoke with him yesterday, mainly because I wanted to hear what he would say. He said It was a one time thing, not who he is, and he is embarrassed and has a hard time owning it, all of which is probably true.  He began to explain the incident and I stopped him and told him the issue is, he checked a box on the app stating he had never been arrested for a felony and untruthful information on the application is an automatic disqualification. So that's that. It's not that I don't think a person could make a mistake in the past and move beyond it, it's the issue of truthfulness. 

I'm going to take everyone's advice into consideration. At this point, I kind of want to get him in the house because he makes plenty of money and checks out fine other wise but on the other hand being less than straightforward with me is something I don't like at all. I will certainly ask him about this issue and listen carefully to his answers.  If they are divorce related, I know in this state the husband is automatically the bad guy in any situation and basically gets the book thrown at him. He may have not said anything out of embarrassment. But I think he still should have told me, or at least answered the question on the application correctly.

Speaking of false information on an application, some time ago I learned the hard way that tenant screening companies, at least the one I used, don't verify that any information is correct insofar as employment, income, prior landlords, and so on. They merely call the phone numbers on the application and write down what the person on the other end says. In this case the employer was a friend posing as the employer, so was the prior landlord and the co-tenant whose income was really what met the minimum (tenant's income not sufficient) owned her own home and never planned to live in my unit. 

edit to add; in reference tho the thread title why is it I never catch spelling errors until after I post?

I've got an applicant who told me he has no record or background of violence. Background checks reveal several felony and misdemeanor charges, all from one date in his home town. I'm assuming they are related to his divorce. He plead guilty to lesser misdemeanors on all counts, served time, payed fines and finished probation. This was three years ago and there's nothing since. Our rental policy currently excludes violent felony convictions so he isn't excluded on the misdemeanors however I'm concerned that he was not forthcoming with this information. Would you consider this a red flag and if so, how big? Everything else related to screening looks pretty good. 

Oh man, we already have a family camping trip planned. I would have loved to come to the meet-up. Thanks for planning this event though! Have fun.

This thread's been around for some time I see. It's a good Sunday afternoon read. I do not watch television at all and have not done so for 30 years or so. I don't know who these late night infomercial gurus are. When I first began to get serious about investing, someone gave me Carlton's course on investing with no money down on CDs. I listened to them all and thought two things; first, I don't really think I could pull off some of those strategies and second, using these methods would net me lower returns than I could get otherwise. But I thought Carlton seemed like a nice enough guy, someone I might like to get to know.

Robert Kiosaki has been mentioned in this thread. Ten years ago I got hooked up with a couple local REI groups. Many people asked me if I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad. When I answered no, everyone would tell me I needed to read it. It was touted as the "starting point" for any investing strategy. Well after many recommendations like this I got the book from the library and read it. Very soon into the book, I began to get bad feeling about the whole thing. I don't know how to describe it but much of the book seemed to go against everything I knew and held dear. Sometimes people I meet, or listen to speak, or read about just kind of creep me out. I get a sort of feeling of alarms going off in my subconscious mind. That book was one of those times.

One man who I became very good friends with told me he and his wife spent a very large amount of money on Kiosaki's courses and coaching. He said he would be embarrassed to tell me how much. He also said they never used any of it. They had never done any real estate investing at all and probably never would. Talk about throwing money away!

I tried this on the worst cabinet door and it seems like this will be the way to go. Thanks! Now I have to run out and get some more elbow grease.

Thanks for the replies. I still haven't decided on what I'm going to do, been working on other things.

I think this is my first post other than my intro post.

We're getting a house we just bought ready to rent. The kitchen cabinets are structurally sound and they look great however the people who had lived there apparently didn't use the handles on the doors and drawers. They just grabbed the edges of the doors and drawers to open and close. Now, anywhere hands have been touching the varnish is very sticky and tacky. We've tried various cleaning methods from gentle to severe with no luck, It is actually the varnish that is soft and almost gummy. So as I see it, options are replacement (which we'd like to avoid if possible), re-facing with new doors and drawer fronts, or striping and refinishing.

My question is, is there any way to solve this issue other than the remedies I've mentioned? The cabinets really look great, they're up to date in appearance, and they're of fairly good quality. I'd hate to scrap them. Any advice?