All Forum Posts by: Uwe K.

Great idea, and finally I get to respond.
Would be interested in meeting up. Currently Wednesdays might not work for me, but may after September or so.
Otherwise it's a hit or miss right now, and I might not know until the day before and may have to join later. 6 or later should be good.

Don't know Bar Louie , but Bayshore kinda works for me. The place should have some munchies :)

It wasn't that it is required to have by law. They claimed the law required them to add it first then give me the opt-out option.
In any case, I haven't pursued it yet, for two reasons: a) time vs. priority, and b) if they should get in trouble I need to be prepared first in case they cancel all my insurances. About to switch away soon anyway and may tackle the issue again without the fear of "retaliation"...
Will provide an update once something happens.

From my experience, the seller banks don't give a rat's behind about your reasons you spent 40 hours on why this should sell for less and is severely overpriced. Although I am not investing in hot places, more low income, I think the banks are all the same. The bottom line number counts, and they don't care about the buyer. At best, they listen to the listing agent, but usually only after they ran into that aforementioned wall a few times.

A couple of years ago we bought a SFR. It seemed they got three listing agent opinions at the time, with the highest list price recommendation being $94,000 or so. They had it listed at around $50k, I think, then dropped in $5k at some point. After a long time we got to purchase it for $27k, which was even a bit more than the limit we set.
But it took months to get to that point, and the bank didn't care about what we had to say or the listing agent (he knew the local market and that it was overpriced).

You're just dealing with some pencil pushers who follow a script or flowchart, and nothing changes their mind.

Curious also about what area in Milwaukee you're talking about.
Besides that, personally, I would not buy a property like that (for myself or investment). Too many potential problems if two parties having to agree on certain things like a roof replacement.

Why is that?
Too much fried food?
Too much beer?
Too cold?

I can confirm what Dawn says, nothing specific about late fees in the WI code.

Related: In order to deduct unpaid late fees from the security deposit, you must specify that you may do so in the "Non-standard rental provisions", otherwise it will be an illegal sec. deposit deduction.

The fee should be mostly irrelevant (but see also notes below) to your decision whether a letter is required or not. There are places that do not require a fee, for example. Also, I take a fee, but sometimes refund it if I see disqualifying factors (resulting in a denial) before running the credit check.

I am actually not sure of the legal requirement, and it may depend on your state, too. In WI, for example, you are not required to give the reason for denial. As a default, I always send a letter and then state a reason (or the main reasons, as sometimes you have a whole book of reasons ;)

I also reserve the right to deny an app simply because it is not complete. And not paying the fee means not complete. So if you have that, then the fee could become relevant as a reason, if you wish to use that.

The tenant asking for policies could be a red flag. It is always advisable to have a written policy and actually give that with the application forms. That way they cannot complain if they are being denied because of an eviction last year, since it was stated clearly. You are not required to have a written policy, but it's like an insurance. For example I heard of a landlord in the area who only rented to people with a certain min. income that was quite high. One day he denied a couple with kids, based on the income only. They sued for discrimination because of the kids, and they won. It came out that in the past, his tenants always happened to be couples with no kids (coincidence) and he could not provide a written policy that established a history for his reasons.

I am not saying you have that problem, but you have to check your state laws to see what's required. Otherwise, I would just send him (or both) a denial with the reasons (eviction), and don't bother about he policy. Did you state in the listing or somewhere else "no evictions?" You could refer to that.
Or you write up a brief half page list of bullet points with potential reasons for not approving and call it policy and send it (and use it in the future, too).

Assuming you have a POP3 or IMAP account with GoDaddy, you may want to look into a separate mail app. Most of them will let you set the polling interval, however, not all of them are fully customizable so you can set it to 1 minute or whatever your personal update urgency level is accustomed to ;)

Depending how badly you want it, you can jump through hoops and have email forwarded to gmail or somehow have gmail collect from other POP accounts. But it very quickly gets messy and unorganized, especially if you access emails from elsewhere, too.

I am sorry that I sometimes have a laugh. Probably should go in the basement to do that...
But that's not the reason why people don't like investors. The reasons are that investors are seen as the greedy people with pockets full of money, and then still demand your rent on the first and charge you late fees when appropriate and take your deposit when you leave a pig sty behind. Then they feel they are not being treated fairly and ripped off.
They are hated by people who break the rules in the first place (and I am not just talking about the "at least one bath a week" rule) and have to feel the adverse effects.

You just crack me up... But so true.

I don't see how I can put much value on information from a third party that has never met my tenant. The knowledge she creates through her ability is likely (or should) be based on a variety of information sources, incl. lots of non-verbal communication by the tenant.
So if I hear ABC from the tenant, pass that on to her, she only knows ABC. She does not see if the tenant poked his nose while telling me that or tries to look away or made a pause thinking about a credible answer.

It would be like a psychiatrist treating a patient he never met or saw, and only talks to the brother. It can only work if the patient goes to the doctor, and if your assistant deals directly with the tenant - repeatedly.