All Forum Posts by: Amanda Cates

I felt the earnest money was too low also and 90 days is a long time. I am really surprised our realtor wants us to accept those terms. Thank you for your advice.

I have a rental property I am desperate to get rid of. It's been on the market for a week now. It's a super cute house in a older historic type neighborhood. Completely updated and a good lay out to be built in 1949. Only negative is the house next door is in poor condition.  The neighborhood is the best in the area and not a lot on the market in the price range of our house. So far we have had several showings. Our realtor is super busy and I haven't been given a lot of feedback on the showings or know when they are since it is empty. Today we received an offer for 20,000 less than asking, $500 earnest money, 90 day contingency on the buyer to sell Her house. $0 in closing. The realtors states he is familiar with her house and she paid cash for it so he says we should counter a tax $120-$125000 and accept the rest of the terms because it will close. What is everyone's opinion on this? We have had circumstances change and we can't  afford form it to sit empty for a long time without renting it again which we don't want to do. Im afraid to accept and afraid not to. Thanks for the advice. 

 Thank you for all of the info. The tenant actually ripped the carpet out to try to hide the animal situation I guess. But the smell was terrible and he didn't clean up the pee along the walls and baseboards. Maybe he was thinking I wouldn't notice? Haha. I do know where he works . So if I purchase the ozone generator it would be an expense I could charge? I was wondering this because we purchased a pressure washer because he didn't clean out the gutters and you can see where water ran done the house from the gutters and caused mildew stains. I was wondering if I could charge the cost of the pressure washer?

Thank you for all the info. Yes...the landlord role isnt something I wanted to do. We had to move and we were upside down. The house went on the market yesterday so fingers crossed it sells quickly this time for a decent price. This particular tenant has a very good job so maybe there would be some chance I would see some money but after reading everyone's comments I'm thinking it might just be better not to deal with it anymore.

I have a couple questions about what I can charge the tenant for. As I stated in a previous post I'm still learning because this is my first time dealing with a tenantt leaving me with a mess. Repairs are costing us more than the security deposit. My first question is my husband and father in law did all the clean up on the house. They easily put in 40 hours cleaning up dog urine and the mess left. Can I charge the tenant an hourly rate for this? Also the tenant left is with a flea infestation. It's bad. We treated it our selfs once but then had to call an exterminator. They treated the house but told us we would have to come vacuum everyday for two weeks to get them. I thought they were exaggerating but no the fleas are still everywhere when we go. There always more dead but they keep hatching. We live 30 mins away. Can I charge him for the time to do this? Lastly they were smoking on the property. The only evidence I have is cigarettes and cigar tips left in the yard and carport. Our lease says he owes us $2000 for smoking anywhere on the property. You can smell it somewhat in the house now that we got the urine smell out so I'm wondering if I have enough evidence for the judge to put that in my claim? Thank you for any advice. 

Yes...your right. I made a huge mistake. The realtor is our friend so I trusted that he was handling it. I should have requested to see everything. It's all said and done now and I have learned so much from it.

We did get a security deposit and option deposit. The option deposit covers the real estate fees.

We are still getting the house cleaned up. We are almost done. It's around $1000 over the security deposit. We did do a walk through with both agents and the tenants. We did attempt to do a final walk through but the tenants left the house unlocked with keys under the mat. It's been such a mess and I can't believe I was so dumb.

I have a quick question for all the experienced landlords out there. I made a huge mistake when accepting a lease puyrchase on my rental. Two years ago we had our rental house for sale. We didn't intend on becoming landlords but we bought at the height of the market and were upside down in the house. We had to move so we rented it for a year then put it on the market. We didn't have a lot of interest but a lease purchase came along so I trusted our realtor and their realtor. We were told that he hadn't been at his commission job for two years so he wouldnt be able to buy until this happened. We did a lease for 18 months and let our realtor handle the lease and all of the verification. Big mistake. The renter let 5 dogs live in the house so you can imagine what we walked into when he decided not to buy. So I contacted my realtor to get a copy of the background check for court because we are going to attempt to get some money out of the tenant for damages. Well our realtor didn't do a background check. All that was done was a verification that he had a job and income. The realtor didn't even verify this himself, he took the finance guys word for it. The realtor felt like everything was okay because finance officer said he would rent to the tenant. It's my fault for not visually seeing the background check but I asked several times who handled the reference and background check and I trusted the real estate agent & his company since they did the lease. They were not managing the property, I was doing that. I am just curious if it should have been done or if I should have done it? What is everyone's experience with this? Oh and I turns out the guy had bad credit but I was never told this. I was only told that he hadn't been at his job long enough.