All Forum Posts by: Andrea Townsley

I agree with what Amy said.

I’m not sure how much protection is offered by a renter’s policy that covers animals (I’ve never even seen a policy that covers animals, but we don’t have any so it’s not on my radar), but I imagine their policy would not cover the landlord at all. And hold harmless agreements don’t always end up in favorably in court.

I would not allow her to stay with that dog and you might have to check up on this to make sure she gets rid of it if she does stay. And if this runs into when she has her baby, that’s going to be a worse situation and will be very stressful for her (it’s her own fault, but still).

If she had the dog before she moved to your place and brought the dog with her, she is an outright liar. If she got the dog recently, maybe thinking it would protect her and the baby, she’s not the same kind of liar as it’s more a lie of omission, although still very much a lie. I would be inclined to not trust her at all if she already had the dog and I would evict for breaking the lease, with no qualms whatsoever. If she just got it, I might be more lenient but I still think the insurance will be an issue. Even if you can get landlord coverage, are you going to pass that premium increase to her? It’s an expense, a liability, and a big hassle for you for her having this dog.

I would not go with granite. It requires special care and I wouldn’t trust tenants not to mess it up. Plus if something goes wrong you might need a granite specialist to fix it, and it will not be cheap. We have had good luck with laminate countertops from Home Depot, they are very easy and pretty straightforward to install if you’re handy.

I also have to add that I’m absolutely appalled by the hearing babies cry comment. I sincerely hope nobody would reject a potential tenant bc they have a baby! Kids whine, babies cry, that’s life. People need to get over being bothered by kids being kids. If they don’t like it, they can go rent in a 55+ community where it’s legal to discriminate based on age and family size.

And again, you’re in violation of the Fair Housing Act if you would actually not rent to a family with a baby or young children.

Just to preface this, we have four kids 7 and under and are expecting our fifth. We wouldn’t personally do less than three bedrooms as we will have a boy room and a girl room (doesn’t matter so much right now as they are all little, but they are still 2 to a room). Baby stays in our room till they are weaned. Most places we have lived have a limit of 2 per bedroom plus 1 (which is because babies don’t need their own room, and I would honestly stretch that to two if it was my rental bc what if twins?).

As it applies to you, if it was a two bedroom I wouldn’t care about three kids in one room. But a one bedroom means they are either all in the same room or someone is in the living room, and neither of those situations is good for anyone.

Side note based on some comments I saw: Please do not make assumptions about the place getting trashed. We have always left a place in better condition than we got it. We might be an exception to the rule but that’s what a security deposit is for. Comments such as this, assuming you would follow through on a NO due to family size (ignoring occupancy limits), violate the Fair Housing Act.

It’s interesting to read how people handle it. What we have done is show it individually to people who are interested. They are given the option to apply. We were using Smart Move this last time and I wasn’t a huge fan of it because it doesn’t give a complete picture. Anyway, I would only have one person applying at any given time because it doesn’t take that long to verify income and get the report back. If I chose not to rent to them based on what I found out, I would schedule more showings and repeat.

I’ve been on the tenant end where they allow a bunch of people to apply online and then say “Ope, somebody else already rented it. But you can use your application fee toward another of our properties.” Uh, no! If I’m not interested in any of those, I lose my money. I will not operate like that and steal money from hardworking people. That’s honestly how I see it. Between my husband and I we were paying $75-100 per application and we did not have that kind of disposable income to apply a bunch of places, so we would only apply for ones we were sure we would get. Maybe class A people don’t care?

All that said, we are re-evaluating our process as landlords, not because it failed us but because I would prefer to just check income and references first before running their background and credit. It doesn’t take THAT long to make a couple phone calls and look at pay stubs submitted with the app. I wouldn’t be comfortable charging for that but I do want reimbursement for my fees for background checking.

Also if it’s not vacant when you’re marketing it, you can’t very well do an open house, and as someone who has mostly rented, I find it odd when people do open houses for a rental. I also am flexible on move-in date, so long as it’s not too far out. When we lived in the Atlanta area, it seemed everyone wanted move-in to be within two weeks, but considering we give 60 days notice in most areas to not renew a lease, how are we supposed to find a new place in advance? I don’t personally like cutting it that close, as a tenant or as a landlord.

I’m in Gainesville which is north-central Florida - smack dab in the middle of the state (1.5 hours to either coast) and about 6 hours north of Miami, to give you a reference. Here we get some high winds (which often knocks out power), some heavy rain, and possibly flooding in low lying areas that takes maybe a few days or a week to go away.

There is an interactive flood map available on the flood insurance site, but I’ve seen others where you can overlay the flood zones with the regular map. I cannot now remember if those are just something I can access as a licensed agent, though. Bottom line is if you’re in a flood zone, anywhere in the US, you will likely need flood insurance. Flooding can happen anywhere, not just in places that get hurricanes. I know they had some rivers flooding in Illinois recently, for example.

A friend in the city of St. Augustine (not the beach part) told me before that anything east of I-95 has different building codes. That was about 12 years ago and I’m not sure what has changed since, but I imagine codes have only gotten more stringent.

Yes, we do get destruction when hurricanes come through, depending on where the hurricane hits and how long it stays and how strong the winds are. Most of the issue is spinoff tornadoes and a hurricane that stalls and drops a lot of water. But I wouldn’t let that keep me from investing. Proper insurance helps, and all Florida policies have a hurricane deductible which is a percentage of the replacement value of the home, if I recall.

All this coming from someone who lost it all as a kid in Hurricane Andrew (1992, Homestead).

A split level? Probably not. It depends how the house is laid out. I’ve seen some splits that would work great for that but most wouldn’t. If it has to be rezoned, too, I probably wouldn’t even attempt it. That stuff can take months to get approved. Are there others in that area?

@Michael Ablan I 100% agree with you.

We have been in this situation and our landlord refused to let us out. I offered to help advertise it (this was in a different state, pre-RE license), do showings, and get a new tenant in place so they wouldn’t lose any/minimal income. He told me he was going to let his lawyer handle it. It ended up being his loss because he refused to mitigate the damages. But in Georgia, a landlord isn’t required to do that. So I guess first I would say to check your state’s laws to see what your duty is in regard to mitigating losses. But personally, I would charge a month’s rent as a fee to get out of it and possibly keep the deposit. No sense in trying to take him to court (since you’d have to garnish his wages to force payment of any judgment) and wasting time trying to make him stay and pay. Once a tenant wants out, they’re done, let them go but try to reduce your losses as described.

@Jodi Roberts

Even though you can’t control when it will end, they still have to give notice, and you likewise can also terminate with notice if something goes south. Do you live up north where it’s harder to turn a rental in the winter? If not, as long as they give 30-60 days notice (whatever it says in the lease and/or whatever your state laws say), I don’t see why it matters that much. Either way, you will know ahead of time. We have it written into our current lease with our tenants that after the first year, it will go month to month (no rent increase bc our rate is already maxed out for our area) and they have to give 60 days notice to terminate. They have been there two years now.

As someone who has mostly been a renter due to a lot of relocations, I very much appreciate when a landlord can work with me on lease expiration and not insist that I go month to month just to get more money out of me. One time it ended up that we were expecting a baby two weeks before our lease was up and moving with a newborn would be a nightmare, but they would not let us extend our lease for one or two months unless we wanted to go month to month at an ungodly rental rate. I truly do not understand what difference it makes.

We do own one SFR as a rental (due to a relocation actually) and we are flexible on this kind of stuff because I believe in treating people how I would want to be treated, even in business. As long as we get our money as agreed and nobody is trashing the place, I'm happy.