All Forum Posts by: Austin Welty

Western NY State

We moved into a town-home community about a year and a half ago. The process was pretty rushed because we were moving from out-of-state and had limited options locally.

They said because our credit was so good and income relatively high, no security deposit required. My wife did the move-in walkthrough, but there was no documentation signed by either her or the landlord (this is common I guess in this community?)

We were the second tenants in this otherwise brand new townhome. The previous tenant obviously had a dog that urinated on the carpet regularly, the smell was pretty obvious. My wife noted that and they shampooed the carpet a few times, but still there was some odor noticeable. We weren't happy but had nowhere else to go at the time, after already moving in so we went with it and tried to keep the windows open all day when the weather permitted. Over time it went away.

We are now moving out and concerned that they are going to try and charge us for the carpet. Our neighbors recently moved and said they had similar circumstances (no security deposit or move-in inspection) and they got charged $1,000 for carpet repairs.

We're concerned they're going to do the same to us - there's some minor stains on the carpet, some issues with fraying at the edges, but what I would consider minor issues. Because there's no documentation of the state of the apartment (dumb on me) when we moved in, could they try and blame all the issues from us and previous tenant on us and come after us for total carpet replacement?

Move-out walk-through is tomorrow, but the property manager told my wife it's basically a joke and they come through and do a much more thorough walk-through later....sounds very sketchy. I told my wife to take as many pictures as possible, but you can't take pictures of odor.

It seems to me that we would have a case to argue they can't come after us for anything without  move-in inspection documentation - what are your thoughts?

@Steve Vaughan interesting point...how do you avoid issues with turning away potential tenants? IE, discrimination claims, etc? I know this is a more "general landlord" question than anything in this thread, but curious to hear on your experience.

Thanks @Michael Craig. A few follow on questions:

- Would you still be able to evict for big ticket items, IE not paying rent? 
- Would this prevent you from forcing a tenant out via not renewing their lease?

"With all of the controls, municipalities would need to opt in to the bills' coverage. The new laws wouldn't be imposed on them." - I'm new to NY state, do the municipalities generally get on board? 

For someone new to the industry: Could you give a quick summary of the potential impacts this could have for landlords and REI?

 Hi Matt,

Would you elaborate on this a bit? A lot of books, forum posts, blogs, etc recommend using a real estate agent with experience working with investors - especially for those just starting out. I'd be curious to hear a counterargument as to why this wouldn't be the best route. 

@Andrew Gingerich

Do you have any books you recommend specific to taxes and real estate investing? I'm still in the "research" phase of my REI journey and feel like a lot of books that I've read have a pretty significant gap in information on taxes and how they effect your cash flow, ROI, etc. I've talked with a CPA briefly, but there's so much to learn it can be overwhelming if I don't have some kind of baseline. Thanks!

@Justin Windhamthanks for the links, good resources!

@Shane W. Chapin Thanks! PM sent

@David Pere thanks David! Anywhere I can find more info on your veteran community?

@Mike Cumbie thanks, good advice on several fronts. If I'm able to find a good property for house hacking, I'm considering using an FHA loan to get that 3.5%, since the plan would be to live in for at least a year. I've also seen several other folks on here talk about low-down payment conventional loans as alternatives to avoid the PMI. My understanding is I can only take out one VA loan at a time, so I've thought there could be potential for a VA loan for a primary residence after going through house-hacking steps, if I understand all the processes correctly...which I probably don't, but that's why I'm here - to learn!