All Forum Posts by: Bob H.

@Marlene Michael, you are on the right track. A few suggestions:

To avoid being accused of discrimination of one kind or another, you might want to give an application and a list of your acceptance criteria to each adult who sees the place. You don't want somebody to act uninterested, not get an application and later claim that you discriminated in some illegal way by treating that person differently.

Also, when I first speak to potential tenants on the phone, I try to get their email addresses and offer to send them an application and the acceptance criteria. I like to think this weeds out a few people who read the criteria and realize they won't qualify. It would be nice if they would call and cancel, but some people are inconsiderate and just don't show up for the appointment.

Your timing seems very tight. I would not expect a prospect to fill out an application on the spot, but you would need that if you plan to verify the information within hours. Even the best tenants need time to privately discuss the pros and cons of the place, then go home and look up old landlords' phone numbers, etc. Often people have made appointments to see other properties right after yours.

@Kate B., I have twice rented to people from out of town who had seen only pictures of the houses. In the second case, the people had a friend in town come to see the property on their behalf. If you can get them to send a representative like that, it's far preferable.

In both cases, these were nice families, and everything worked out fine. As always, I ran them through a screening service and checked rental history and employment. I accept a personal check for a deposit when people sign a lease, but that's usually a month or more before the tenancy begins. With such short timing a cashier's check or electronic payment seems necessary.

I have never found it necessary to require guaranteed funds. With well-screened tenants, I always think that if the deposit check bounces, then you're not going to let them move in. If the deposit check doesn't bounce, I don't have any reason to think the first month's rent check will.

I don't have much experience with this, but that $4.80 charge to read a meter seems ridiculous. I think you need to get the utility to put in two regular meters or something so you can get out of the water business.

I doubt that something like Liquid Plumber would work once the roots block a pipe. I think I've heard of something you can put in drains periodically to prevent root growth. In my experience, plumbers and drain services that have cameras can help you locate the problem, but equipment to cut up the roots inside the pipe (run by people you hire or rented by you) seldom does the job. Unfortunately, there's often no substitute for digging up the pipe. Sometimes you can cut the pipe in one place and pull out a long bunch of roots, saving you from digging up more.

I never have bid at an auction, but I do recall a real-estate attorney and teacher mentioning that, at least in California, it's common to come equipped with a supply of $10,000 cashier's checks. You don't know the final bid amount going in, so you want some flexibility to pay just a little more than the final price if your bid is accepted.

I'm always reluctant to bring in expensive consultants, but in this case I agree with the recommendations about having an engineer involved. The driver's insurance company should pay for inspection before and probably after the repairs. You don't want to be selling the house later, disclose this accident and then have a inspector say the floor joists are unsafe or something like that. 

Surely, the fewer rentals there are, the better it is for you and the worse it is for tenants. This is hit or miss, but on some sites you can get an idea of the demand by looking at the number of days the property has been listed for rent. If you're driving around, you can pay attention to how long for-rent signs stay in yards for properties similar to yours.

You're better off managing it yourself. If you get the property in shape before renting it out, and if you get good tenants, maintenance trips will be rare, and most can be deferred to days when you're not working. For "emergencies," such as a non-working refrigerator, a broken pipe or no heat in the winter, have names and numbers of a few repair people ready and check reviews of them while you have time.

If you try to drop a bad property manager early, the PM may impose an unreasonable termination fee and take it out of a required "maintenance reserve" that you have to provide, ostensibly because the PM might not be able to reach you to pay a repair person.

You could at least ask them what happened to the water lever and see what they say. You're probably stuck for the repair cost, though.

I had seemingly good tenants who broke the handle off a microwave door. I found some blog posts about people having trouble with the doors on that model, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I bought a new door on ebay or amazon and fixed the microwave. I often think, though, that I could have used something like that myself for 20 years and it would still be fine. :)

You also should change the combinations on garage-door openers.