All Forum Posts by: Bill S.

This is my take. You are dealing with a pro tenant. They know the law and how long they will be able to stay rent free. They know what it costs to rent for the time they will live rent free. They also know what it will do to their drug dealing business.

Personally, I don't think your offer is all that generous. Think of it this way they still owe you money they have no intention of ever paying and will have to go through the brain damage of finding a new place. I think the attitude you got was "What are doing offering me chump change don't you know what this is going to cost you?"

2 ideas. Ask her how much it would take for her to be gone by Monday noon or even Nov 1. Figure out how much the eviction attorney will cost you as well as all the other fees and lost rent. That is your max figure for cash for keys.

Also when you do make her a real offer (your last best price) let her know there will be no other offers, it's off to court do not pass go do not collect nothing if the don't take your best offer.

I'm sure you know this but no keys=no cash. Nothing up front. You might want to rent a storage unit for them. They rent it and you give the storage guy the money for the rent.

What do you have for credit? Cash advance on CC could work. Do you belong to a Credit Union. You can get a signature loan from them. Do you have extra stuff laying around you are not using that you could sell?

My biggest mistake was thinking that if the current owner was renting to scumbags for $500 per month I could fix the place up and get $600 per month. Turns out most good tenants didn't want to live in the area as it was in transition. Those that were willing to risk it, wanted to pay below market rent. So I fixed the place up and took $50 less per month. That hurt. The secret is low end tenants always pay more for rent because no one will rent to them. Everyone will take a good tenant if they apply.

The best advise I ever got was what I read in David Schumacker's book on buy and hold real estate. It was decide what kind of tenant you want to deal with and only purchase property they will rent. Follow that advise and lots of your landlording issues disappear. I do my own pm with 20 units from SFH to 4 plex. I've been doing it for about 12 years now.

One key is to grow big enough that you create systems so things are repeatable. Landlording for one SFH is a hobby and every two to three years you have to do the same thing again but all the rules are different. With 20 units every month or so you do the same thing. You roll and adapt with the market and have systems in place so it's routine. You don't have to relearn everything again and again.

Fire damage is a whole nother animal. Servpro is a national brand that will cost you an arm and a leg. Go to the yellow pages - or the online version of that and look for the guys will the small ads next to Servpro and call them and get them to give you a price. I've had a fire and it takes people with special knowledge to address it and to do it right.