All Forum Posts by: Jeff T.

I just found this old email from my property manager. Landlording is "interesting" sometimes!

"The tenants at 123 Main St have vacated the property. The husband came in to our office last week and advised he had come home from a 2 week trip (truck driver) and found the house empty and cleared out, and a note from his wife telling him to return the keys and garage door opener to us. He said he likes the house and would have paid everything and stayed but his wife also cleaned out their bank accounts. He was not very happy."

You know what I would do if I had 20 million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities... Ok, not really, that's a quote from the movie Office Space. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

@Michaela G.  Thanks, that is my question about Florida, what is the law regarding taking applications.  I want to make sure my PMs understanding of the law is correct.

The properties are in Florida.

Jason DiClemente Yes I think you are on to something. I think I will try a different PM next time I have a vacancy and start with one property

@Jason D.  Ok, good question about the quality of the tenants they have been providing... A little tricky to answer.  One of the issues I have with the PM is they say they can only take one application at a time (or more, but only if they are turned in the same day).  Maybe this is true, I don't know, but if I get a marginal tenant that I need to get more information on. Maybe they stayed with relatives so don't have a recent landlord reference, so we have to go back and forth to get an older reference or have some difficulty getting some of the information.  

So then I have to wait on that information or reject them in order to get the place back on the market.

They say they have to review them in order.  It seems very inefficient. Another PM said that the first one to provide all of the necessary information to approve and the funds gets the place, so it's not just one at a time.

How do other people screen and take applications?   The property is in Florida

@Michaela G. @Alexander Felice @Mags S. @Thomas S. @Cara Lonsdale  I appreciate the input, it's helpful bouncing things off of the knowledgable BP crowd :)

Any further thoughts are appreciated.

One other question I just thought of, how to vet a new PM and how to transition from the old without hard feelings.

Ok, that's 2 questions....

@Nathan Gesner  That's good input. It's interesting, because I've stayed with the PM for a long time because I do trust them, at least in the sense that they are honest and would never steal and don't do things to purposely inflate prices or anything like that. So the trust we are talking about is a little different I guess in the that I don't trust that their judgement of tenants is the same as mine.

It's also interesting that you bring up deposits, because I've been experimenting lately with higher deposits. The standard is one month and I find that I always lose on moveout because the rents are $500-$900 or so and that doesn't cover much. The last 2 I've charged 1.5 months deposit. I think I will continue with that as the rental market is tight.

I'm considering going with a large PM that is in multiple states and is growing into my smaller market.  Well actually it's Andrew Propst's PM company from the latest BP podcast. I still need to look into the company more, though.

 Thanks for all of the input everyone. I'm still trying to sort out how to best deal with this. As I said, I have some issues with the PM, but some of them may be self inflicted. 

I may be getting too involved in some areas and not involved enough in others.

@Nathan Gesner  You make a good point. I think part of the issue is I don't completely trust the PM to make the same decision that I would. Sometimes the PM likes to give people starting out "a chance", without prior credit history and that has cost me before.

So there's a question. How do you treat applicants with little to no prior credit history?

@Alexander Felice  I appreciate the input.  I agree it's hard to boil down someone's credit history into a single number. I would like both actually.

How do you judge what you see in the credit report?

@Cara Lonsdale  Thanks for the input, yes, I do want the credit history, but I have a hard time objectively determining the credit worthiness of the applicant hearing a list of the credit information over the phone from the property manager. 

If there is a list of items and they have a late payment from a few years ago and a cable collection, then some medical collection from 5 years ago, but everything else is good now.

I have a hard time judging that applicant objectively. I'm just asking for a FICO score that every lender uses to assess the creditworthiness of a borrower.

Like I said , there are good things about the PM for sure, but I feel there are some things which make things harder for me and also more expensive.