All Forum Posts by: Carlos Lez

Dear fellow members, I am confronted with a weird accusation that I haven’t seen in 15 years of managing student rentals. We have multiple properties rented to students living in different rooms. We start showing rooms to prospective tenants right around a month before lease expiration. We have a blurb in the lease that has the tenant agree that with a 24 hour notice we will be showing their room. We barely spend a minute in a room to show the layout to prospective students.
subsequent to a showing yesterday I get the following email. I am seeking advice on how to  address this and help me with a response. We don’t require but advise tenants to carry renters insurance which they usually don’t carry. We don’t know what transpired and if any of this is even true. The email;

when I returned to my room this morning I noticed that my room looked out of place. I know you guys had people come look at the rooms Saturday afternoon between 3 & 5. My suitcase was opened when I returned and I had a bag that was ripped in it. I know some of my drawers were left a little open and my heels were out of place when I returned. I took photos of how my room looked before I left with timestamps and took photos of how it looked when I returned with timestamps. I am concerned because I had money in my wallet that was left in my room that is now missing. I think that if you are showing people the rooms this is an invasion of privacy of someone to go through my things. And I expect the money to be returned to me.

 Doesn't say anything expressly about this. Is it implied in residential contracts? If you can share verbiage I'd appreciate it.

With the recent storms in the Bay Area there have been a lot of power outages due to PG&E equipment failure. Some areas have been out of power for 4 days and counting. One of the resident's writes to us;

"You need to consider a credit or money refund for March rental payment. We have been without electrical power for four days.Your leasing company is receiving a very poor grade!"

Any thoughts on a fitting reply? 

tenant says “The water heater smells like rotten eggs, sometimes like a foul smell and sounds like almost a gas leak near the water heater at night to clarify.”. I am a qualified engineer with construction skills and have maintained and installed water heaters. However I am not licensed. I went there to check out the water heater which is only 5 years old and is working correctly. There was no evidence of any leakage of combustion gases or hydrocarbons. There was no smell and gas detectors did not detect any leakage. 

I reported back to them but they now say “is it possible to have receipts of the tests done for the water heater because it did have a foul smell. I want to ask who did you have come in to check the water heater. I just want to insure you did have someone come in who knows what they are looking for and is experienced in checking out a water heater not just people in charge of renting the place.”

what would be an appropriate response to this?

 I totally agree with you. It is literally not worth engaging with these people. The more transparent you are the more they get after you. He is breaking the lease because he had some dress of doing a startup that has now gone bust and he is moving back to school.

 It is the current tenant who is breaking the lease. He wanted to see a link to my ad that I have posted to which he commented about pictures.

You are right that a prospective tenant will walk through the property before signing a lease.

What came across as of was the tenant telling me to post the ad a certain way. He is obligated to mitigate the damages and he should post his own ads.

 Your rant is baseless and does not answer the question which is about a tenant that wants to break is lease and is now trying to coach me on what type of an ad I should post. After 15 years of property management I don't need to learn what type of pictures to take or what details to include in the ad. 

Your response was baseless and full of assumptions. How did you come to this conclusion, "If the property is really that bad looking that you don't want to put up pics, maybe you need to update or sell."

Dear Fellow members,

I have this tenant who wants to terminate his lease after only  3 months into his one year lease. I understand that landlords have a duty to mitigate damages. But the tenant is telling me the following. I am seeking your valuable input on how to reply to him.  He is criticizing my method of advertising, unsolicited;

"Could you guys could put up pictures of the unit online so prospective tenants are more likely to inquire. Looking at the unit online all there is is a picture of the back of the house, nothing with the unit at all. I think these are necessary for a good faith attempt at advertising. I have some I can send as well if need be. I want there to be adequate resources and time to find a new tenant."

He had asked for a link to our ad and I sent him a link to one of the many ads that we have running.I haven't inquired with him on what efforts he is making to get that apartment re-rented.

 Thanks Nathan! Your responses are always precise and spot on.