All Forum Posts by: Chris G.

@John Hernandez thanks for the reply, yes that was the plan. 

I want to see what other peoples opinions are on this topic but I feel a home owner or property owner should look into the risks when renting or handing over a property to a management company.

My example for this is an owner that wanted our management services around 8 months ago lets say, they we're moving far away but wanted to use this second property as a rental. We had a qualified tenant move in a few weeks after on a one year lease. They paid rent on time for around the first 3-4 months, the last 2-3 months they've been paying super late. Of course we do the 3 day notices but unless the owner gives permission to allows us to we can't file for eviction since it's their money. Well for whatever reason this owner was mad they weren't getting paid rent but not wanting to evict after we recommended to do so many times. Of course the tenant figured that out after awhile so they continued to pay late, I feel this was the owners first mistake for refusing to pay to evict. I then got a call from this owner saying they're wanting to move back into the home (the rental) which I explained the tenant has a legal contract you can't just have them leave so you can move back in, I said the only way to get them to leave early is by evicting or them voluntarily moving out early. Which they weren't too happy to hear. I just feel there's a lot of owners like this out there that don't look into these risks or situations prior to giving over a home or renting it themselves and end up blaming whoever they hired assuming it was a risk free business. Happy to hear any other views on this. 

We have retail store from on a block in the historic district. Currently have 3 tenants in 3 shops there with a sidewalk awning that attaches to the building. The awning is quite old and technically "historic" we we're receiving complaints from shoppers as well as the tenants regarding the awning. Mainly saying it looked dangerous and unsafe from the wood being old and sheet metal warped due to weather. Nothing ever fell or came off even in bad storms it was mainly how it looked. Most large vendors would only replace the whole thing and not do maintenance which was way more then we we're looking to pay $10k-15k bids. Eventually the town told us we could replace "wood for wood" and it would be considered repair and maintenance. So recently we got a small vendor we use a lot that's very good at wood repair and roofs to go work on replacing the cracked and rotten wood. In order to replace the wood we had to remove the sheet metal and as soon as that happened the town shut us down saying we weren't doing maintenance we we're rebuilding it and need historic approval. Now I feel there is a fine line on their definition of replacing wood for wood because we we're doing that but in a larger scale and not just 1-2 pieces but it would still have the same appearance. So now it's half taken apart and there's a large fall festival in the town next week. The city won't approve our written application until the next meeting which is the end of November. I'm assuming we're kinda stuck at this point but has anyone else dealt with something similar. 

@Ron Singh

Had a similar situation where the tenant was paying way less then market value. Since they we're going m-m I gave them a call and explained the situation and then sent them an official notice that the rent would be increasing to X amount on X date. If they couldn't afford it or didn't want to pay that amount they needed to give me notice to vacate. Not sure about your area but here we can terminate a m-m lease for no particular reason and they have to leave within 30-60 days. 

There's a 4b 4b unit we rent to mainly students we rent it by the bedroom. One of the tenants starting smoking cigarettes, not in the unit but I guess the smell of him just gets left over everything in the unit. He's been in there 6 months and never smelled like that but the past month it smells awful when you walk in. Honestly I'm surprised the other 3 tenants haven't complained or mentioned anything to me. I was thinking to give notice to cure letter but not sure if that's worth it because 1. I doubt he can stop smoking in a week or smelling like that 2. I doubt he can fix the unit smelling like that in a week. I figure the only way to solve this would be to evict him or give him the option to break his lease and leave. The bedroom he's in has new carpet and was freshly painted so I'm assuming those would have to be replaced and possibly some items around the unit. Does anyone have tips for the best way to get rid of the smell without having to replace everything since his deposit won't cover that. 

@Kim Meredith Hampton

I usually make a trip by the unit maybe once a month or every other month it seems mainly just going in the common area/ kitchen to either check things over or if there was maintenance issue. Of course they could have people over late at night and I wouldn’t know but I’ll see if someone rats the others out. 

@Caroline Gerardo

Thanks for the reply. I do know what both of those look like so I’ll keep my eye out. We’ve charged in the past usually $50 extra per tenant as of last month for this unit and no tenant had any idea so maybe if something is going on they’ll rat them out with a higher rate this time.

To add on these tenants are either full time students or 9-5 jobs so they’re rarely in the unit during the day. 

So the shared living units we manage  mainly for students they are 4 bed 4 bath 1200 sqft. We include $200 of utility charges a month. Anything over is split among the tenants. Lately with electric costs rising we’ve been charging tenants an extra $25-50 a month it seems. But we have one unit that out of no where we get September bill it’s $900 (avg is $180-300 for us). Pretty much 700 out of 900 is electric cost using 4300 kwh which is extremely high. Contacted the owner and he wants this charged to the tenants like normal, it would be impossible pretty much for the tenants to use this much power, looking back at the last 12 months of electric bills it has been 1000-1300 kwh per month and now 3-4 times higher. I feel there is either a utility company issue or a major electrical issue and don’t think that should fall on the tenants, looking for opinions on this. I know the owner doesn’t want to have to pay that alone but still these tenants are grad students I know their smart enough to figure out using that much electric in a month for that size unit would be impossible and will refuse to pay. 

@Padam Neopane

I would recommend having a section in the lease regarding pets. For example we allow pets (depending on the property) but there is a one time $200 pet fee and an additional $25 per month. It's hard to say some cats have been very good and had no issues when the tenants moved out but other times the cat scratches things or pulled up on the carpet or had cat pee smell. That would then be taken out of SD if there we're any issues.