All Forum Posts by: Amanda Davis

If your LLC does not own the property you defeat the purpose of liability protection. If the tenant wants to sue, they would sue the owner of the property, so if the property is in your name, it your personal assets at risk.

If you keep proper business records and do not comingle business and personal funds, it is not easy to "pierce the corporate veil". Talk to a real estate attorney, and they can help you craft the best plan to protect your assets.

First you would pick your tenant. If your tenant has a section 8 voucher, they will submit your property to HA for approval. Then the HA will schedule it for an inspection. I don't know about your area but in Cleveland it takes 2 to 4 weeks to schedule an inspection. After the inspection, if you place passes, then HA will tell you what is the max rent they will pay for that unit. ( You can probably figure this out beforehand by talking to other landlords in your area). 

Before you market the place you want to find out what the market rent the HA is paying because you will be stuck with your advertised rent, unless it is above the market rent. If it is above they will allow you to lower it, but they won't let you raise it ( at least not until lease is up).

Section 8 is a government housing program run by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is administered by a local housing authority (HA). The housing authority sets the market rent for the area, generally speaking the market rent that the HA sets is higher than the rent you could get for the low income neighborhoods ( and lower than you can get for middle class areas). So if you are investing in low income areas, you can make a lot of money renting to the section 8 tenant.

Before you make a offer on the place, get a copy of HA section 8 inspection list. So you will have an idea what work it would take for this unit to pass a section 8 inspection.

You may have breached the lease with the other 2 tenants, if you did not have them sign off on the lease. This may give the other tenants grounds to opt out of the lease. 

Where is the rental property is located? In Ohio, you would not be successful with the eviction if you deposited the rent check.

Most likely, the owner of the house needs to contact his divorce attorney  and get a Court to order a sale of the property. Some Courts ( I'm not familiar with PA) will do temporary orders for some financial things but usually large assets, like a house, they won't decide how to handle it until the divorce is finalized. Since this house was bought during the marriage, most likely you will have to wait for the divorce to be finalized if the wife won't agree for the property to be sold.

I'm not familiar with MA law so I don't know how complicated the process is. I'm probably biased but I would consider getting an attorney esp. If you never done it before. This way you can ensure that it is done correctly.

In Ohio you wouldn't go to small claims if you already have a judgement. unless MA is different, you would not use small claims to enforce a judgment. You need to probably need to try to start garnishment proceedings. You probably should consult a local attorney.

I will try to be there

Welcome! I'm from Lorain County too