All Forum Posts by: Brian Hoffman

Thanks Lloyd; I appreciate your input.

Hi Awesome people,

I have a 4 bedroom house occupied by three young professionals and one of them recently lost their job. He's interested to move out due to lack of funding, but they are a few months into a one year lease. Unfortunately I did not include an early termination clause in the lease. I believe the other two housemates would like to stay, so one solution is for them to find a substitute and allow the unemployed to move on. 

Any thoughts on this? 

• Is it appropriate to toss the lease, or should I hold him to the agreement?
• Should I charge a fee for changing the lease? 
• Should I start a new 1 yr lease? 
• Any recommendations on the deposit/cleaning topic?
• Any loose ends you think I may be missing?

I'm sorry, I'm new at this and admittingly not great at it...

She doesn't have any current accounts. EVERYTHING is closed it seems. All 15 installment accounts are in/sold to collections. She has 4 revolving accounts, (all closed) 2 listed as current, 2 listed as collections. The 2 in collections seems like they were current in 2012, but then she let them go.

I have some potentials, but noone seems to be biting as hard as this individual. Her desire to garden also struck a cord that no others did. I know, not really important. I don't see any evictions on her credit report and she stated that she's never had an eviction.

Originally posted by @Alan Russell:

You pretty much hit my concern on the attorney aspect. I know that it's unfair to judge her by the profesion, and I do everything I can to ensure mmy leases go through my attorney so everything is up to snuff, but it basically boils down to if she get's fiesty, she knows the game better than I, doesn't need to pay for advice, and has more favorable laws on her side

I didn't know that team was there. Thanks, I'll look into that now.

Thanks for the input.

I'm not sure why they are still showing on the report. I wish I had a better understanding of the account history. I'm using the credit report service under Cozy.co. Have you ever used this?

The payment history shows 2 yrs since last late payment, 0 accounts open, 13 accounts in collections, and 3 public records. I really wish I understood how that correlates to a bankruptcy.

Hi,

I am trying to rent a 1/1 and had an applicant that was proactive, friendly, and seemingly perfect with the exception of credit. She has a 477. Discussing it with her, it seems that her late husband racked up quiet a pile of debt that resulted in her eventually filing for bankruptcy. The report shows that she has been current on all bills for the past 2 years, but has a long string of closed accounts for collections, and she says that these are tied to the bankruptcy that took place 9 yrs ago. if the bankruptsy happened 9 yrs ago I'm not sure why the closed account are still showing for the past couple years as 'major derogatory assigned to collections'.

She has provided a list of references (previous landlords, neighbors and housemates), and otherwise seems ideal. She is a self-employed divorce lawyer if that makes any difference and the rent is $2k/mo (furnished with utilities). She has offered to pay 2x deposit to ease the concern.

Renting to an attorney also seems like it could go either way. On the one hand she knows the expectations and there shouldn't be any surprises. On the other hand she likely knows how to exploit tenant-friendly laws to her advantage.

Do you guys have any experience renting to non-cookie cutter tenants? I assume past foreclosure/bankruptsy must be a more and more common thing in recent years after the bubble popped. 

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks