All Forum Posts by: Lyndsey Keller

Still in the showing/pre screening process, but what do you all use to verify when someone's income comes from disability or retirement?

First timer here, and I was very surprised that when I advertised our house for rent last week, all the responses I got. Showed it to 5 different people last week and have 6 more to show to this weekend. Apparently there is a high demand for rentals around here.

Okay, well, I guess we'll just cross that bridge when we get there. I have 7 more people to show it to this weekend, no since worrying about it unless it will definitely be an issue.

Another newbie question I thought of today on the way back from showing my first rental to the first prospective tenant. Now, I haven't even read their application yet, but he did mention he would have to give 30 days notice to his current landlord, if accepted.

Let's say I do end up going with this guy, who obviously can't move in for another 30 days:

When would we sign the lease?
Do you take a deposit to hold the house for the 30 days? Can you then use that as the or part of the security deposit?

I have to assume this is a common situation, yet I've never read about this. Scenerio from different people and books looks more like you call them to tell them they've been accepted to lease it, you meet and sign the lease soon thereafter, and then arrange a move-in date rather quickly.

Okay, thank you for the quick response. I was planning to just call to verify everything, but then I was reading about Proof of Income letters. I just became concerned.

Getting ready to show my first rental house tomorrow, and have a quick question about employment verification. Should have I asked potential tenants to bring a document with them to the showing? Or do they typically fill out the application at home and mail it in with any documents?

Once you have a tenant in place:

How often do you do inspections?

Do you include inspection info in your lease agreement?

How do tenants handle an inspections?

What exactly do you look for?

How do you bring attention to anything that is wrong/worrisome?

Okay, so land contracts are out the door. Too much legal issues that I don't even want to get into. We are trying to sell this house and we aren't getting anywhere. I'm beyond annoyed at this point. I know the market is down, and apparently anyone around here even possibly interested in it can't get a loan from a bank. We've got it priced higher than what we want out of it (we'd take it), b/c we figured someone will offer lower. It was with a realtor for 6 months and now we're trying to sell it ourselves (going on 1 1/2 months) since the realtor was useless to us. Should we continue to drop the price? Any other methods to get someone to at least make us an offer, or do we just continue to play the waiting game?

Our current home is the same way. Front door is where company/visitors go to. We always used the back door (came straight from garage) and that's where we hung coats, kicked off shoes, etc. I thought it was odd at first when we bought the place, but actually, rather liked it. Found out later that the house had been continually added onto, so that why everything was laid out the way it was.

Can someone give me a crash course on land contracts? We are trying to sell a house and EVERYONE interested is wanting a land contract. I understand we would essentially be the "bank" they would make payments to us. However, if a real bank won't loan them money, why should we? Definitely would want to do a credit check, right?

We want to get rid of the mortgage payment on this house. A month ago we were going to start renting it, but quickly realized that it would NOT follow the 50% rule. Wouldn't a land contract essentially be like rent, except they will "own" the house and therefore have to pay for all maintenance?