All Forum Posts by: Douglas Krofcheck

In some states if an apartment isn't habitable and the tenant has to temporarily move out then you're not allowed to charge rent for those days.   Double check TN's laws before you decide.

Wow.  Lawyer up, document everything with pictures/video, and only communicate with the landlord through traceable (email, certified mail) means.  You'll win.  It's illegal to lock a tenant out of their 'property', especially if you had personal items in the garage you can no longer access.  He basically stole them from you.  Police can kick you out, a landlord can't.

They probably delayed informing the tenant until they were sure you were able to close as they didn't want to lose someone if they didn't have to.  I'm in a similar situation with the first property I'm about to close on, but I'm not making moving plans until after I close.  Who knows if the tenants are going to destroy the property right as they move out, in which case I'd pull out as there are already enough repairs to deal with.

What do you want from the sellers, credit for hotel costs?  The tenants haven't done anything wrong.  They need their legal move-out time.  Perhaps you could offer them money to move out faster?

If you pull out of the property your moving plans will be destroyed rather than inconvenienced.  I don't see what a lawyer could do (please enlighten me).  The sellers can't fulfill their side of the contract so you can either pull out without losing your escrow funds or you can work with them on another addendum. 

I'm sure Airbnb has a term every lister has to agree to saying the lister has a legal right to rent the unit. They shouldn't have to do more than that. It's impossible to be a party to every transaction, to know if a property was just sold or if someone received an exception from their management or whatever. A watch list won't be updated by someone selling their property and it would take too much effort for someone to prove they now have a new controlling interest in the property and that the old listing ban has expired. Aimco has other ways to enforce their rules. They could gate in their community and track how many times a code is used to enter the area. They could install fingerprint readers as door locks. They can use software to scan Airbnb and automatically flag abuses. They could setup their own listings in a corner of the area and undercut all the tenants. They could hire onsite security for their delicate community. Etc. If you want to argue houses need to be held to higher code standards then ok, but that other then that... When was the last time an ISP or electric company had to get more than a caller's word that they wanted service? If Airbnb has to do more, then all business should too.

The reason your equity isn't a bank account is because there's no guarantee it'll exist tomorrow. If the market tanks so does the amount of money you can pull out of the property. If the apartment is destroyed then your equity also vanishes. If you are finically stable then it isn't too big of a deal. You're just not making as much as you could be. If becoming as rich as possible isn't your end goal in life then not gaining as much as you can isn't a problem. Whatever lets you sleep well at night is fine. Just be sure you can still feed yourself if it all burns down. Hopefully you still have a trickle into your emergency fund instead of putting all your savings into loan payments. Do not maintain equity as your only emergency fund!

Does she normally pay in person? If not then being out of town is no excuse.

I don't know the cost, but it might be worth looking into if the original fridge can be repaired. Double check that they simply didn't turn the temp up too. How did they find out you were reusing a fridge from the dead guy's apartment? If they haven't seen it, you could move it into storage for a day then tell them you took it out of storage for them.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but you charged one months rent as a holding deposit, then you have a 1.5 month security deposit, and on top of that they need to pay the first month's rent? So you're charging 3.5 times the monthly rent to move in? If so, I'd double check that's legal and if it isn't then refund all the money, pay them the $100 for wasting their cab ride, and apologize for your poor communication (doesn't matter if true or false). You don't want them thinking about suing you. A one month holding fee sounds like a lot for keeping a property off the market for a week. Double check your laws.

Why do you think she's moved out if she still has the keys and says there's still stuff in the apartment she wants? Sounds to me like she's still inhabiting the apartment even if she doesn't sleep there. Follow the rest of the eviction process to have her removed.

Don't put the breaker specificity in the lease, add something like a $50 fee for every minor problem you have to solve. Then also provide a troubleshooting flow chart to solve all minor problems so tenants just don't leave issues piling up to avoid the fee. I'm kind of surprised the PM didn't provide basic support over the phone, but I guess they're just middle men. On a side note, does anyone have good troubleshooting/repair guides they're willing to share? I'm about at the stage where I need to get some.