All Forum Posts by: Jeffrey Duck

@Aly W. It's still early and hard to say what I have to pick from. So far, I've gotten a lot of (real) scammers and past evictions but I'm just getting started. My advertising didn't propagate like I expected and I started late in the month. Right now I'm probably more worried about short term since I had to put way more into the property than expected and I'm getting cash squeezed. I'd rather push some risk down the road a bit although I'm really feeling like this tenant is much lower risk than most other prospects.

@Frank Nolan - You hit right on the problem that I'm having. I'm really trying to streamline things while self-managing. I think I've looked at every platform that has a workflow for small landlords. The problem I'm finding is that none of them actually 'flow' well.

I decided to go with www.rentalutions.com because it does actually flow information from the listing through to payment processing, but I'm finding their interface doesn't actually support the workflow and tracking very well. The information DOES flow but the screens don't really put it all together well. I'm a software designer by day so I may be too picky but it just seems like the entire process is one manual step after another.

I'll take a look at My Smart Moves (thanks!) I'm starting to think I'm less likely to make a mistake by doing each of the steps individually.

@JR T. - It sounds like you're thinking more like I am. There are factors that can reduce the risk more than the eviction increases it.

I was worried that I'm over-doing my screening, and I may be. I've found this information before doing a background check, and for that reason, I wasn't clear about the technical outcome... The tenant wasn't actually evicted - the judge required mediation where the tenant agreed to leave at the end of this month. It sounds to me more like a landlord that got comfortable with a long term tenant and fell asleep at the switch.

I guess the reason I asked about this is because there are so many negative guidelines for who to rent to - and that's generally reasonable and natural - but no metrics to measure the positive value. It seems challenging to get started as a landlord. Everyone has something undesirable so far. Nobody has come close to a 700 FICO, long term tenant, extra income (and even a consistent voter).

I'm looking for my first tenants right now and had come to the conclusion that I wouldn't take ANYONE with an eviction, but I may break my own new rule.

I've also decided that I want long term tenants and I'm not going to be a slumlord. I've budgeted for repairs and have maintenance agreements.

Other than a CURRENT eviction, one prospective tenant appears to be rock solid so I'm wondering if people think the pluses outweigh the eviction.

Everything isn't verified yet but here's what I can see so far:

• Same residence and landlord since 2000
• Income is 120% of my requirement
• 2 FICOs (married) in 700s
• Tenant lost eviction mediation - court filings show tenant stayed through hurricane repairs and frequently did own minor repairs but withheld rent because range was broken for 4 months. Tenant was allowed to stay until end of this month.

I'd like to hear what other people think? Especially if anyone has any kind of experience with this type of a situation.

Thanks much!

@Justin Jocewicz - I would have liked to do stainless appliances but I had already replaced many of the appliances about a year ago while I had 1/2 price tenants in the building. At that time, I didn't expect things to go like they did. I also didn't know I could get granite so cheap until the counters were almost in (real bad timing!) Now that I read what you said, I do think it was a mistake but I can't afford the change now.

On the property manager debate: I'm solid on the side of self-managing for now. No matter if I do it myself or hire someone, I need to learn what a PM needs to do and I think there's no better way to do that then to do it myself at first. Once I know what the job is, I'll better know the value of a PM. I hope to buy another building and at some point, it would probably make sense to hire someone but not yet.

Moving forward, I have 3 new prospects this morning. Yeah! The first two are coming fresh out of evictions. Argh! Fortunately, I'm getting people with unique names so it's easy to isolate their history on Google. I have another question on one of them but I'm going to put that in a new post.

I seem to be limited on my use of the 'Vote' button and the ability to message people so thanks again!

Wow! A lot of great replies - Thanks to all!

Now that the places are listed, I think they are too high. Just to be safe, I included water in the price so I could lower the list price and remove water to end up with nearly the same profit. That should bring me down about 6%. I may go a bit lower to assure I'm below market.

I'm going to add the credit score requirements in the ad.

I've gone round-and-round with my wife about property managers. Her mother is a Realtor and as family... well, we're doing it ourselves. It seems like we can reach the same prospects in this market. Right now I'm using Rentalutions to manage the listing and leasing process but I'd like to find a platform that has better lead tracking. Any suggestions?

I DEFINITELY want to have good tenants at a lower rent for this building. I would rather focus on learning how to smooth out the operations and try to get another building.

@George P. The location is mixed and there are (what I've heard called) micro-neighborhoods. There's  a fair amount of Section 8 but there are very high community image standards in the city. I now think neighborhood referrals aren't best for me and I'm better off getting leads from the Internet.

@Rhonda E. I could probably write a 5000 word post about the details of what I've gone through to verify scams but as for the ID - After suspecting something wasn't right, I took a photo of the person's driver's license, held it up to her face to verify the photo, and compared the signature to that on the application. They all matched, however when I had her sign another paper in front of me, she couldn't reproduce a signature that as anywhere similar, she went from a church lady to me having to call the police.

There were a number of questions about the ad so I've attached them. Any more feedback is greatly appreciated!

Unit 1  Unit 2 I'm hoping to have professional photos this week.

Hi folks - I'm new to Bigger Pockets and to landlording. As I was getting started, I found a lot of great information here and hope it will be a good place to help me get started.

I recently inherited a triplex with 3/2 units. It was mostly trashed and I'm just about done renovating it. I have one unit ready to rent, and one more will be ready in a few days.

Due to my health and 'extended family' tenants, it took about a year to get started then about four months of construction. In the meantime, the postal carrier became my best friend by referring everyone to me who was in the neighborhood searching for a rental. 

The problem that I'm having is that EVERY prospective tenant so far has been a scam. My first one was a multi-state felon fake 'brain cancer' scammer. The second was a Realtor/tenant with real money but a fake ID and background. The third was a lawyer/CPA who is getting screwed by her current landlord and "just doesn't know what to do about it", etc. There's more background to these people's stories but I've verified them to all be scams.

Now I've stopped taking neighborhood referrals and setup an account on Rentalutions. Two listings went live on Zillow last night but haven't propagated to other sites yet. Today I've gotten 5 contacts from prospects. EVERY one of them either spell their name three different ways, can't even come close to filling out an application, and/or has some other background that's a problem. There's at least 2 red flags with every one of them.

I'm very good at Internet searching and within a few minutes I found criminal records, fake property ownership, old evictions, etc. with all of them. I'm starting to think that I'm paranoid and over searching things. I'm in South Florida which is a pretty scammy market (and I was ready for that) but it's getting ridiculous. I was honestly thinking that I got on some list and am getting my name sold as a scam prospect but now that I have a public listing, things haven't changed so that idea is out.

I'm wondering if there's something someone can identify that I might be doing wrong? Will this wash out over time? After a year, I'm ready to rent and start getting some income but not having even ONE reasonably honest (and even unqualified) prospect makes me wonder if I'm doing something completely wrong.