All Forum Posts by: Jesse M.

A little bit tongue in cheek and a little bit serious, but it seems to me that landlords deal with so much crap (literally and figuratively) and so many awful situations and bad people that its hard to feel that guilty about running your business/property the way you need it to be run.  To be more serious though, you could help your conscience and their move by doing things like providing them fair time to find a new place, going easy on their security deposit, writing them a letter of recommendation, etc.

I think Jim K. is spot on with his prediction....will have to come back to this thread in a year and see what ended up actually happening.

We all know that government doesn't often voluntarily let go of power / rights / bureaucracy that they have taken or created.  Its a classic lesson of history, and those who ignore it are doomed to repeat it, as they say.

Interesting strategy, hey at least he's trying something to adapt to this craziness.  I would think it could piss off some judges and might leave the landlord in a worse position, but then on the other hand if the tenant is not the judgement proof type and cares about the potential of having a huge judgement chasing them around then i could see how this could add motivation to leave when they realize their situation living there is over. (a lot of tenants may think their missed rent is going to get forgiven and after this is all over they can eventually resume paying their old rent and be safe....in this strategy it might help to eliminate that thinking from their minds)

Hope it works for them, glad to see the market adapting to the unjust and unconstitutional situation landlords have been put in.

To Matthew's comment, part of why small landlords like myself are selling isnt just the moratorium, thats just the big *** straw that broke the camel's back but the constant push against landlords vs other providers of goods and services has been unrelenting.  Hows your screening process gonna work out for ya when states like NJ block evictions from being public record, or prevent you from using criminal history, etc.

One of the worst parts to me is the sheer lie of putting this massive burden on landlords to "stop the spread of covid" meanwhile every tenant is getting their coffee and lottery tickets every morning (have you been to a wawa in NJ lately? Huge lines but apparently no covid? I guess only evictions spread it?) , shopping at the grocery store, target, costco etc.  The whole thing is a scam based on false pretext....gaslighting the american people.  Its an unbearable injustice and no one is fixing it, its too much to bear.

Yep, i gave my tenants cash for keys and my last property just got listed last week.  Sunday open house had 17 showings and 6 or 7 more today.  Cash offer at asking with no contingencies already received.

So why the hell do we want to be small landlords in NJ anymore?  Risk and effort has to be worth the reward.  Some people can keep blaming screening but you're just fooling yourself and playing roulette till catastrophy strikes.

I guess because i read them, google news sends me a handful of awful stories like this almost every day.  There's so many awful stories of the abuse that's happening.  Sadly no one cares, and none of the court cases seem to be going anywhere.  Landlords have lost this round badly it seems.  

I just wish the tables could be turned and these tenants that are commiting all kinds of crimes beyond just overstaying would finally be facing charges like fraud, extortion, terroristic threats, assault, etc...you know, the kinds of things that landlords get threatened with when they want to throw the book at one, but somehow tenants seem to be immune from.

Just make sure to set proper expectations for yourself -- you cannot get tenants out in NJ if they don't want to go right now.  All you need to do is read the news to see whats happening to some landlords in states like NJ, CA, etc.  Like above poster said, we are probably months away from having this lifted.  Just yesterday Murphy sounded new alarm bells because of "Covid variants".

No offense, but you're playing with fire by relying on sketchy venmo details.  And whats with all those deduction notes, tenants should never be deducting repairs, the landlord should be managing that.  If you have an attorney i would make sure they get on top of this ASAP...estoppel agreements, clear documentation, and be fully informed of the anti-eviction and moratorium laws in NJ.

Anyway, hope whatever decision you make works out well for you, update the post if you can, we're curious!

Awful that tenants are allowed to do this to you and other landlords.  I have to fix some pet-damaged hardwood flooring this weekend myself for a pet that was never authorized (which was new beautiful flooring before the damage).

I saw that airlines were recently allowed to clamp down on emotional support animals so hopefully the same will carry over to landlords eventually....

Landlords are being pushed down an awful road and its likely to get much worse before it gets better.  The answer to the question of how to combat the growing hatred is simple...time to get out of this business.  Over US history many types of businesses have risen and fallen so this isnt crazy talk.  Ask the general store owners.

Society might soon be finding out what happens when mom and pop landlords no longer see the risk / reward / effort equation as favorable. 

You dont see a lot of mention of it here but for some of us these moratoriums are the last straw...i'm getting out of this business asap.  Risk vs. Return is not favorable in a state like NJ and the trends are ominous.  I don't think i'm the only one making this decision.....i bet there will be an interesting set of unintended consequences to gov't action when this is all over.