All Forum Posts by: Michele Fischer

You are getting good advice.  Realistically, you will probably only get the deposit amount back, but you should itemize the cost to get it rent ready and the rent for the period they should have given notice and put that on a move out deposit itemization.

If you don't have a forwarding address mail it to the address of the unit.  If it doesn't get forwarded, retain it as proof of attempting to deliver.

Keep in mind that if you are able to rerent the unit before the notice period expires, you can only charge the tenant until you collect rent from the new tenant, you can't charge two parties for the same unit.

I would reserve judgement until you see how long it is vacant.

Even with regular inspections it is difficult to guage what condition you will be the property back in and it is good to have some flexibility in how fast it needs to be turned and ready for rospective applicants to make a good showing.

That said, they should hustly while it is vacant, able to work long hours to get it ready.  Some property management companies have a waiting list of applicants that they don't need to do a lot of advertising.

Property managers will never minimize vacancy costs the way that owners would, but we find that ours increases rent enough to more than offset a few weeks of vacancy.  If it is a month or more that is a concern.

My perspective is that if applicants had good credit they would buy rather than rent.  One compensating factor we look at is what type of debt they are carrying.  Medical is understandable, consumer is normal, and any debts to utility companies or anything that looks like it could be a landlord judgement are a no.

Like so many other things that happen on our properties, this is so hard to police and enforce and even know the extent. Anything agaisnt the lease is always just temporary and you can't verify much one way or the other.

I personally would ask for a quick text of the breed and length of stay when it happens and leave it at that.  Then if you had any issues (dog attack, prolonged stay, suspected second dog) you would have some information to help decide how to proceed, but it is too hard to enforce anything more.

For some comic relief, I am going to say mint green.  On all surfaces.  Walls, ceiling, switch plates, all of it the same shade of mint green, in all rooms of the apartment.  This is a gift one of our outgoing tenants left us.  They thought they were helping.

I guarantee that someone on a housing voucher will hang blankets in the windows regardless of what you provide.  It seems to be a low income cultural thing, maybe for cost effective privacy.

We like to use wide slat inexpensive blinds on all windows.

I'm not sure it is worth a lot of process for only a few units.

Is the pain point with the checks that you don't want to be close to the mail, or you don't like e-depositing them, or the time lag to find out whether it will bounce?  We liked checks way better than cash.

But our favorite was when the tenants went to our bank and deposited to our accounts.  Some risk that they could make partial payments, but we never had any issues.  

You are getting good advice.

We had a tenant completely abandon once and it was unnerving.  We were checking arrest, hospital, and death data, he was just gone and we never figured out what happened.  We have used our states abandoment policy several times to pursue getting a unit back when rent goes overdue.

We would not evict if we can get possession back via abandon process.

As additional protection, when we rent to a single occupant, we have them fill this out as part of the lease so we have someone else to work with:

In the event of abandonment, arrest or death, the following person has the authority to decide when to terminate tenancy and how to store/distribute my belongings:

Name: ____________________________________________________

Address: ____________________________________________________

Phone #: ____________________________________________________

Some states have a lease automatically revert to a month to month agreement when the time period expires, you need to know the laws in your state.  New paperwork covers you regardless though.

You are getting good advice.

When the tenant contacted you, were they really looking for a discount or a deferral? It's important that everyone is on the same page.

Go into this assuming they will not catch up.  Get agreement from them that if they cannot get caught up in a certain time period that they need to move.  Make the agreement something you can live with and be firm.  Consider asking for partial payments that align to the paychecks that the tenants still working so that you can see progress move often to guage how things are going, and have them be less behind total.  

And watch utilities if you will be responsible to pay them after move-out, people often let utilities slide when they are strapped for cash.