All Forum Posts by: Michele Fischer

I like to provide new doormats as a kind of housewarming gift, plus a fire extinguisher and any specialized floor cleaner. And a roll of TP hanging up. We clean the carpets (and charge them) if they don't leave a receipt proving they did, assuming we didn't tell them we'd be replacing the carpet so they don't need to. I consider 4 hours of cleaning for one year of tenancy to be the expected level, and charge them for anything above that.

Phil, welcome to Bigger Pockets! I'm down south, but my heart is still in Seattle. I currently have 2 great, 2 good, & 3 bad tenants, and one just moving in this week that we are hopeful for but time will tell. I guess that's not too bad of a distribution given that it is low income...

@Tom Goans , your approach scares the heck out of me, but I do appreciate the attitude adjustment. I'm not sure being so rigid is getting me very far, and it is easy to forget that my mission to make the neighborhood a better place includes how I interact with tenants and applicants. I am curious what information you do ask about for screening.

In my units.

Almost none of my applicants and tenants even have credit scores.

I still run credit, to look at who they owe money to (easier to discount rent to own, credit cards, and medical than utilities, judgments, etc) and to see if their addresses jive with the application (which they rarely do).

@Tom Goans, does aligning due dates to pay dates mean you are taking multiple payments a month? Do you build in any extra fees for being flexible with due dates or taking multiple payments? If a tenant gets paid on the 10th and normal due date is the 4th, how would you handle that? I hate waiting until the 10th to see if there is an issue.

I watch Craigslist to see what the local market will bear. I put myself on the high end of the range, but not over what others are asking for. In my experience, there are folks who get almost all of their deposit back and folks that still owe me a lot of money even after the deposit is applied, and very little in the middle where the amount really matters very much.

we paid a tenant $200 for keys, she needed gas money. Rent was $500. A lot of our tenants don't understand their "rights" to stay without paying.

Thanks for piping up for me, Steve. My BiggerPockets time has been severely cut right now due to my entertaining but time consuming low income tenants. With the day we've had, my husband is convinced that no scoring system can protect us from tenants losing their minds at the end of their tenancy. When I get my head above water again, will look at what I can contribute to the BP community on the topic.

I'll back Steve up. The more you provide, the more tenants can trash. I stick to the basics of safe and clean after experiences of tenants not respecting the extras. Appreciate yes, take care of no.

We are doing chili and line dancing this year. And always sidewalk chalk. For latecomers, it is very quick, fun, and cost effective to go door to door with a small cooler handing out ice cream or fruit bars.

I am also in the low income market, and still check credit. Our applicants rarely have a score at all – we almost always see “file not scored because subject does not have sufficient credit”. We expect applicants to have poor or no credit. We run the credit report to verify addresses and to see what types of debts they have. Addresses sometimes come back with odd date ranges or in odd sequential order; the dates are only captured when the applicant applies for credit. We look for evidence of an address not disclosed due to not wanting us to talk to that landlord. We also review the list, age, and amounts of unpaid debt. Medical, auto, and rent to own debit are less problematic than utility companies or what could potentially be a landlord. Agree that any credit screening option that requires the applicants to provide permission (and sometimes even pay the fee) via e-mail doesn’t work with low income populations. . They either don’t have e-mail or have too many technical difficulties to process the request. We use aaacredit.net. They require a one page questionnaire signed by the applicant, which we’ve incorporated into our application process. For about $30 each, they return credit reports within hours.