All Forum Posts by: Harriet Baldwin

Let the letter speak for itself.. And in the future be careful not to let people think they are "pre" approved. 

If you do engage, emphasize they didn't do anything wrong, it's just that they don't meet your criteria. But be careful, they will want to know how they can meet your criteria and that becomes a slippery fair housing slope.

At the Turning Stone event, Jaime had fielded a similar question - iirc she was thinking that the 3rd time or so you were in court, the judge would see the pattern and uphold the eviction.  

I think the holdover approach may become more popular.  And you wouldn't necessarily have to have a m2m form to make it work - if paying late (or unpaid late fees) are a default of the lease, you could (*if* I understand the new law, ianal) send a notice to cure (as set forth in your lease), and unless the $$ are paid in full you could then cancel the lease and start a holdover action.  I think you would still need to do a small claims court action for any non-rent monies outstanding (late fees, etc.).

Someone (maybe me?) did ask if we can allocate tenant monies received to rent last (that is, pay outstanding late fees before current rent); Jaime basically said that was not a good idea under the current law - that the court would likely re-allocate when assessing damages and it might harm your case to have been more aggressive.

Also, Jaime felt that raising rents and offering discounts for early payment could work - that way it's unpaid rent, not a late fee, in the eyes of the law.  But you would need to offer the discount across the board (to avoid fair housing issues/appearance of favoritism).

I have had schizophrenic tenants.  Some are okay as tenants once they settle in, some not so much.  Change tends to be especially hard to handle/process.  

imo you definitely want a lawyer to at least review your proposed course of action.  The crux of the tenant issue is no payment & no lease - was she a guest of the seller?  Or was there ever a verbal lease agreement?  An affidavit from the seller may be in order...ianal and local laws vary. Before closing, make sure the lawyer is confident that the title is good & marketable.

For the human side, you won't cure this person or be the one human that the tenant can relate to in a linear fashion.  I suggest your goal be to avoid undo harm *while pursuing your legal rights and objectives*.  Does the seller have any contact information for the tenant's payee (if any), counselor/psych care person (if any), or relative-who-still-is-involved (many mentally ill people seem to have burned out their relatives...).  These people can be very helpful in such a situation.  Any neighbors who can offer perspective?  If the tenant has no identifiable support network, call your area's Adult Protective Services and let them know the situation - they may not talk to you until you own the property, in which case have the seller reach out first.  There may be resources that can help the tenant transition to a more stable living situation.

Family member had a similar situation about a decade ago - only they were never going to do the fence themselves, and it was the neighbor who was trimming trees up to the property line.  My relatives had to call the cops & go to court to get an injunction to get the neighbor to not interfere with the already-permitted fence construction.  Cops were happy to help, one of them had gone to high school with the difficult neighbor and had seen the movie before so to speak...

@Joshua Israel there is a very active landlord attorney in Buffalo & Rochester who has great insights, not sure I can post her name under forum rules, pm me if you want specifics...

I attended the Unify Upstate Landlords conference yesterday 9/10/19 at Turning Stone.  Lots of lobbying and coalition building are on the horizon.  There was an open Q&A with an experienced upstate landlord attorney, the practice/adjudication of the new law isn't exactly settled yet, and ianal, but some actions by landlords include:

-move to eviction more quickly

-raise rents (and in some cases offer early payment discounts)

-increase qualification requirements.  Anecdotally, some landlord in NYC now "requires" income of 50x the monthly rent. Yes, fifty.  I assume so anyone with less income than that will offer to pay in advance so they can be approved despite falling short of the income hurdle

The new law seems likely to have the biggest impact on the lower end of the market, and it's hurting tenants as well.  Folks are no longer allowed to pay extra security to overcome falling short on qualifications, and with longer eviction processes landlords are raising and/or becoming more strict on those qualifications.

New York upstate was about 21 days but thanks to the new bill passed in June 2019 is now more like 57 days. Downstate is usually longer. 

@Jason Behrens in our community, the water bill also cannot go in tenants' name(s), but the water department can bill tenants by sending the bill to "Occupant" at the residence. Is that an option with your utility?

Another option would be to give the water account info to the tenants and have them check with the water board to pay what's due.  Our local water board will print out a bill for a resident if the resident goes to the water board office).  In our area, unpaid water bills result in a shutoff and extra $75 fee; tenants are highly motivated to avoid either the shutoff or the additional fee.

@Kim Meredith Hampton sounds like a smart approach.  When you mentioned the FL limit on "our" money in the trust account I jumped to the conclusion that the property management company owned some of the real estate directly :)

@Kim Meredith Hampton @Karen Higgins - have either of you considered creating a separate LLC so that the property management company is *not* the owner of your own properties, even though you also own the management company? That might make things even cleaner.

We do manage properties for multiple entities, but we are whole or part-owners of each of the other entities.  

Although Appfolio suggests doing owner distributions 1x/month, I sometimes do distributions more than 1x/month (which could help keep below caps such as the FL $5,000 of "own" money in the trust account if the a single company is the manager & owner).

(sorry for sequential posts, I took so long to type and post that there were posts I hadn't read, and I couldn't figure out how to tag you in the edit mode of my first post...)

iirc Appfolio lets you manage multiple bank accounts, but only 1 per g/l item.  That is, you can have 1 rents receiving account, and one security deposit account.  

If those are both trust accounts, then you could transfer self-owned property rents to yourself.  

If you want more bank accounts, ask Appfolio or search the help center or user community, and you can ask a question in the user community as well.  I know you can do multiple g/l's (that is "manager held security" vs "owner held security"), but not sure if that means Appfolio will deposit to separate bank accounts...I am guessing not.

Not sure about MN, but in NY the security deposits are actually held in the name of the tenant (bank account is a master account with sub-accounts), so would be no need for multiple master security deposit accounts from a regulatory perspective.  Your owners may request separate ones...in which case you could make transfers out from Appfolio receiving account anyway.

Definitely figure it out ahead of time before going live, I didn't 100% understand Appfolio before we went live and it was a mild hassle to untangle things later.