All Forum Posts by: Jason Cox

 Don't know. Personally I would get it directly from a source in my state to make sure you have the most current one. In my county the county clerk office has a packet available for a small fee.

One more comment, re: the idea of keeping this tenant on.

I have a feeling this tenancy will implode on it's own. The 70 year old man doesn't live at the house, he lives somewhere else. If they aren't allowed to do airbnb anymore they have no need for the house.  I predict these people will soon ask the OP if they can break the lease, or else they will just cease contact and just stop paying rent.

I'm not the person who wrote what you are responding to, but in my opinion there is no reason to restructure the lease. If you wanted to keep the tenant you would serve a Cure/Quit notice to them to stop subletting and then you would have to monitor the house closely for awhile to make sure they aren't using it as an airbnb again.

As far as losing this tenant, not much of value would be lost if they moved out. This is a major lease violation, assuming what OP says is accurate. It would be hard to trust this person in the future.

 This is not a good idea.

 1) the excess liability policy will be written by some company that does this kind of policy -- usually USLI. They may be able to write your umbrella policy too. These type of policies are written all the time in Florida due to Citizen's limitations. An agent will be able to advise you.

2) the home inspection will give you the knowledge you need for hidden problems like aluminum wiring, poly pipe etc. Also just facts like the age of the house and whether any part of the roof is flat -- you can find that info out on your own via public records and photos online. You may be able to find out the age of the roof by looking at county permit records.  

3) When you are ready to apply for a policy the carrier may require a separate 4 point inspection. This usually isn't a big deal unless there are some very old systems in the house that need to be replaced, or things that a big no-no like poly pipe. You can google 4 point inspection to see what it entails.

I'd serve the C/Q notice and get an eviction lawyer involved if he doesn't comply with the lease rules. In fact I might even have the lawyer serve the c/q notice by process server just to get the point across firmly. This situation needs to be nipped in the bud fast because of the liability and damage concerns.

I've found that if someone lies or acts uncooperative during the application stage, there's always some kind of rule following problem with this person later on once they become your tenant, even if they had good credit, good job. Best to avoid those who tell lies and try to hide things, even if they they seem like harmless "white lies".

Sorry, but it sounds like you got played. If you are stuck renting to this person learn from this experience so it doesn't happen again. Get your screening streamlined so you know exactly what you will and will not tolerate.

I thought this might be an interesting topic. I'm talking about during pre-screening before you have run an application. Something that may not be a DQ but sets off your bad gut feeling (rightly or wrongly). I'm not really talking about obvious things like someone needing to move tomorrow. More subtle cues.

For me:

--prescreening answers pre-loaded with any type of "story" instead of just answering the questions

--won't just plainly state their income and give a number when asked  -- "oh I make lots of tips, and I get commissions....  Landlord must put in work if they want to get a real answer from this person.

--inserting irrelevant information when answering questions ("I am a US Army veteran" etc)

--they claim to have no rental history because they owned a house 

Disagree strongly on this. Too many types of offenses, too complex to make hard and fast written rules on this. And with Biden & friends constantly changing the rules in the middle of the game to make things more "fair" having hard written rules on criminal can easily blow up in your face. My criminal criteria now is simply "all criminal offenses will be evaluated on a case by case basis".

You will really need to call a local agent to get an idea. It is very slim pickings right now, Citizens is the only option for many people. If you do get stuck with Citizens remember they only offer 100K liability, you'll have to buy an excess liability policy from another carrier to get higher amounts.

When buying a property here, allow for the expenses of updates to make the property insurable. They don't allow aluminum wiring, poly pipe, or (generally speaking) roofs more than 15 years old here. If someone does insure a roof at 15+ years it will be at a very jacked up premium.