All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Donley

@Iesha Padilla I echo Greg's advice.

In general, I try to remove anything that could be a maintenance problem down the road.  

If you're looking more for inspection type items, you can find the HUD HQS document online https://www.hud.gov/sites/docu...

But in my experience, each inspector will have his or her own things that they pay attention to so it's hard to prepare entirely. We have municipal occupancy inspections here and the HUD inspections are similar. But we plan to fail both on the first try because it seems inspectors will always find something.

With that in mind, if you can get the inspection done sooner rather than later, I recommend it so that as you're finishing the rehab, you can just add the inspection items to the list and not have to make additional trips.

Good luck!

@Joshua Boyce, it's interesting to me that a good tenant went to bad in 2 years.  I haven't had this experience.  Good tenants stay good and bad ones never get better.  

Unfortunately, what you're dealing with isn't uncommon because unless you told her not to flush tampons down the toilet, tons of women do it even though they shouldn't.  

We put in our lease and rules not to flush anything but tp down the toilet.

I would file an insurance claim to get the clean up & rehab started and if you want to evict, start that process too at the same time.  Utilizing her renters insurance (if she has it) to cover the claim will require going against her liability and that will require the insurance company to investigate, which will take a long time.  So use your insurance to get it done ASAP cause you don't want that stuff sitting around.  Your insurance company can then subrogate against hers if she has it. 

Regarding getting her out - It may be easier to just have a conversation with her that she needs to move out so that you can fix the property.  Evicting her will take a long time and is tough to do in some places.  She may or may not go in which case you'll need to decide next steps but I promise you it's much less drama and money if you can just get her to leave without a court ordering it.

@Christopher Freeman So if you had market tenants (non-Section 8), you would ask them to write 2 rent checks? One to you and one to the other person/entity?  That doesn't make sense to me.

I would assume you would have 1 bank account where all income and expenses are paid out of and then you would distribute income 50/50 from there.  It shouldn't be on the tenants to pay you separately.  I can't imagine that would work long term.

@Stian Jones, I'm with Brent - Section 8 isn't a reason on its own to run from the deal.

Managing Section 8 rentals is different than market tenants simply because you have a 3rd party setting rules and paying some or all of the rent for those tenants.  They have their own processes and rules for you to follow, as well as the tenant.  But the beauty of Section 8 is that the Section 8 paid portion is guaranteed and that 3rd party means that you have an added layer of accountability in the Housing Authority, as long as you learn how that works and utilize it to your advantage when necessary.

It sounds like your Section 8 units are higher than the market one but there should also be a process with the local Housing Authority for increasing rents probably annually.  Figure out this process and follow it and you should get consistent increases to help you stay in line with market rents.

Congrats and good luck.

@Terri Smith, I charge $1000 security deposit.  I do this because my average rent on a 3 bed is $1075 so it's close to 1 month.  The difficulty with Section 8 is that you probably won't know exactly how much will be approved in rent until you're well into the process so you can't give the tenant a firm number if you're actually going off rent charged.

You could just set it at $1400 and if rent comes back lower, no big deal, it's still $1400.

Because the Section 8 process takes a little while (2 to 4 weeks in my market), I require half of the deposit at lease review/Section 8 paperwork signing and the other half on or before move in.  If the tenant cancels occupancy due to something in their control, I keep the first half.

For Section 8, I require $1000  month in income (close to 1x the monthly rent) instead of 3. 

I don't care about credit score.  I do care about payment history for the last 24 months, eviction history, bankruptcies, monies owed to utility companies and of course landlord references.  Very few of my Section 8 applicants have a credit score over 600.  A few but not many.  

Good luck - Section 8 is great when understood and executed well by the landlord!

@Priscilla Lakes, welcome to REI in St. Louis. I have 27 doors, almost all Section 8 rentals, and all in North County. I love this business.

I echo Nathan's advice - there are a TON of meetups and REIAs in St. Louis, some still in person and some just virtual.  FasterHouse Buyers Club, Core Properties, SSIC, etc.  Also our St. Louis real estate investing pages on Facebook are extremely active - search FB and find a few and the rest will start to get suggested to you.  That will give you an idea of who the players here are, what kind of deals are being shopped, who is wholesaling, etc.

Lastly, I'd recommend getting on every buyers list in town.  You can post in the FB groups and say you're wanting to get on buyers lists and you'll start getting requests for info.

If I can help in any way, let me know.

@Anthony Pomerinke I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such trouble!

No this isn’t normal. HASLC is usually pretty easy to work with and it should only take a couple weeks at most to process the paperwork.

I find everyone there to be much easier to reach via email.

I’m assuming you’ve submitted the new owner paperwork and received the HAP and it didn’t have the rent listed?

Here’s what I would do- email the caseworker daily until you get a response. Cc the manager, whose name you can find online.

Nadia Brooks is another person there that I’ve found to be very helpful.

Let me know if I can help further.

@Account Closed's advice.  Additionally, you lose some leverage if you are taking off the books payments.  That's because Section 8 tenants have to follow the rules of Section and if they don't, you can notify their caseworker which can put their voucher at risk (I don't do this very often but it's an important benefit of Section 8 in my opinion).

But if you're also not following the rules, the tenant can report that too and it makes it harder for you to report issues.

Join me, Jennifer Donley, the Queen of Section 8, to get all of your Section 8 questions answered! Bring your list of questions OR email them to me ahead of time at [email protected].

@Jake Drappi, hang on here - there's a lot that goes into determining rent.  

Generally, Section 8 rents strive to be even with market rents.  

There are some rules and guidelines:

1. HUD sets "fair market rents" for an area. You can find these online. They basically set up a range and more importantly, a ceiling for rents in that area. What these mean in reality is that you can usually get market rate rents in B C and D areas. You will get under market rents from Section 8 in A areas.

2. Then, your local PHA looks at "rent reasonableness" meaning they are trying to keep Section 8 rents comparable to market rents (up to the FMRs).  

3. Then, a tenant can't pay more than 40% of their income to housing expenses (the intent for Section 8 recipients is actually 30% but that number can go to 40% if local rents require it).  So sometimes this can limit your rent amounts.

In practice, every PHA works slightly differently though in how they set rents.  They follow the guides above but they will vary in who determines rents (here for instance we have a "market analyst who does this, in other areas, it's the inspectors). 

Also, there will sometimes be pockets of higher and lower rents that require local knowledge.  

The bottom line in my experience is that you need someone who is doing Section 8 successfully in your market who can tell you the ins and outs of rents there.  Anybody else responding, like me, can give you general but not nitty gritty specifics for your area.

You can call the local PHA but they may or may not give you answers that bear out in real life or that give you enough info.

And I have the exact opposite opinion of @Carl Mathis - I think Section 8 is the only way to go right now, especially in C and D areas.  I also follow this model for B areas (I don't own in A areas).