All Forum Posts by: John K.

I feel like I have seen it all, looking for other's good stories when you have looked at properties to buy.  Tonight saw a place that the current tenants were obviously stealing cable.  Pictures speak better than words:

and then right through the back yard:

1) make sure it's not knob and tube wiring - can be hard to get insurance 2) just more repairs typically - but all depends on how well it was maintained.

30 minutes with standard traffic

Read them all - just keep and open mind. I love going to the bookstore and just looking through the real estate books.

I've always received them on standard purchases, only foreclosures have lacked security deposit transfers - but only since the bank did not have the details and stated that no security deposits would be transferred early on in the process.

Congrats!!!

I get all my water bills from rentals, the units that are metered separate we bill back to the tenant ourselves.  Lease states that late water bills can make rent late, and that unpaid water bills can be deducted from security deposit.  

The other biggest benefit is, water habits don't typically change, so if you see that water usage raises by 3500 gallons a month, good clue that extra people have moved in...

Have you tried Microsoft Access?  I always feel like spreadsheets don't work the greatest for things like lead tracking..

This is a good one!

Purchased a property with tenants a while ago.  During purchase process just got the name of one person in the unit, so we started out with just that one name on the lease we drafted (it was month-to-month on verbal with old landlord).  

Renewal season rolls around, tenant requests that we add the spouse officially to the lease.  My perspective: great!  Just another name on the lease.  They just signed the lease renewal which goes into effect in about 60 days - now the spouse no longer wants to be on it.  

I don't really care - they have been good tenants and were inherited with the property, but I feel like it's a paperwork mess.  Obviously the easy thing to do would be to "tear up" the renewal they both signed and just do a new one - but I'm not sure if that's proper since we signed it and sent them back the copy of it.  

Is there an official document to remove someone from the lease? 

It may be a 10,000 mile view, but a good Excel spreadsheet goes a lot further!