All Forum Posts by: Kimberly T.

You're right, it's not the best analogy.  In fact, it's not an appropriate analogy at all.  There's nothing illegal with leaving your baby in a carrier while preping the car seat.  It IS, however, completely illegal to possess illegal drugs.  You think tenants don't get in fights in their homes or OD on drugs at their homes?  You have never watched an episode of COPS.  Our PM in AZ had a tenant in another landlord's property die with a needle in his arm.  No one knew it until the downstairs tenant complained about the smell... a week later.  That landlord learned a valuable lesson in having better screening criteria.

But, if you guys want to have tenants who will (not "may", WILL) be having less than savory characters at your complex, not respecting your property, and possibly putting your property and other tenants in danger, then that's your choice.  Leaves more good tenants for me. :)

Edit to add: most leases state that illegal behavior is prohibited on the premises.  There's a reason people have put that in leases - it's because illegal behavior on the premises never turns out good for the landlord.  At best, it's neutral for the landlord, but that's not often.

We don't allow pet dogs, or credit scores below 600.  I'd pass.

You also didn't say how many bedrooms your unit is (big enough for 4 adults?).

I agree with other comments above - does the lease permit her to run a business out of your unit?  What about liability issues for the landlord?  Do you require her to have insurance for this business, since she'll be having strangers come over for this business?  Is there sufficient parking for her clients?

I'll give you my experience on buying/selling several properties in the last few years:

We made an offer on a fourplex that just got listed next door to a fourplex we already owned.  Inventory was fairly low and it was a decent deal, so we weren't surprised to hear there was another interested party (not sure if they'd made an official offer yet).  The seller countered our offer, and we accepted it since the numbers still worked and never heard anything more about the other interest/offer.

My brother and I listed our grandmother's house for sale.  The market was still pretty hot, and we'd listed it a little below what we thought we could get for it because we wanted to make sure to sell it within that tax year rather than try to squeeze a few more bucks from it.  We got about 5 offers within the first few days of listing it (most of them over asking), and our agent told the last one that there were multiple offers and that offer ended up being the highest; we went with that offer.

A fourplex got listed that we were interested in, and it was in a really good part of the town we were looking at.  We made an offer a little below asking, then heard that there were multiple offers but decided not to raise our offer price.  It went into escrow, so we figured there must have been a higher offer, but then a few days later we heard that buyer backed out and the seller wanted to know if we were still interested, so we ended up buying it at our original offer price.  So, win-win for us, because we ended up getting the property but didn't have to raise our offer price.

I have sometimes wondered that myself, whether they're really being honest about having multiple offers, but like others said, it's impossible to prove they're lying.  You just have to make a judgment call for each property and decide how you want to proceed.

I never said there was proof.  But white powder, a mirror, rolled up dollar bills, and butane gas is plenty enough to qualify as "probable cause" to investigate further.  Or do you propose OP waits until the guy burns down the building while cooking meth?  Or worse, doesn't burn down the building and just leaves it with meth contamination, costing OP many thousands of dollars to remediate?  Or how about having a gang shoot up his building/tenant for dealing drugs in their turf, or the tenant ODs on something in the unit and no one notices until they smell the decomp (sounds like he may be living there alone now, since the wife left and probably took the daughter with her).

Sure, those are rather extreme possibilities (though they do happen).  What's more likely, to be honest, is this tenant continues to have other druggies hanging around, and he doesn't take care of the property (trash/chairs left in the yard, etc.), and any other decent tenants the OP has will move out because they don't want to be around that type of behavior or activity.  OP will have higher turnover, and likely have to settle for lesser quality tenants because they're the only ones willing to live around that.  That right there is reason enough to nip this cancer in the bud and get rid of these types of undesirables.

@Account Closed I just wanted to mention, since you asked about states allowing landlords to enter the premises without giving notice, Colorado also appears to allow that, based on my research.  Colorado has no law regarding landlords having to give notice prior to entering the premises; however, I imagine most, if not all, landlords still do provide reasonable notice or gain permission from the tenant to enter.

As for the original post regarding the apparent drugs/paraphernalia, I am rather shocked at the number of landlords here saying to just ignore it.  I can now see why we have such slums in some areas; you figure as long as you get your rent you don't care what happens to your property.  If you think people who do drugs don't bring around other people who do even worse drugs (not to mention other crimes) and who clearly won't give a s*** about taking care of your property or what happens to your property if it gets raided by the cops, you are naive at best.  Just because they may seem like an occasional/recreational user now, that doesn't mean they won't become a dealer or get into harder drugs or die in your unit with a needle in their arm in the future.

In most states, it's illegal to discriminate based on marital status.  I don't know if Ohio is one of the few exceptions to that or not.  Assuming it's not, then you should evaluate them like any other group of applicants - verify all their income, run their credit/background, see if the sum of all their income meets your minimum (3x rent, or whatever your minimum is), etc.  In other words, if you would count a married couple's combined income to meet your minimum, you have to do the same with non-married couples.

I've honestly never heard of anything regarding discrimination against/for roommate situations, so I don't know if you can or should somehow count the other person's income separately.  Generally, in those situations, landlords just add up everyone's income and see if the total meets their minimum required income.

Not a lawyer, not legal advice. Consult a lawyer if you are unsure how to proceed.

My husband and I bought our house when I was 23 (one week before my 24th birthday) and he was 25.  We bought our first rental (a local triplex) just over 2 years later, when I was 26 and he was 27.  We have bought 3 more multifamilies since that one, in the last 5 years; 2 are in AZ and the third is in CO.

We got started in it because when I was growing up, my parents were landlords who self-managed their rentals. I used to help paint and clean them as a kid. My husband and I saw the financial independence and wealth they gained from it and agreed we wanted to do the same. My parents recommended multifamily properties because of the better ROI versus single family, and they were right. We got into investing in other states because: 1) my parents moved to AZ when they retired and told us about the sweet deals you could get out there compared to CA (not to mention how landlord-friendly AZ is vs CA); 2) my husband and I are strongly considering moving to CO in the next few years, so we bought a good deal there too (it's also extremely landlord-friendly).

Sorry to hear about that!  Were you home when it happened?

Most rental agreements just say that if the unit is uninhabitable, you just have to give them back their rent for the  day(s) it is uninhabitable.  You would not be required to pay for their hotel/lodging.  Check your agreements to see what they say.

Depending on how long it will take to make all the repairs, you may want to consider releasing your tenants from their leases.  Not sure if you're required to, it may be up to you.

Since the driver was (likely) at fault, you shouldn't have to pay for anything for the repairs, and you should also get reimbursed for lost rent, all from their insurance.  As others stated, you'll have to do a claim with their driver's insurance for that.  If they were uninsured, then you'll probably be on the hook with your insurance most likely, and then you'll probably have to pay your deductible and you'll lose out on the lost rent reimbursement, though you could try suing the estate of the deceased driver for all that.  If they somehow determine that another driver was actually at fault for this accident (which I doubt), then you'll probably have to deal with their insurance.

Also, you're not the first one here on BP to have someone crash into your rental.  You can check out this post to see if there's any more helpful info (although this one was in NC):

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/95/topics/124...

I don't know enough about this whole process to give more advice, but it's probably not a bad idea to get some pro's on your side (lawyer, etc.).  Good luck!

Thanks guys!  Just wanted to see if maybe there were some cons to doing auto-pay that I wasn't aware of.  I do have some bills set to auto-pay, just not all of them.

@George P. LOL, well I'm a pretty old-fashioned type.  Which you probably wouldn't guess, since I just turned 31 recently. :)