All Forum Posts by: Kimberly T.

I don't have a problem with calling to ask about rent, amenities, etc., but I wouldn't set up an appointment to actually view the interior. That's where I draw my line, anyway.

Off hand, I would say if they are all on one lease together, you would only need to send one letter to the unit, addressed to "all residents." If they each have their own lease (if the previous owner leased the bedrooms rather than the entire unit), then I would send a separate letter to each tenant. My reasoning is that this would be consistent with how I would have to serve other notices (notice to pay rent or quit, notice to vacate, etc.). I wouldn't want to set a precedent that would lead them to expect to each get their own letter even if they're all on one lease together. I would serve one notice per lease.

That's just how I would do it, nothing necessarily wrong with sending a separate letter to each tenant even if they are on the same lease.

I've heard this as well, and figured it was the case in every state. Interesting to hear that Maryland does not have that.

Anyway, I've generally heard of landlords setting up systems so that the tenant cannot pay less than the full amount owed - the system won't accept the payment. Our PM for our AZ rentals has that set up for tenants who want to pay online. We don't do any direct deposit or online payments for our apartments that we self-manage here in CA, so it's not an issue for us here.

I agree with the others here, "noisy" is not a protected class, regardless of familial status. If this were a single person, or married couple without kids, who mentioned that they are sometimes noisy (play a musical instrument, or love to have loud music on), you could reject them for the same reason. The fact that the noisy ones in this case are kids is, to me, irrelevant. She admitted that some occupants will likely be noisy, that's enough for me to be wary of renting to them.

That said, if she otherwise seems ok, you could try calling her current and previous landlords to see if any of her neighbors had any noise complaints about her or her kids. Perhaps what she considers "noisy" is what most people consider "normal" noise level, so it may not be a big issue.

I also always rent month to month, so if things don't work out (noise complaints, etc.), I can just serve a notice to vacate, and don't have to wait out a lease.

Congrats! My husband and I own 2 fourplexes in Scottsdale ourselves, also looking to expand our ownership. What area of Phoenix is it in?

Just because they're asking $399k for it, that doesn't mean they paid less than that for it. They may very well have paid double that, and are losing their shirt on this property and just want to get out of it. You can probably look up the sales history of the property to see what they paid for it, I usually do.

As others mentioned, there are other possibilities (moving up to a bigger investment, retirement, etc.). Of course, upcoming maintenance issues is certainly a possible reason as well, so make sure you inspect the building thoroughly. Especially being over 100 years old, there may be a lot of deferred maintenance that the owner wants to unload on some unsuspecting sap.

Each landlord has their own method, there is no "wrong" way to do it.

Personally, we always wait to advertise until the unit is vacant, clean, and ready to be viewed. Even though our tenants are generally fairly clean, I don't want a prospective tenant to see the occasional dirty dishes, pile of toys, etc., and think that we don't care how a tenant maintains the unit. We only want them to see it in ready-to-rent condition so they can't come back and claim "but I saw how the last tenant left it, I thought this would be ok!" The new tenant will not know that you may have taken money from the previous tenant's deposit to do cleaning, so I don't want them thinking we have low standards. Since you plan on painting and doing some other work, you don't want new tenants thinking that it's ok to leave the walls all scuffed and marked up - they won't know it has perhaps been many years since it was painted. We also don't want prospective tenants turned off by how the current tenants keep the place (smells, hair in the tub, etc.); no sense in driving away someone who would be glad to take it if they'd only seen it once it was clean and painted.

Also, I don't want to let strangers inside my tenant's unit that I will not be able to hold accountable if something breaks or goes missing. You never know if they might be a clutz or a clepto, regardless of how they appear.

This is just how we operate, obviously not every landlord does it this way.

This is something I have heard of as an option, if you only have enough money for one deal but want to make multiple offers. This lets the seller know they better jump on your offer if they're considering it, since you could very well rescind it soon.

Another option, if you make 2 offers and one gets accepted, is to simply rescind (in writing) the other offer that has not been accepted yet. This is obviously only going to work if they don't get accepted at the same time. As others have said, though, if you want to bring in a partner or something, you could do that too.

Well, you shouldn't be treating them any differently than any other prospective tenant. If you do, that's discrimination, and you could get sued for rejecting someone based on age.

Just screen them like any other prospective tenant (income, credit, rental history, etc.), and approve/disapprove based on that criteria.

Thanks! We've had to replace a couple electric water heaters (our apartments in AZ don't have gas), and our licensed plumber/handyman has been charging about $250 for new heater and supplies, and $200 labor, for about $450 total cost to us. I didn't realize until I looked it up this morning how much more expensive a gas heater is than an electric (another $200-ish), so that probably accounts for the difference in price that we're paying versus what you're paying for a gas one.

Thanks for all the feedback, good to know as we research other markets to invest in.