All Forum Posts by: Kimberly T.

No, I'm pretty sure turning off the electricity is illegal in every state in the US.  You'll have to go through the eviction process to get her out.  Contact a local landlord tenant attorney who specializes in evictions.

We'll accept apps up to a few days before starting to process them (that's usually over a weekend when the credit company is closed anyway).

We made a set criteria by which we judge apps and run them.  You'll have to decide what criteria is more important to you to use as a "tie-breaker" criteria - higher income, higher credit score, no pets, etc.  Obviously it can't be something that would be considered discriminatory (number of occupants, etc.).  Once you get that figured out, write down your qualifying criteria and what your "tie-breaker" item(s) is/are, and process your apps accordingly.

 I understand, and I didn't think you were trying to mislead the OP or give bad advice, but people have been known to get in legal trouble for giving legal advice/opinions on online forums, especially when they are not lawyers and/or what they are saying might be illegal in some places.  That's why you see some people write things like "not a lawyer, not legal advice" at the end of a post where they give a legal opinion.  Good way to cover your butt. :)

 Yup, also illegal in CA.  Some people are treading dangerously here, giving legal advice that is often illegal.

 Kevin, make sure to read up on whether this above advice is legal in your state.  This would be illegal in CA, as "last month's rent" is considered part of the deposit, which is 2 months' rent max for unfurnished rentals.

Personally, I wouldn't rent to this person.  Bad credit is a big deal breaker for me.  Don't care about the reason why it's bad.

We don't live in CO (though we are strongly considering moving there in a few years), but we did buy a fourplex in Colorado Springs last December. I'd actually been watching the market there for a few years, and while I know we missed the bottom, I'm happy with the property we bought. Cash flow and a decent ROI is definitely harder to find now than it was a few years ago.

We do have a friend from college who moved to the Greeley area last year, they were renting at first.  They were shopping for a house this spring, and he was getting pretty exasperated with how quickly homes were flying off the market as soon as they were listed.  They did eventually buy a house, though, a month or so ago.

You are not responsible for lost mail, just like when you mail in a payment for a bill... the recipient isn't responsible for it getting lost, you are.

I don't know building costs in your area, but off hand, $120/sf doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  Don't think I'd go less than $100/sf.

Personal property of $10k may be a bit high.  See if lowering it to $5k or $3k is possible, and if so, does it affect the premium (it probably won't).

For liability, we like to have lots of coverage.  See if you can get more, preferably $1M or higher.  If not, see if you can get an umbrella policy that puts you over the $1M threshold.  It might be cheaper to stick with the $300k liability quote here and get a separate umbrella for an additional $1M rather than trying to get the full $1M with this policy.  But you'll need to check if the umbrella has a minimum requirement for the basic policy you have (our umbrella requires us to have at least $500k liability on each rental).

Medical is absolutely needed.  Trip and fall, dog bite, a cut from broken glass requiring stitches.  Besides, you probably can't have this coverage removed, it's very common.

Yes, the fair rental value should cover loss of use.  Make sure that $20,300 covers at least a year's worth of lost rent (in case your building is destroyed and needs to be rebuilt).

Engineers get called "nerds", lawyers get called, well, all sorts of things.  People who can't or won't achieve in life just fling mud at those who can/do.  It's like the other high school kids who talk bad about the popular/pretty kids... they're jealous, and since they can't be one of the cool kids, they try to make themselves feel better by tearing others down.

I've been called a slumlord before.  I just laugh and say "yeah, sure."  It is kind of a sting, but I know it's said out of ignorance and/or jealousy, so I don't let it bother me too much.  Maybe one of these days I'll debate 'em, we'll see.  But my husband and I also have people asking us real estate questions, so I know a lot of people also have respect for what we're accomplishing.

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but it's totally normal to get a bunch of interest within the first few days of listing a unit for rent. Think about it... there have been lots of people out there looking for a place to rent, and when they see a new listing, they all call about it.  In a week from now, all the people who'd been looking for a while will have called, and at that point, you'll just be getting calls from people who have just started looking and came across your ad, which obviously won't be at the same rate as the number of people who'd already all been looking and called you within the first few days.

Also, a lot of the people who are calling you will be the desperate type who will take anything they can get, because they've been rejected everywhere else due to evictions, bad credit, low income, etc. (that's why they're all still looking and calling you so quickly).  Not all of them, but a good chunk of them will be this way.  You don't want to rent to those ones.  You'll need to weed through all these people to see if any of them are worth renting to.

Here's an example.  We rented one of our 2 bed units last August.  We got literally dozens of phone calls within the first few days of listing it (listed on a Friday I think, so this included a weekend).  Out of those dozens of phone calls, we had probably about 20 or so showings over the weekend.  Out of those 20-25 showings, we got about 8 applications.  Out of those 8 applications, only 2 or 3 were worth checking out and possibly renting to.  We did end up renting to one of those applicants and they've been great so far, so I'm not saying to disregard all these calls as desperate losers or anything, I'm just saying to keep things in perspective and know how this process works.

Personally, we like to keep our rents a little below market, for exactly this reason.  Offering a good deal gives us a bigger response and allows us to pick a great tenant out of a pool of applicants, rather than getting only a few applicants and having to pick the least crummy one.

As for the one with the pit bull and eviction and lie on the app, that one should be obvious as a no go.