All Forum Posts by: Kamran Rahman

Bump 

Update Since 1 Month Ago:
At end of October I had some, professional cleaning I needed to have done to make place ready to do showings. I paid the bad tenant to do the cleaning job and she did a great job. Obviously she stopped asking for lower rent at that time, and paid November rent on time.

This week she requested to meet in person to discuss her current financial situation. I’m anticipating that she is going to guilt me and try asking for lowered rent again, and I think she thinks doing it person will be easier to get a yes for me. Would love feedback.

My Plan:

like I did the first time they asked for reduced rent last month, I plan to keep repeating the following options, and not deviating or going into much more detail with them. 
1. pay rent on time

2. Pay rent late

3. Move oit

I anticipate these options will be met with lot of resistance and complaining, so my plan is to stick to my guns and keep repeating myself like a broken record, and then end the conversation. Otherwise this seems like it will just be an ongoing debate with a tenant who seems unreasonable. 

Feedback is appreciated 

I gave them the option to terminate. Of course their answer is that they have nowhere to go, which I feel is an ineffective answer. And you are right about offering work. See details below

general update:
At end of October I had some, professional cleaning I needed to have done to make place ready to do showings. I paid the bad tenant to do the cleaning job and she did a great job. Obviously she stopped asking for lower rent at that time, and paid November rent on time.

This week she requested to meet in person to discuss her current financial situation. I’m anticipating that she is going to guilt me and try asking for lowered rent again, and I think she thinks doing it person will be easier to get a yes for me. Would love feedback.

Apologies for the delay! The 2.3k doesn't include utilities. Tenants of each room split the utilities by room. 2+ years ago I do believe it was worth hacking by room because the market rent as SFH was between 1700-1800 per month.

I think it's worth considering SFH

general update:
At end of October I had some, professional cleaning I needed to have done to make place ready to do showings. I paid the bad tenant to do the cleaning job and she did a great job. Obviously she stopped asking for lower rent at that time, and paid November rent on time. 

This week she requested to meet in person to discuss her current financial situation. I’m anticipating that she is going to guilt me and try asking for lowered rent again, and I think she thinks doing it person will be easier to get a yes for me. Would love feedback. 

 Thank you sir. Appreciate it. I had suggested to her and naturally her response was “I have nowhere else to go”. Naturally, I reiterated that she is free to go, and said there is nothing I am doing to force her to stay. I will continue to hold that stance. 

 I really appreciate the response. The work I volunteered to her is a one-time job, which is to clean the common bathroom and living room. I was going to have her do the bathroom first. If she does a good job then, then I would have her do the living room. I plan to reiterate that I am doing this as a one-time job to prepare the place for showings. 

Good call on what you mentioned about me thinking how succumbing to Tenant B’s response, could result in the other tenants expecting lowered rent (I’m thinking of a situation where Tenant B informs Tenant A of reduction). 

I recapped the convo with the fact that all future discussions around rent, would be only discussed within the context of the lease agreement. 

Hi all

I’ll jump right into things.  

Context:
I have a 3 bedroom condo  2 rooms are rented out. Tenant A is an A+ tenant  Tenant B is a C+ tenant. I used to occupy the third room as a house hacker, and am planning to rent it out to a third tenant  

Summary of issue:

Tenant B is asking that I lower their rent by 6% due to a number of reasons that seem somewhat frivolous. Her overarching theme is that she’ll have to share common space with another person, and she would hope to get a 6% rent reduction 

My immediate answer to her:

I have no plans to reduce rent at the moment. If the concern is money, I told Tenant B that I have some work she can do around the rental for $. This sum of $ is worth about 3 months of the savings she would have gotten, if she had reduced rent. In this same convo, I reminded her that I had given her some paid work to do and she never did that, to which she responded that that work had slipped her mind. Long story short, my current position is that rent stays the same and I have a couple paid projects she can work on (assuming the work doesn’t slip her mind, again). 

The updated answer I am contemplating 

I did research to see what fair rent is for my unit, if I rent it out to a single family. I found that $2k is the fair rent. 

Currently, my goal is to make a total of $2.3k in monthly rent (so a 15% premium on the market rate for a single family). I personally do feel like that premium is fair, given the additional overhead involved for me when renting out by the room. 

Question to audience:

Objectively, does my current stance sound fair and reasonable? If I actually went down the path of cutting rent for Tenant B, I am also contemplating proactively doing the same for Tenant A (I don’t want roomies to think people are getting preferential treatment). However , I’m super apprehensive about this because I feel like this will not only set a precedent, but I also feel like Tenant B will ask for even more things in the future (which she has a tendency to do).   

Alrighty!

Sorry I’ve been MIA. Lot of life things going on for me in the last couple months (good life things! ). 


This is what I ended up deciding and doing:

1. I decided NOT to put the property under an LLC.
2. I DID get a landlord umbrella insurance policy for the rental. 
3. I did get my best and longest standing tenant, to become my paid in-unit manager, once I have the third room rented out.  

I have a new problem where tenant from the other room (tenant has been not that easy to work with since day 1), is now trying to negotiate their rent down after learning I’ll be renting out the room that was originally mine.

I said no over the phone, and said it in writing as well, so now I’m contingency planning for if they come back demanding lowered rent again. It was completely out of left field, and they even started trying to guilt trip me IMO. 

This response was also super helpful.

Over the weekend I analyzed your response and the other response in this thread, and also consumed some literature on the Pros Vs. Cons. Based on that, I formulated that I would go with getting the appropriate insurance (I am waiting on a quote from my agent), and keep the property under my name. I couldn't see the benefit of establishing an LLC at this point, as i want to keep the benefits of non-commercial financing and taxation on this current househacking situation, and my other property that I will be moving to permanently.

This was super helpful. Thank you. I called my local Farmers Insurance broker to explain the situation. He seemed pretty familiar with the circumstances, and is working on putting together a quote for me. I also did a weekend on the pros vs. cons on using LLC's, and for the time being, I'll pass on the LLC option.