All Forum Posts by: Katie DeLorme

I too use craigslist for renting out my property and have had mixed responses. Some ARE indeed scams such as Uwe S. was saying. I had responded to one person and the next day my email had been hacked and my credit card number had been compromised. Not a big deal but simply annoying!

My rule of thumb is to not respond to any that have blatant spelling mistakes, improper grammar, or are just not responses that pertain to the context of the ad.

K. Marie I sincerely appreciate your tough love. IMO it's the only way you can get better with handling situations. I suppose my thoughts in writing this thread initially was that if I wrote every detail no one would want to read it. However, from what I've seen so far, this is an incredible network people who truly want to make themselves and each other successful. To clarify, the 1/2 of months rent was a promo my husband decided to do in return for signing 12 month lease. I was never a fan but I think we were reaching the point of desperation to get someone into the unit as the property was on the market for about 4 months with no inquiries. (we had already moved into our new home) This being our first time renting, we did make the mistake of letting her run the show. We thought by bending over backwards it would make the tenant happier. I just thought about all the years I had rented and how much I appreciated a nice and proactive landlord and wanted to emulate their practices. With that said, I think there is a fine line of doing whats right and being taken advantage of.

Joel, you are correct. This tenant called one week, was moving from out of town, and wanted to move in the following week. They had given us a copy of their W2 and it was certainly more than enough to cover the rent. We did a preliminary BG check and all was well. With that said, once things went south we dug a little deeper and the records had revealed the tenant had filed for bankruptcy 1 year prior and had several aliases. The company she owns also had some holes. Her W2 was from 2011 yet I called the state to determine the company registration date and it wasn't a registered business with the state until March 2012. Now, I do understand you can own a business in some states without registering but there are stipulations with that scenario. So even after all that, I suppose I still wanted to give the benefit of the doubt but others in this thread said something that really struck home for me. "Take the emotion out of it - it's business". I think another quote to remember is "don't be stupid" :)

To answer a couple of the rental inquiries in this thread: the rent is 3,500. We are not making money on it but the property value has increased by 30K in 24 months (not huge increase but not bad considering the country's circumstances). Our goal was to hold on to both of our properties for quite some time despite our intentions to move in the near future. However, the situation is complicated by the status of the building, the board and property manager.

The board (which I recently joined (treasurer) as a means to keep up to date on the situation of the building) had no established process for claims such as these and I am not the first person this has happened to. The pipes that were installed in the building 10 years ago, when it was built, were 2 inch pipes connected to 4 units. There is improper venting and as such the pipes back up. Initially the board tried to claim this was not the building's responsibility as the owners must have been negligent with what they put down the garbage disposal thus clogging the pipes. Until this year there was no plan in place to be proactive in changing out the pipes and the board/PM could be liable for neglecting to remedy the known issues.

With all that said, we are considering selling at the end of this lease but are still willing to continue renting out our properties in the future.

Joel, THANK YOU! I agree and went about the situation the same way. I offered the security deposit back in exchange for an agreement to be signed stating she waives all rights to pursue me any further. I had my attorney draft it and sent via email. I just scheduled payment and sent her a screen shot - she responded with the delivery date is not sufficient and is requesting I meet with her. Im just frustrated. You are correct in stating Im a new landlord. I thought with a property valued at 600K I would get really upstanding tenants and as such went far out of my way to make her comfortable and when threatened with police action I backed off letting her manipulate the situation. I am grateful for each person's response and am eager to learn more via this forum. Again, I kindly thank each of you for the words of encouragement and guidance.

I must be totally oblivious - just never thought I would come across a genuinely mean spirited person.

Pardon me, I tried to shorten my story and missed a couple pieces. So the tenant at the 3rd week in May had not yet paid rent or security deposit. We had originally said yes to allowing her to pay with her Amex so she could ear points and in doing so we had to set up a google checkout account. That process is a little turbulent as you have to wait so many days before funds can be depositied into my account and it was showing the tenant had submitted payment but we had not yet received it. At the time of the flood she fully tried to cancel the security deposit payment but we submitted the lease to google checkout proving the payment was valid. In total, we received 1/2 may's rent and security deposit - no June rent.

Im not sure what to do at this point. I have exhausted several thousand dollars in attorney fees and many hours tending to this situation. We have a tenant who moved in the 1st of May and in the third week of May the condo flooded. Within 15 minutes of the tenant calling me I was at the unit cleaning it up with my own towels etc. The water was all cleaned up when I left. The following day I made arrangements with a cleaning company to go by the unit to assess the damage and what it would take to dry out the whole unit as there was still water under the hard wood flooring. That same day I also put my flooring guys on notice that I would need to have all the bamboo flooring replaced in the bedroom, kitchen, and living room. In the mean time I tried to coordinate with the tenant to pick a vendor she was comfotable with to move her belongings out of the unit (we were going to pay) and to put her up in a hotel. She did not respond to me. The next correspondence I had was from her attorney and that if I touched her belongings she would call the police and put a restraining order on me. Mind you while all of this is happening we still had not received the security deposit or rent for May. This goes on for several weeks where I thought we were going to have the flooring replaced and the tenant denied us/technicians access to the unit costing us more money for them to conitue to go to the unit. We finally cut off comcast as we were paying for that too. Im not sure where everything broke down but the long in short of it is that there was damage done to the unit, she lived there all through the month of June and didnt pay rent and now she is requesting her FULL security deposit back or she will sue. I dont know how to proceed at this point because she is claiming the unit was uninhabitable for the whole month of June but we had tried SEVERAL times to get in the unit to make the repairs and couldnt. Additionally, there was mold build up as a result of her not letting us make the repairs. Do we just give her back the deposit and call it a day or let her try to take us to court? Im just not sure if its worth it. My blood pressure rises and I cry everytime I talk to her because she has nothing but hurtful things to say and all I ever wanted was for her to be happy. Everything we tried to do for her is in writing.... Im just not sure it will hold up as DC is one of the most tenant friendly locations.