All Forum Posts by: Kristin Kerr

Yeah, his email said nothing about seeing mold, just his friends “instant massive headache” that didn’t go away until the next day. And this friend who is apparently diagnosed as anosmiac (noseblind) and can only smell something when it is REALLY strong. Why didn’t the renter smell something then? Or the other people who were over? It’s like once an idea is planted he obsesses over it and creates bigger issues in his head. 

We emailed back asking for more details. The thing is, we were there probably the day before his friends had come over and we smelled nothing, and he didn’t mention anything about these concerns. 

I’m very sensitive to smells, to the point that all of the spices in our pantry are in a ziplock back, which is then inside a plastic Tupperware container. The condo smelled fine to me. We will have to suggest a dehumidifier and go from there. Unless there’s proof of mold somewhere. 

We got an email from our tenant today expressing his concern over the perceived air quality of the condo rental. This is a 4-unit condo, he is renting the end unit and shares a wall with 2 other units (there is a “carriage” unit over the garages). 

He had friends over recently and one of them called him the next day saying the condo gave him a headache and that only happens when there’s large quantities of mold or paint or cigarette fumes. 

He doesn’t smoke or vape, any painting was 7 months ago, and as far as we know there is no mold issues. There is a basement which does get a musty smell in the summer (hello humid Michigan summers) but i don’t think that would cause a problem. 

We were there just before he had friends over to do a checkup on everything and while making sure the furnace filter was changed he mentioned getting a cheap one, I said I would get one that would  handle pet dander since we had a cat when we lived there. 

Prior to me telling him, he had no idea we had a pet, much less a cat. Now, in addition to the mystery smells his friend is smelling he wants to get an air quality test. From what we have learned about him so far in the last 7 months is he is a high maintenance tenant (this is not our first issue with him). 

He prefers to not run the A/C on warm humid days so the musty smell in the basement I’m sure travels upstairs when he does turn the air on, and we lived in that condo for 10 years. If our windows were open and our neighbors were smoking, we could smell it. He has new neighbors in one side, who knows what they are doing over there. 

Should we just bite the bullet and get the air quality test to keep him happy? Would this fall under the “repairs” category of the lease?

Hi,

We are 6 months into renting out our condo to a young professional. We live several states apart due to a job change (hence why we are renting out our condo in the first place). I’m just curious if we should schedule a physical inspection when we are visiting family in the area later this month. 

Partly to change the furnace filter and stuff like that (show him where the water shut-off is to the outside faucet so the pipes don’t freeze over winter) but also make sure he hasn’t done any unauthorized work on the condo. 

The first few months we were hearing from him almost once a week about something he wanted to upgrade/replace and he wound up doing a few things without our permission (replaced a toilet without asking, replaced outlets in the bathrooms with asking). We sent him an email basically saying STOP (very nicely worded, but it got the point across) and we really haven’t heard from him since. 

I know there was a few other things in his “list” he had wanted to change and a part of me is worried he decided to stop asking and just did them. He had mentioned replacing the kitchen and bathroom faucets. 

I just want to make sure that he’s not doing a bunch of electrical or plumbing work on the condo that hasn’t been inspected by a licensed professional. It’s a 4-unit building so it’s not just his safety but also at least 3 other people that could be affected if something was wired wrong. 

We are three weeks out from our visit to family so we would be able to give plenty of heads up time about the inspection. 

@Wayne Brooks

Yes, the landlord is the owner/developer. 

@Hubert Kim it is so bizarre, and I’m probably not getting the details right but this is what I’m being told by the PM. Apparently the owner is in the middle of refinancing so they can build more houses in here? I don’t even know. 

I hope I can ask this here, my husband and I are currently renting out our condo in Michigan after an unexpected move to Alabama for his work. So now we are both landlords and renters (the move is most likely not permanent). We are renting a house about 30 minutes of Birmingham in a weird subdivision. And by weird, I mean it’s a kinda a failed subdivision. There are only about 20 houses in here but originally we think the plan was for around 200. There is also an abandoned golf course and club house that give off some serious “Walking Dead” abandoned overnight vibes. 

I love the house we are renting but not the property managers so much. Communication is a joke and i have the same person telling me two different things in the same conversation. Anyway...the latest thing is that slowly all of the street lights outside stopped working. After contacting the PM about it (twice) I finally got an answer, apparently, the owner doesn't want to pay the HOA the light bill for the street lights so the HOA shut them off. If we want the street light by our house on we would have to have it hooked up to our power and pay for it ourself.

We are smack dab in the middle of nowhere and it is DARK here, we may not have a lot of houses in our sub but the one across the street is pushing 200. It just doesn’t seem right that the street lights can be turned off like that, one would think that the owner would want the security of the lights especially considering that there are several of their properties for rent in here still! 

We had to make sure that our tenant had a copy of the HOA by-laws but I don't remember getting a copy of the ones for this sub. I don't know if that's a difference in state law or what. I'd ask the property managers but who knows how long that will take.

Are all landlords requires to supply tenants with copies of the by-laws? If not would I be able to find them online? 

@Trey Burns

Knowingly or not they are getting a really good price on the place, I think we could have easily gotten another $100-$150 a month for it. Another unit in the subdivision that is slightly smaller and doesn’t have a basement like ours does is renting out for what ours is. The things you learn after it’s all said and done right? And we left all of our appliances there, everything except the fridge and washer are less than 4 years old and stainless steel in the kitchen. 

But I am very grateful for a (so far) good tenant given the situation. 

@Anthony Rosa I’m sure we messed up by not having this stuff taken care of before putting the condo up for rent, but in our defense we had a month to figure all of this out and move across the country. And the condo rented out so fast! It was on the market for less than 48 hours and had 3 people interested in renting it. I barely was able to arrange to get the carpet cleaned in time!

Right now I just want to know what to do to minimize any further mistakes and fix the ones we’ve already made. 

@Tom S. Thanks for the suggestions, I would have to reread the lease again to be sure, but I think it says something like the tenant is responsible for the first $100 of a repair and then we would step in to help cover the cost if it’s more than that. 

Hi, my husband and I recently became landlords after a new job took us out of state. Long story short, we wound up with only about a month to decide to move, rent out our condo, and move out of state. 

Thankfully we found a renter (we had a background check, credit check, proof of income, all of that done before agreeing to anything) very quickly. Right now we are just trying to figure out what repairs to let the renter handle on their own (at their request) and what to have a contractor or handyman come in and do. 

The renter has already replaced one of the toilets without our permission, we were not happy about that one, the toilet wasn’t broke, it took a minute to flush but it wasn’t broke. We would have readily said yes to replacing it (it was on our short list of things that we wanted to fix before we found out about the move) but the fact that it was replaced without asking first was not cool. 

There are a couple of other things that they want replaced that aren’t technically broke, a drip in the shower, a faucet that has a small leak when it’s turned on just the right way. Again, it was on our list of things to do...eventually. We are not opposed to any of these things being replaced, but the tenant wants to replace them and we are a little leery of letting them replace plumbing things. Oh, and we just got an email last night with them asking about replacing plugs in the bathrooms and kitchen with GFCI plugs, again, not opposed, but do we want a tenant messing with the electrical? 

They are an engineer at an automotive company, so I don’t doubt their intelligence, and they say they have done a lot of this stuff before. I just don’t know what to allow them to do. 

and of course, they want the cost of all of this taken off of the rent, which is fine, we could save a few bucks that way actually by just paying the cost of materials. But would it be worth the potential risk? And it’s only been 3 months and they are asking for permission to do at least 4 projects. And I don’t see it stopping, I could see there being 1-3 things a month they want to do and have taken off the rent. At what point do we say “no, it’s fine” or something like that?

We never planned on being landlords, and we were not prepared for this at all. Unfortunately, renting it out made the most sense so that’s where we are at