All Forum Posts by: Kyle Meyers

What state are you in? Is this a single family home?

In most places it is legal to have a single family tenant pay for pest control. In Indiana, there is virtually no time when it is ok for a tenant to withhold rent. I would call her bluff and send a pay or quit now, file for eviction ASAP. Make sure you everything exactly as the law specifies, including sending the security deposit accounting. Your local laws may vary and cause you to take a different approach to this situation. If you don't know the laws for your area, contact an experienced landlord tenant attorney.

If your judgement is against both of them, it sounds like you will have better luck collecting from her. Have her brought into court and ask her about her employment, collect information about her current position and her nursing license. Also get bank account information on both of them. Figure out the process to garnish wages and start that on her, you should be able to start getting a check every time she gets paid. If they have money in their bank accounts you can take part of that to repay your judgement.

I put SS instead of white appliances in one of my rentals, it only cost $300 more and I think it increased the appeal to potential tenants. This was for a lower income rental, for a $1000+/month rental, I would definitely do stainless.

25%

Tough to get without financing, but now that I have been investing long enough for my rents to included in my income to qualify for a loan it is much easier to get a 25% return.

Thanks for your thoughts Leo Kingston. I am not trying to use these so much for rent enforcement as to track maintenance response. In Indiana, the law is pretty much if you don't pay rent you get evicted, so that is not an issue. I am more concerned with keeping track of what issues tenants report to me and when and what I do to fix the issues.

I manage my own rentals and when I have a maintenance issue I have been writing up a quick note of what I do to correct the problem and having the tenant sign it. I have been doing this to keep a record of what work is done at what properties and to document each time a maintenance request is made.

I am wondering what others do when there is maintenance work completed. Do you have tenants sign anything? What kinds of forms do you use? How do you track maintenance and repairs?

I would start making offers on 1-20 unit properties in the Indianapolis area. I would put in offers at 25% cap rates or better and try to get financing on each deal as I go. With each property I bought, I would put some money into reserves. Once I spend all the $1MM I would continue to invest the rental income and buy more.

I am considering some rent increases. My rents are below market for some tenants and I have not increased since their leases started over a year ago. Market rents are up about 10%, but I would probably only raise rents 3%. I think my tenants will be more likely to accept small increases every year or so than a large increase every 5 years. I also want to do some kind of improvement to the units, but haven't decided on what yet.

David Beard, the acquisition indebtedness information in the link you provided does make it seem like the pay yourself back method may not be accepted by the IRS. I had actually read through that article before, but didn't catch that part of it since it was about primary residence mortgages. Since there is no clear answer as to whether or not it would be acceptable and I am taking this loan for the specific purpose of a remodeling project on another rental, I will not trace any of the proceeds allocation to paying myself back. Thanks for your help with this.

I have custom signs that say "For Rent" and have my phone number and website, they cost about the same as the blank signs and I think they look a little more professional. I don't think one will generate more calls than the other though.