All Forum Posts by: Lisa Thiessen

We have done both. LVP is definitely cheaper and easier, but if we have the opportunity to preserve the original features of a home, we try to do so. 

In our most recent rental, we rented the equipment to refinish all of the original oak floors in the living areas and used porcelain tile in the bathrooms and LVP in the kitchen. 

If you choose not to invest in the wood floors now, you can use snap-together LVP that can be removed later if you decide you want to tackle refinishing the hardwood. 

I would allow it. It sounds like this is a decent tenant who has encountered difficult times. He knows he can't pay the rent and he's telling you up-front. 

You're either going to have a vacancy now or later. I think you have two options: 

Deal with the vacancy now, keep the security deposit, try to get a paying tenant in place and possibly collect some rent through the winter. 

Or...deal with the vacancy later, but definitely not collect rent through the winter because this tenant cannot pay. No telling how serious this accident was; if the tenant is in bad shape and can't take care of the house in the meantime, you may have a mess to deal with later. 

If the house remains vacant through the winter, take the opportunity to do maintenance/repairs/updates that are difficult to do when the house is occupied. 

I have a low-stakes question. A longtime tenant lost her mother recently, and I'm wondering what, if anything, fellow landlords do to acknowledge big events (marriages, births, deaths, etc.) in their tenants' lives. I'm inclined to send flowers; is this too personal? 

I use Apartments.com to advertise vacancies, do credit/background checks, and collect rent. It's free for both the landlord and tenant, and reports to credit bureaus to build tenants' credit history. 

Someone has my house listed for rent on Facebook Marketplace. The house is currently rented and the person who lives there is not the one listing it, so it's not the tenant trying to sublease the property. I reported the listing to Facebook. Is there anything else I can or should do about this scam listing?

We purchased 2 properties in 2022 and we need to focus on maintenance and capital improvements in 2023. 

Jared, I am really curious about the script you use with a link to your pre-screening questionnaire. I always manually send a link when someone inquires, but would love to automate this process as much as possible. Would you share how you set this up?

Good to know. Thanks!

Thanks! I will try that.

This is a small town, so there are literally three properties for rent on Zillow in this ZIP code. While my listing does show up last, since there are only three, it's still on the first page. There are more properties listed on Apartments.com, but when you narrow the search to single-family homes, you see 6, which still keeps mine on the first page. 

What does your rental cycle look like? Rental rates are increasing in my market and I'm experimenting with raising rent as I fill vacancies, but I'm wondering if I've reached the top. I have a tenant moving out at the end of October, but he gave me plenty of notice, so I listed the property in mid-September to be available on November 1. I'm not sure if I have the property priced too high ($100 more than the current rent) or if people who want to move on November 1 just aren't looking yet. 

My question is, how far in advance of their anticipated move-in date do you expect prospective tenants to start making inquiries?