All Forum Posts by: Mark Ko

I am ready to sell my investment property (tenants have moved out). Wondering if it makes sense to wait until Feb/March to list it? Its a starter townhouse in the 400K range close in town. 

It costs me about $700/month to keep it up so another 4 months is less than 3K in sunk cost. 

I live in Portland where the new set of laws are crazy and I unwittingly got caught up in it, so may be I am too cautious. But here's my take.

1) Tell them they can sign the lease or leave

2) If you have a good relationship with them - You can tell them (verbally) if they do sign the lease and need to break, you'll go easy on the lease break fee. 

3) Assume that as nice as your tenants are (and i thought mine were great!) they will turn on you once they realize the law works for them better than it works for you. So I would hesitate not providing adequate notice and falling in that trap.

4) An attorney i consulted with repeatedly warned me that there are a bunch of ambulance chaser type lawyers just waiting to make a case out of it. Nathan's advice above seems sensible but I suspect it would run afoul of the portland laws.

I signed a 6 month lease with my tenants two of whom were living there last year and one is new, moved in after one of the old roommates left at the end of last lease.

This typically is not a problem except in Portland which sets a cap on rent increases of <10% per year. And in all the documentation I've seen I don't see any mention of 6 month lease. The phrase "rolling 12-month period" appears over and over.

My question.. and I understand there may be no clear answer to this. I have a appointment with a lawyer coming up next week.

Is my current lease a new lease (hence the year long cap doesn't apply at month 7) or would it be seen as a continuation? 

Thanks all, just trying to work through a tenant issue. 

PDX has some of the craziest tenant protection laws and I (single home landlord) need my tenants out. The way it works here is I have to renew their lease and only they can walk off it. I kept my rent low because they seemed nice, didn't make much and to me this was just a temporary thing until we sell the house. Yet another fool, I know.

So question - have you ever served an eviction notice for not having running batteries in the smoke detectors? What about yard maintenance? 

The former is in the contract but I have a feeling the pothead in one of the rooms has the batteries removed. Now I wish I could serve notice for pot usage (also in the lease) but I don't know how to prove that.