All Forum Posts by: Matthew Guidry

Fannie Mae doesn’t care what platforms that your second home is marketed on.  Per Fannie Mae rules, you can rent out a second home, but you must stay there a minimum of 10% of the nights that it is rented. So if you rent it 250 nights a year, you would have had to stay in the property 25 nights.

This is some real Florida white trash nonsense. This guy is abusing your mother-in-law and spitting on the memory of his dead wife.

I feel for you, @Matthew Guidry. What you need to do is drive over to this guy's house and get a full explanation out of him. If the explanation is not satisfactory, and I doubt it will be, you will then need to take off your belt and beat him with it until he understands the beating will only stop when he grows up a little bit and starts treating family members like family.

This entitled twit has to learn that his behavior has consequences.

While she may not be able to take the AC system legally there are several issues to consider e.g. it may be difficult stopping her from taking major pieces of the system, or destroying it by smashing and bending everything.

A good AC system is critical in Florida and I would like to hear more-complete details from both sides. Did she notify the brother-in-law that her AC was broke and did he offer or refuse to pay for the system since he is the property owner and most-likely it is his responsibility to repair or replace the system. You can't put blame on the tenant in regards to whether the tenant repaired or replaced the system since the owner may have left that choice up to her. Since some AC refrigerants are now illegal to use it is absolutely necessary to replace entire systems.

It the tenant paid $6,000 to install the furnace only a few months ago then the tenant may have a chance of suing the owner to recover her money and if a court favors the tenant then the owner is wrong and should have done what was right before it went to court.

I've owned rental properties for more than 50 years and there has been a few times that tenants did repairs without my knowledge and then sent me the bill. Of course, I sometimes get excited for not being told and because the tenant paid two times what I could get the work done for. I also know that if the tenant takes me to court I will most-likely lose and will have to pay the high price the tenant paid.

One of the biggest issues I questions is the owner's morals even if the tenant did not give the owner an advance notice. The owner should not snicker and walk away with a free AC system if the system was broke and regardless of whether or not it could have been repaired. Now, the owner has a new system that should last no less than 40 years and why should he earn a larger profit because the tenant used her good faith and hard-earned money to pay for the system even when she was not the property owner.

$6,000 is a very reasonable price for a complete AC system changeout. The least the owner should offer to pay the tenant for the system is $4500. I don't know the whole story, but it looks like the tenant should take the owner to court and I will bet she wins.

For this situation the owner should be honest within himself, do what is right, sit down with the tenant and discuss everything without badgering to tenant so he can come out of this smelling like a rose and walking away with something he should have paid for in the first place.

$6000 I would definitely spend a few hundred and talk to an Atty

total guess would be no she can’t take it 

What does the lease say?

I'm not familiar with RentPrep. It sounds like they just run the credit/criminal but don't collect anything else? You should consider moving to a different system that allows you to customize the application and collect ALL pertinent information. My application asks for employment history, address history, birth date, social, etc. Then you compare what's in the application with what shows in the credit report. For example, the tenant may tell you they lived in Dallas and LA for the last ten years, but their credit report shows an address in Idaho last year. This may be a red flag that the tenant is hiding a previous address and/or Landlord.

You should also collect animal information, vehicle information, and anything else that may be important to know. You don't want to go overboard, but there are certain things that should be collected. 

Four pages? And that's your "preliminary" screening? You need to loosen up, friend!

My preliminary screening is very simple: tell them we will run a full credit/criminal on every adult, they should make 3x the monthly rent income, all income must be verifiable, and we will be calling Landlord references. That alone eliminates 90% of the bad applies. The rest are caught in the formal screening.

I'm managing 400 rentals and run approximately 800 applications a year. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.