All Forum Posts by: Matthew Wyn

Do ONLY 30 day leases with 30 days notice with roommates/rooming houses. 

Or 60 days if you need at most, never a year lease for a roommate. Ever. 

So much easier to get a bad roommate out with month to month leases, and the roommate is generally more careful not to anger the roommate/owner with month to month leases knowing they can be asked to leave at any time. Been there, done that with the 1 year roommate lease-- NEVER again. Never never never. Repeat after me, month-to-month lease with roommates.

Have the roommate agreement specify occupancy limits, including overnight guests. College students (and any roommates) WILL try to let their boyfriend/girlfriend, sibling, friend, etc. "crash" in their room a few nights a week or more. That runs up utilities, risk, liability, noise, parking, wear and tear, etc. My roommate agreement specified the number of nights limited per roommate, with a clause on them not accumulating, not being transferable, and applying to any guest that roommate has that month-- not per houseguest, but total houseguest limits per month.

Have a lease AND have her have a roommate agreement with her 'sub-tenants.'  

My roommate agreement specified things like: furnished or unfurnished, maximum occupancy- limiting number of overnight guests as it's bills paid roommate living, if it's co-ed or single sex, no smoking vaping e-cigs or substances on the property, cleaning chores/expectations, no underage drinking, pet rules, what utilities are included up to what limits and what utilities aren't included, etc.

Require a security deposit from each roommate, even if small.

Get a locking thermostat cover; set utility allowances so people won't take advantage of "all bills paid" rooms and have the daughter/master tenant or whoever is paying the utility bills be the person who sets the utilities. Or split utility costs with each roommate paying a utility deposit upfront and/or adding their name to the utility bill.

Have a strong lease with occupancy limits (including overnight guests-- it's a roommate lease, my city allows roommates to specify this), quiet enjoyment/don't disturb neighbor clauses, verify a student's court record search for evictions and criminal history (they might be young, but still can have them), noise rules, and a strong disclaimer. 

Strong disclaimer was my biggest rule- waiving of inconvenience, injury, loss of property, etc.

I would have your daughter rent from you as the master tenant-- then the roommates rent under her. She's got less assets to go after than you if a roommate tries to sue. 

I wouldn't interview your daughter as a property manager... if you do this, it's doing it as a favor to your daughter. If my normal tenant asked if they could rent out rooms, my answer would be NO. NEVER. Not in a million years. You're doing this as a personal favor to your daughter. 

This is your main source of income? Does your daughter already live there? What if your daughter gets fired and can't pay you--- are you going to evict your daughter? Charge her $2000 to replace the stained carpet? Have your property foreclosed on if you get $0 a month from her? Expect, at best, to get your normal rental rate paid by your daughter. Roomming houses aren't huge money makers after you factor in vacancy, taxes, and utilities if you're doing "room for rent- bills paid." 

It would be so much cheaper and less risky just to rent your daughter a $500 bills paid room in *SOMEONE ELSE'S ROOMING HOUSE." If your daughter can't afford the rental rate on her own, no roommates needed, you're taking a risk-- and you'll have to pay the difference in what she can't pay. She'll have to compromise on rental qualifications to have no vacancy with roommates if she can't afford the rental rate on the house on her own, and that's risky, at best. 

I would have her choose older students, no 18 or 20 year olds. Underage drinking is too common, and 18 year olds don't know how to not damage a house more often than not. I found students and young professionals 24-28 so, so, SO much easier than 18-22 year olds... yuck! At 25, she should seriously expand her reach to young professionals... 24-30 is an ideal age. By then they have often toned down the partying somewhat, gotten a job (fewer late night loud parties that disturb neighbors), care more about their credit, have some idea of the damage they're doing to a property, etc. An 18 year old freshman will generally be whiny and complain about everything, while a 25 year old will appreciate the cost of living and value of a "room for rent." Find roommates with a job and school, they're less likely to be entitled "call their mom" types that whine about everything and annoy you. Upper 20s/lower 30s young professionals are so much easier- they've usually rented before, are trying to settle down and start a career, and know how to work a washer/dryer-- unlike many 18 year olds these days. o-O

This.

Once you close, it's your problem. And the tenant's sound like extortionists. They may try to drag it out, and yes- it would then be your problem after closing so long as the courts would be willing to let them drag it out. The tenant sounds like scumbag extortionists, and I would reconsider purchase until it's vacant-- and never buy anything unless the contract says delivered vacant at COE.

A few months after inspection would be hard to prove that the mice were up there during the inspection.

$4500 for... mice?

Get yourself some traps, and repeat. I had mice in my place last year. It set me back about $4.50 to get rid of them. Not a pleasant task, but easy DIY. 

How many mice are we talking here, hundreds?  Have they chewed electrical cables or wood structure?

Pest resistant insulation = load. of. crap. You need chemicals and traps. Bait buckets work well, then they don't run back to the insulation. There's some pest chemicals now that dry them up so if they run back into the attic insulation, they don't smell. Pour a bottle of wolf/fox urine around the perimeter. Seal up cracks. Clean up wood piles, trash, etc.

Suspicious behavior = let the neighbor's call the cops. In my city jail time voids leases.

Late payments = fee. No payments = eviction.

I've never heard of a landlord re-screening long-term tenants. New tenants yes, long-term no. I suppose you could include it in your lease, but it sounds like a lot of effort for low odds and a very rare circumstance.

Would you evict for a misdemeanor or felony? Only after sentencing or before? Most of those things would mean a person finds themselves in jail and jobless, so they'd get evicted for lack of payment anyway.

If someone's been there a month or a decade, if they miss a payment = late fee, if they don't pay= evict. If they bother the neighbors, that violates my lease (quiet enjoyment, etc.) = eviction. 

My lease requires all adult members of the household to be screened no matter when they move in-- if someone has their felon adult child move in a decade later than they moved in, that person must pass my application.

I have a clause on no subletting (including Airbnb etc.) and no home businesses.

You could, but most potential tenants would run, and run fast.

I would never, ever in a million years apply to a place before even seeing it as a tenant.

I would also never ask a tenant to apply before even seeing the place either.... that's nearly unheard of. I've never heard of it, even in large cities where places rent within a few days or less.

List your criteria, talk to them, and weed them out-- show it to top sounding candidates, state your criteria without exceptions, show the place -- open house if nothing else, then let them apply after seeing it. Some people will view the place and not be interested or not like it.

Before letting someone inside, I run their name through a quick local court record search, PACER, and google/social site. It takes all of a few minutes and has helped me weed out some with recent evictions before bothering to show it or give them the property address. I do an open house with tenants back to back scheduled within 15 minutes, and tell them "7:15, 15 minute showing window for each open house guest"... if they're an hour late, they'd miss out.

I politely declined, said it must be through Airbnb. And I declined again and explained airbnb doesn't allow it the second time- saying bookings through airbnb only. This guest has been polite, helpful, ideal- takes out the trash, cleans the counters after cooking, really too polite. That's scary. :D This person has only one previous review recommending him from a popular new host in my city.  

We're less than 24 hours away from their airbnb checkout day.
They said they would put in another reservation request through airbnb, but haven't done so yet.

What if the airbnb guest won't leave? Or refuses to rebook through Airbnb? 
I keep reading airbnb horror stories about long-term 30+ day tenants. It's been well UNDER 30 days, so no long-term tenant's rights.

Airbnb guest is a foreign visitor, and wants to pay directly to save on all their airbnb fees. They want to stay here a few months, so airbnb would take a fairly hefty fee from them.

Guest has been here a little while now, ideal roommate/guest - clean, polite, etc.

When visitor booked, they had a debit card issue so the payment at first didn't work-- supposedly because it was a foreign transaction (they're from outside the USA). They fixed it, payment went through. Airbnb is charging them 10%+ fees., and that adds up when they're staying by the month.

My first reaction--- all levels of no, they could "easily" not pay and try to stick around. Or, it could be some sort of scam-- this would void airbnb's insurance they cover us with, blah blah.

My second reaction... Airbnb is charging them a pretty penny, and this isn't much riskier than the roommate/tenants I've gotten online from other sites-- except the fact that this person doesn't have a deposit here. I've got home insurance, and the lease I could have them sign has a solid disclaimer (for what it's worth).

I've gotten plenty of online tenants, some short-term (one month or more) before-- and never had a problem. The earlier tenants had small deposits (a few hundred or less), the difference is that this person 1) is from another country 2) no deposit at all 3) already living here (through airbnb).

This person was easily searchable online- somewhat slightly known in their career field, just from another country. Their story added up, no local evictions/felonies, etc. 

I thought about making them sign a weekly lease-- if they ever don't pay, it's a 7 day notice to leave. 

Or I thought about saying "sorry, airbnb would ban us" and making them always pay through airbnb.

They're already paying $100 more a month than our "long term" roommates, so I like the idea of extending them. Airbnb is adding fees to that for them-- and also charging us fees. 

Would you extend through airbnb or accept a "new" tenant from airbnb directly by cash?

Do you find that tenants pay late or not at all? 

I've had good luck with ACH payments a while with middle class tenants until now. It stopped them paying a few days late or forgetting/out of town. This time it's a lower-middle class tenant, and having him pay by paper check to make sure it's a good check seems like a good way to remind him of his spending. 

This tenant did give me a check... hopefully it doesn't bounce.

No sign of a check yet and he is back in town. 

I'm going to give him until Monday. Monday I follow the lease and give him the cure or quit notice.

My lease requires late payment in the form of cashier's check or money order, which I'll require after Monday.

 I don't want him to keep trying to float-- then bounce-- checks on me. Him saying he didn't have the money in that account doesn't sound promising. Rent isn't a large sum.The payment site telling me the error wasn't "insufficent funds" but "customer placed stop payment" still makes me assume the worse.

I can't believe this. Guess I've been very lucky in doing this over the years to never have a late, let alone a bounced, check before.