All Forum Posts by: Sam Leon

The biggest problem is communication, or lack there of.

I would not get a rent check and sometimes it takes a few calls to get a response with a "oh, you didn't get it? I mailed it a week ago..." and it happened a few times and me being the nice guy I let it go a few times if it's a day or 2 or 3...I know, shouldn't have done that.

Some items they broke I noticed and asked them to fix and they would say sure will do it first thing tomorrow or next week, and two months later not fixed. Had to get it fixed by my own repair guy and add on to the rent. I don't like to get lip service and nothing happens.

With this lease renewal same thing, sent email to him with a new lease 60 days prior, no response. Texted, called, got voice mail. Two weeks gone by and I emailed/texted again, replied and said computer broke and will look at lease the next day, as expected, nothing. Finally sent a noticed three days ago - letter, email, text saying yesterday was the last day to renew, after that I will retain someone to market the property for rent. Yesterday 11pm I got an email saying he's super busy on work and will call today to discuss.

Today he called and asked for month to month keeping the same rent.

The dragging feet approach and make me remind, remind, remind is really ticking me off and I am sick of it.

My 1 year lease is about to end, send renter a new 1 year lease with a 5% increase and renter wants to continue at original rent rate month to month.

I am inclined to decline and just part ways. He wasn't a model renter to begin with and had issues along the way.

Thoughts?

With so much junk in the way it's going to be impossible to put in a new water heater anyways. Best you can do is either (1) shut the cold water feed from the outside, to at least stop the feed to the leak, or (2) find a plumber who would at least go in to "short circuit" the leak, this means taking the connection from the cold water supply to the HWH, and the hot line coming out the HWH, and connecting the two. It will no longer have hot water, but you still have water in the unit. This is a simple process, cut or uncouple two points and connect them with a flex line, 20 minutes.

As far as the mold problem it's going to be tough. I would first do a mold test to see if those are black mold. Then proceed from there.

Thanks.

I am drawing up a new lease right now, and have a couple of additional questions.

When the tenant initially moved in, he paid 3 month's worth of rent - first month, last month and security.

Therefore if he does not renew, he does not need to pay last month's rent, and the security deposit is returned to him after I deduct damages.

If he does renew, and I wish to raise the rent say $100, how would I handle the originally held security deposit and last month rent? Should I charge an added $200 so that the deposit and last month rent are raised to the current rent amount, or leave them be? Doesn't matter to me either way but seems that raising to the current rate is a cleaner approach?

I need to add some verbage somewhere to say the deposit and last month rent are transferred to this new lease. Anyone has any standard verbage that I can use?

Now this one is a bit confusing. The tenant started the lease term on the 19th of the month, and when we signed the lease it was the 19th of each month the rent is due. This caused some problems. Sometimes we get late rent because the tenant forgot. I would like to move it to the 1st of the month, which means I somehow need to prorate an amount from the 19th to the end of the month which would be an odd amount. How should I write that into the lease? Or is it typical to just let it slide and not collect for those 10 days?

Seems like rent has risen significantly. Properties nearby that used to rent for $1800 a month are now asking $2400. One is asking $2750. I don't know if they are actually getting that but that's what they are asking.

My current tenant pays $1700. I am up for renewal in 75 days on this property.

Trying to decide how much to raise the renewal rent.

This tenant has been relative trouble free.

Advice?

I need some advice.

I have been having good luck with tenants, except one.

This one is late.

The lease started on the 25th of the month, so that's when the rent is due, and the lease says $50 late fee when more than 5 days late.

Usually I get a check in the mail around the 2nd or 3rd...he said he mailed it a few days late. I didn't make a fuss and just let it slide, and never charged a late fee.

But this time it's a bit much. I was out of town on vacation and had the mail held at the post office, I came back on the 5th picked up my mail, all my other rent checks are in, except this one. Emailed him and no reply. Waited another few days, called, no answer got voice mail. Left messages, and text. No reply until today which is the 13th and rent was due on the 25th of last month. His reply said he was BUSY, computer crashed and not able to access email (it's a web mail that one could access from any smart phone hello?) and that he DID mail the check on the 2nd and was surprised I didn't receive it.

Any suggestions as to how to handle this?

I have a property that I rented out to a tenant and the lease will be due to expire 47 days from today.

I should have acted a little sooner but I was out of the country on vacation for a few weeks and forgotten about this.

Added to that the tenant was secured by a real estate agent which I paid one month's commission to originally as required by the signed contract. The contract also said should I renew with same tenant I owe 1 month commission to agent upon renewal.

So I assume if there is a fee owned per renewal I should have the agent execute the renewal contact instead of me drawing a new one up right? There were issues with the original contact which the agent drew up by using a standard Florida contract, areas I hope to clarify any areas of misunderstanding (intentional or unintentional) by amending a few clauses on the standard contract.

What are standard dates to send a renewal letter to tenants? I assume it's something like send letter 60 days ahead and get a reply by 30 days? I will ask my agent but wanted to know my options now that I think I am late.

My last short sale property besides trash I found inside the closet below the AC handler HUNDREDs of unused tampons.

For me I signed up for FloridaMoves.com as well as Realtor.com. Both have it's pros and cons. I like FloridaMoves mostly because it allows for custom search by zip codes, so if there is a specific neighborhood I am interested in, I can use zip codes and ask for alerts when a property within my strike price range etc...are available.

I request a daily email compiling all for that day, and look through it once a day.

What I am curious is for those who do not have direct access to it, what site do you use to be kept on the changes to MLS?

Some specifics I am looking for:

(1) Seems these sites are running 1 or 2 days late on the listing. Say the listing is available on Monday, I get an alert for it on Wednesday, and won't look at it till Wednesday night. I am already behind by then.

(2) I can't seem to find one that will allow me to put in a narrower search then zip code. If I can set up automatic alerts by subdivision or community names, or block names, that would make it much easier...are there any out there?

(3) I can only set up alerts when a property becomes AVAILABLE, as in new listing, or when the price changes. I cannot find out that would tell me when the "status" of a property has changed, say from AVAILABLE to PENDING or from PENDING to SOLD or whatever. It would be really helpful to know if a status has changed, granted, some realtor don't even change statuses, I see many pending properties listed as available and it's only when you call they say they have a contract on it. Recently I had a short sale property I lost out on, asking 230K, I put in an offer at 200K cash and didn't get it. What I didn't know, was for whatever reason the deal fell through, may be a failure of inspection, or financing, I have no idea, and the property went to foreclosure, and was sold to someone for 180K in auction. I had submitted a backup offer to said property, which the agent asked for but never had the seller execute, only to sit on. Could not figure out the logic to it, but had I knew the property went from PENDING back to AVAILABLE or to FORECLOSED, I may be able to do something in retrospect.

So just curious to what others are doing on keeping up with the MLS.

Looking at some properties in a community that does not allow rental during the first year.

That basically makes it a buy/flip. I prefer to buy and hold to rent.

Any creative ideas on any way to avoid the property from sitting idle?

If it's a short sale, would renting back to the seller - basically allowing them to stay beyond the sale date be "within the rules"?

I am pretty sure the answer is no...I just wanted to make sure.