All Forum Posts by: Sam Leon

This can be approached from a legal perspective or not.  From a legal perspective based on the contract verbage it seems your tenant could be responsible.  It would seem the reason for the high bill does not matter, whether it is a pipe burst or the tenant leaves a faucet running then go on vacation for a month.  But I am not a lawyer.  However, this then leads to what if your tenant disagree and does not pay?  The water company will then cut off his/her service, and if left unpaid, depending on the jurisdiction, down here where I am they will then impose a lien on the property. regardless who's name is on the account.

For this reason I would suggest getting with the tenant and work something out where the burden can be split.

It's not your fault because you don't live there, can't be there to notice anything unusual, like noise behind the walls with water moving when no one is using water.

It's not your tenant's fault because they are not "in tune" with home maintenance.  I have young tenants who does not know the difference between water supply pipes and drain pipes, totally clueless.  They can take, edit, resize, annotate, add smilies and post a picture on a tiny phone with ease but can't change a light bulb or swap out a battery at the back of a wall clock, let alone keeping an eye on a buried pipe or a leaky water heater relief valve.  They just expect things to work.

This is probably what I would do in your shoes.

First, I will contact the water department again. Many water bills have multiple components to the bill.  In my town they charge me water usage and sewer usage.  They assume the water being used is sent down the drain which they have to collect and treat, the sewer charge is actually more than the water charge.  Of course this is not applicable when you are filling up a 25000 gallon swimming pool, so we could call them and say we are filling up a pool and have the sewer rate waived for the time the water is used for the fill.  You should ask the water company to deduct out of the bill the sewer charge because they never made it to the drains for treatment, that should be on top of whatever consideration they gave you for the water leak.

You may also be able to work something out with the water company so the outstanding balance can be paid over a period of time.

It may be necessary for your tenant to call since the name on the account is not you.  Perhaps a visit to the water company together for a scheduled appointment with a supervisor is best, but don't know if this is feasible with the coronvirus threat these days.

Whatever balance is outstanding after all these efforts I would probably propose to the tenant to split it after pointing out the clause in your lease.

As others have stated, it's a real difficult thing to prove the real cause.

I have a clause in my lease agreement that stated that the drains are all clear and functional, what are the 500 things to not put down toilets and disposers, and if there is any blockage the tenants will be responsible for the cost of drain cleaning.  Even with that clause, I do not typically charge the tenants unless I can prove they caused the blockage.

A clear case would be they flushed a rubber duck or a tooth brush down and that lodged inside the neck of a toilet.  I would charge the tenants.

On the flip side, if it's a line with tree root penetration then it's your problem to solve.

In many cases you may not be able to tell.  The drain cleaner snakes or jets the line and rarely are they able to see the items flowing past.

Also in some cases it's a combination, it could be an old cast iron pipe with a rough inside surface full of rust, which started to act like velcro to things that flows past, or a slight settlement causing a belly, which again impedes the flow, then the tenant pours down grease, pasta and bean, well, you get the idea.

Most of the time you end up eating the cost especially if the plumber can't tell you anything.

Now, you mentioned that the clog caused water to back up to a vacant unit next door.  Well, this is a problem because it means the blockage is located at a point AFTER the drain from both units come together.  So it is possible the blockage was originally caused by someone next door, a blockage formed downstream of the wye, but since it's vacant, no one sent anything down the drain to trigger any symptoms.  Now this unit runs the dishwasher, and it backs up into this unit.  In this case more then likely you have to eat the cost.

I also have a tenant who is scheduled to move out at the end of April, end of lease, and mutually agreed not to renew (wasn't a good fit).

Now she says she hasn't had a chance to look for housing, which is understandable.  So now I am wondering what to do, of course one logical option would be to offer her a month to month, which is what I might end up doing.

@Monica Johnson I also have some SFR rentals. Yes those you could bend rules based on the tenants, kind of.

I said kind of because I know some landlords encourage their tenants (and applicants and others) to talk to each other. For example, I know of a landlord with a facebook page listing all their properties, as well as comments from their tenants. Obviously this can be good as good tenants can refer other good tenants, the bad thing is it kind of makes it impossible to use discretion when treating tenants differently. For example, you can't give a holiday gift to only who you think are good tenants because one of them would post "Thanks Sam for the $25 AMC movies GC my boy friend and I saw Avengers last night xoxo" then your other tenants who didn't get a GC will feel left out.

I visit my properties once a month for regular maintenance, mostly for little stuff, like changing AC filters, test smoke alarm batteries, test GFCI receptacles, pour bleach down AC condensate drain lines, exercise water supply stop valves, feel under any drains to check leakage, test water heater T&P valves, etc etc etc...they do not need to be done monthly but that's what I do at each property.  Takes me 1 to 1.5 days to do this for every property.  Now I wonder if I should wait longer or give the tenant the option to "skip me".

Good discussions.

I would like to also get some feedback from fellow landlords on what they are doing DIFFERENTLY due to the coronavirus crisis.

More and more states are suspending foreclosure and eviction. So many landlords, whether you like it or not, will not be able to evict tenants due to non-payment anyways.

I saw many commented that they want to do what they can to help "good tenants" who may be struggling to make rent. My questions are:

(1) In an apartment building, you cannot really treat different tenants differently. If Jerry in apartment C has been a good tenant and you give Jerry a break in rent (deferred rent, waived late fees, partial rent, reduced rent whatever...) how do you stop the other tenants from finding out? You can't, words travel. Now tenants in other apartments (some are not good tenants who you may or may not even renew) may refuse to pay rent because "he heard Jerry didn't pay". You have to give every tenant the same break, right?

(2) What are the breaks you are giving your tenants? Is it deferred rent payment, no late fees, accept partial payment, a rent payment plan spread over next few months, rent credit, rent reduction, apply last month rent as rent, apply security deposit as rent, or something else? If they flat refuse to pay 1 penny for months, then what?

(3) Are you still doing business as usual? Are you visiting your rental and performing scheduled maintenance and repairs, or are you cutting that down to a minimum? Are you doing anything different during repair visits? Do you ask your tenants to keep a distance or leave for an hour while you do your things? Do you cut a once a month maintenance visit to every 45 days or 60 days? Do you wear disposable gloves upon entering each property to avoid accidentally spreading stuff from say one apartment to the next? Or may be you feel you need to do MORE maintenance because the tenants are home more and use the appliances more?

Thank you Robin for your comments, but my situation is different.  I wasn't renting the rooms out individually, I was renting the entire house out.  To one party only, executed one lease.

Only twice in the past two years, the party that applied happens to be roommates.  In one case they were friends, in another case I was told they are friends (only later found out they wanted to rent my house so they found other "friends" online).

I owned multiple family buildings and I do similar to yours, I assigned a person to do some minor chores and be my eyes and ears, I pay for utilities, and each apartment has it's own lease.  I guess the same thing could happen in an apartment, say a 2BR apartment renting to two people who are just roommates, but I expect them to have one single joint lease.

I just didn't have a good experience renting to roommates.  But I wonder if I can reject roommates or whether this is a familial status violation.

In a recent flood where river water rose to 5" above my garage lowest elevation I used a $75 sump pump from The Home Depot connected to it a 5/8" garden hose and dump it into a storm drain (which actually drains back out to the river).  Day 1 I drained the garage (took four hours), Day 2 I drained the crawlspace (took 12 hours).  Yes I had to place it at the lowest point.

Is it just me or does anyone else have more problems when renting to multiple roommates sharing a single family home?  For example, renting to 4 people in a 4BR house?

This is not a college student rental scenerio.

I knew roommates would be more transient.  That they might not move in and out at the same time, and I need to deal with moving one person out and adding someone in.  I don't do individual leases, they will have to line up all the occupants at one time, then I do an application, deposits, and a single lease they are held jointly liable.

But after a few years of experimenting with this in two rentals, I am not liking it.

It seems roommates (even if they are good friends) do not do share chores.  So if you have Amanda, Brenda, Carol and Doris in a house, who takes out the trash every day is a BIG thing.  Everyone just assumes someone else would do it eventually.  The trash gets piled up...which eventually translate into a call to me about seeing roaches around the trash cans under the sink cabinet.  Who rolls the trash cart out for collection twice a week?  Who should be paying the water bill (yes I got a call of no water at 8pm thinking it's a plumbing issue but instead service was cut off from non-payment).  Drama about Carol wanting a lock on her bedroom door to keep others out of her valuables.  Amanda said she has nothing to do with the fridge door handle and the kitchen cabinet door hinge being yanked off, someone else did it, charge someone else...they are jointly liable, on a single lease, yet they behave as if they have 4 leases.  Fight over who gets to park under the car port, who gets to park on the uncovered driveway...wants me to assign parking, no...you guys work it out.  Or may be it's me that I need to have a better approach to these pesty drama.  Them not getting along with each other has direct impact on me doing my job, for example, now I have to individually inform all roommates to make sure I can come by next Tuesday at 10am to do some repairs, because Brenda doesn't talk to Doris anymore LOL.

I do understand these things could happen in a family too, that a couple could have marriage issues and have fights and I would have the same drama, but yet over the years I have never had any drama when renting to a family, whether it is a couple with or without kids, sisters, BF/GF etc...may be it's just luck.

The latest is the annual lease is up.  I sent them a lease expiration notice.  Carol comes to me and say she wants to renew another year, but not with "them".  She has three other "friends".  Amanda wants to stay, but only with Doris as roommates and she needs two other "friends".  Serious?

So my questions to fellow landlords, do you have a different experience when renting properties to roommates that are unrelated?

In addition, if you have an application to your property, and one application is from a family, the other from unrelated roommates, I assume preferring to rent to the family would be a violation of FHA's familial status, yes?

One year lease about to be up and I am not renewing.  Tenant has been a real pain to deal with.  Too many lies and excuses, you know what I mean.

Now do you tell the tenant why you won't be renewing?  Or do you make something up like you are considering moving in yourself, or you need to do some major renovations, or you might make it a short term rental, etc etc etc...it's not the confrontation I worry about but I don't want to risk property damages out of spite.

I have an enameled cast iron kitchen sink at one of my rentals.  Never an issue for years, but this tenant moved in and I have never seen things abused to this level.  Handles of refrigerator yanked loose.  Kitchen hinges broke off.  Now my sink is all scratched up.  It's scratchless before they moved in.  This is what it looks like now.

It's badly scratched up and I don't think it's fixable unless I coat it but once I do I have to do it every year like those old tubs.

They said it's nothing it's just "normal wear and tear".  Do you think this is wear and tear?  If not how would you charge/deduct damages like this?