All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

The tenant had been in the house for 7 months prior to the clog. And the plumber determined that the stoppage was in the toilet. It is clearly her responsibility to pay. 

Hopefully your lease states that repairs, etc are paid for first with her rent money, then it is applied to rent. This will cause late fees to happen. You should explain this to her.

You can also take the cost out of her security deposit, if you absolutely have to. But, this is a last resort, because you won't have as much security deposit to use once she moves out.

Hello. I manage lots of vacation homes, as well as my own, so I can help:

Don't waste your money on newspaper ads. Renters are looking on the internet. 

List your place on Flipkey. I get more inquiries from them than any other place.

Start a Google + page and post to it frequently.

You can always do Google Adwords, but that gets expensive quickly.

I already told them that if they leave it clean and undamaged, they will get their deposit back. 

I will probably reimburse them either way. Just want to know what is required.

Today I served a 3 Day Notice to Quit to my tenants. There are multiple lease violations and they need to move.

All previous 3 Day Notices I have served have been because of unpaid rent. These people have paid their rent in full for June, so that is not the issue.

Here is my question: If they actually move out in 3 days, or before the end of the month, do I have to reimburse them any left over rent for the month?

I don't give it too much weight at all. I look it over and if it isn't horrible, then I base my decision on the rest of the background check. Pretty much everyone that I've ever rented to has a bad score. That's a big part of why they are renting instead of buying.

@Joseph Adelmann I figure out the average per month cost of utilities and just raise the rent by that much. If they go over the allotted amount, then I have to bill the tenants. They rarely go over, and when they do, it is just a few dollars usually. So, it has not been a problem.

@Matthew Paul is right that some people will use more electricity and gas than others. But, there is really no way around that. You just have to be honest in the beginning that it is that way. If they agree, then they really have no reason to complain about it later.

Combined utilities is a tough one. If you raise the rent and then include utilities in the rent, then they will not care how wasteful they are.

If you have them split it, then someone will be mad because their neighbor is wasteful.

Is it too cost prohibitive to separate out the meters? If so, then I would tell them that the first $100 (or whatever works for you) is included in the rent. Anything over that will be split among the tenants, based on square footage.

This is what I usually do. I'd love to hear other successful ways of dealing with this.

I also quit using them a while back. I only had applicants use them a few times, and every single time, they had trouble. I use RentPrep.com. It is really easy to use and your reports come back quickly.

Regardless of who wrote the check, I always send the security deposit back as 1 check made out to everyone on the lease. It is up to them to split it up.