All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

 Not only is this illegal on the banking side, it's probably against landlord tenant laws as well. *sigh*

NEVER CUT THE RENT!!! EVER!!!

You're just setting the stage. Now they are in charge. And dumb college kids aren't really in a position to negotiate anything. They won't move over 50 bucks. And you can't define market rent to within a few tens of dollars. Every house and every location is a bit different. "Market" rent is only an average number. That means some are lower, and some are HIGHER. Nobody can put an exact number to the dollar on your property.

If they are good tenants AND you're already getting the high end of market rate, then I would consider not raising it for another year. Be reasonable and be willing to work with people, but you gotta have lines that don't get crossed. Lowering rent is one of them.

 A city's "master plan" is usually just a nice way to say "stuff we'd like to do but don't actually have any money or resources to complete".

Not for any type of lease. NOT A CHANCE! There is no way that can benefit you. Those leases go on for decades...I don't care how good of tenants they are, don't plan on them being around in 10 years.

 It's not a "system", its a bad guess at best. This is such a TERRIBLE idea. It WILL BE abused. You cannot evenly split power nor can you come up with any way to adjust it based on square footage or number of rooms or tenants. Everybody is different. This will result in 7 people hating you and arguing about electric bills every month. This WILL result in you losing money, there is no "if" in this scenario. The problem is that you clearly don't understand electric bills very well (or you wouldn't be asking this) and tenants rarely understand their own electric bill. Nobody trusts anything but a meter...and even then there is arguing.

Have the units separately metered. This is incredibly easy to do. You do not need to "rewire everything in the building". If it isn't easy to do, because they have all kinds of wiring going back and fourth and other such things, then you just don't want this property in general, because it was built using only half a donkey.

There is no reason you should be talking about 7 people at all. You say there are 4 meters, at least bill those 4 correctly! The remaining tenants cannot be "rubbed", this is purely slumlord terminology and technology!

Give them 24 hours notice, go in there with a high definition video camera and get evidence of EVERYTHING. If they don't like it there is a particular universal sign language you can show them. If it is any different in a month then they have committed criminal damage in most states. They will be required to pay for this. Give them another 24 hours notice to show the house whenever you feel like it.

Additionally, I would charge an early termination fee, and they will have to continue paying rent until a new tenant can be located. These things will be SUPER easy to win in court, and it's way, way easier to collect than many who have never tried think.

And as said before, do not ever accept a security deposit as rent. If the rent is late, start with the proceedings. I would suggest you do everything you can to force replenishment of said security deposit as it is not returnable until about 30 days after they move out in undamaged condition. 

Hit them with an eviction, bad credit for a judgement against them, and no kind words as a previous landlord. At least teach them a lesson, and warn the next landlord if nothing else. Would you rent to somebody with bad credit, no references, and unpaid judgements?

It's rarely hard to add a submeter to most any utility. 

 Then that should be clearly defined in your lease along with the cost of excess bandwidth. 

Still a bad idea to offer internet though. I'm all for submetering all other utilities, just too much support involved with internet.

 Nothing. Nothing happens to you if the tenant uses your internet to do something illegal. End of story. I'm not sure what you mean about "extra costs", buy your internet bill does not ever go up based on something somebody did online.

With that said, no, I would not include internet. It's unlikely they will consider the overall cost when comparing to another property without, and, you're likely stuck being the tech support guy when it doesn't work. And it always doesn't work. Just more things for you to deal with.

Look at what is available to rent. Call them and ask the price. There is no database of this anywhere and any website that claims to is lying. The Zillow "zestimate" for example, is laughable and based on very few real life pieces of information.