All Forum Posts by: Wesley W.

Just to clarify...

Kwikset Smartkey is completely mechanical (a "regular" lockset).  It sounds like Kwikset Smartlock is a wifi / remote product.  Sounds like someone in their marketing department should be reassigned.

@Marcus Auerbach understands.  MTM for the win.

I use Kwikset Smartkey.  Literally 30 seconds to rekey on turnover, and no spare cylinders or locksets to store.  I can key my vacant units to an alternate key for turnover cleaners or the trades.  I've only had one defective lock, but I have had about 30 or so Kwikset sets in service for the last 10 years, so I think that's within industry QC tolerances.

As long as you are mindful to bury the new key to the hilt during rekeying, it works pretty well.  Early on I did not pay attention and rekeyed a couple units so the key would only work if it were pulled out a few mm.

What @James Carlson said can minimize any problems, but to be honest you have an extremely small sample size.  If you grow your portfolio, you will eventually encounter difficulties like you read on here.  Many of the folks post on BP looking for advice on their challenges, not to boast about their successes, you it creates the illusion that most of landlording is fraught with problems.  Kinda like the opposite of "your Facebook life."

I self manage my own C-class properties so I'm dealing with the same demographic you are.  FB is infamously quirky with this kind of stuff.  It's inexplicable and used to happen to me.  My working theory is enough former prospects (usually out of spite for being unqualified) or unscrupulous competitors have reported your post, that the AI thinks you are a scammer, so you are essentially shadow banned.  Best I can determine there is no formal "human" review of any of this nonsense.

To mitigate exposure, when I post an ad, I include the following:

If interested in setting up a viewing, please message me for pre-screening questions sent via email.

After they, respond I send them a list of my pre-screening questions via Messenger, and end with:

Please send your responses directly to my email, below. I will not respond to any messages on this thread. I am receiving inquiries from multiple sites, and I am responding to all questions as well as screening candidates via email. This is not a scam; we own and operate in [local market].

If they respond with ANYTHING via Messenger, I ignore it for two reasons.  First, this is another form of pre-screening for me.  Is the prospect able to follow these directions, or do they think my system is for "other people"?  Secondly, if you exchange communication over Messenger, the FB algorithm thinks you are conducting a transaction and allows this prospect to rate you on FB Marketplace, which will negatively affect your "community score" and affect your ads' visibility.

FB is my least favorite medium to advertise and I feel dirty using it because of their "advocacy" in recent years, but it does give me more eyeballs.  My most qualified candidates still come from the other sites (Zillow, CL, Apts.com).  I find the FB prospects are less qualified and more labor intensive with the screening process.  Anyways, that's my experience.

Good luck.

Well, here in the Socialist Republic of New York, they are expanding the program. They have recently passed legislation that will go into effect in March. It's called the Housing Access Voucher Program. This has a familiar ring to it, right? This basically expands the program to include convicted felons, people with zero income, and illegal aliens, all of whom are ineligible for HUD Section 8.

In NY, all property owners are prohibited from declining any application due to source of income (i.e. we must accept Section 8 and the cornicopia of other subsidized programs available).

Good stuff.

@Matthew Masoud and @Michele Fischer summed it up nicely.

Hopefully they are on a MTM and you can issue a notice to terminate.  If not, excersize "happy clause" and offer for them to break lease without penalty.  Couch this as a customer service gesture, not due to an issue or negligence on your part.

Another solution to this problem in the future would be to move to a MTM contract.  I wrote about it recently here.

Credit unions should be able to do this at no cost to you.  Banks are becoming increasly inflexible with many parts of their policies that are alienating their customers, I find.  Unless there is a local/state requirement for doing so, I would put all the SDs into a single account for efficiency's sake - and just keep an accurate accounting of that the balance is for each tenant.  In my annual rent increase letters, I state what their balance will be once they deposit the additional SD to match the increase.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this person does not belong to the identity that she held out to you.  This will be an expensive lesson for you, but you should learn from it.  I would contact a lawyer directly.  I think working with a third party "eviction company" is another mistake and just throwing good money (and time) after bad.  I think you may be able to do a "John & Jane Doe and all other oocupants" eviction depending on your jurisdiction, but consult your attorney.

What city/state is this?