All Forum Posts by: Randall Beltran

My wife & I just bought a duplex, and would like to renovate it for rental purposes. 
We think it'll be easiest to renovate ourselves while we live there, in one of the sides.

But this changes the tax rules (the 14-day rule, which tops out your deductions at the amount of rent collected for the year).
Since all the expenses are for rental purposes, is there any good strategy here to still be able to claim those deductions?

The home is a 4 bedroom, so I think the number of adults would be legal within the home. I agree with all of you, this gave me the feeling I should "run away"! Certainly, because I don't want to evict someone who can't pay, because their "room-mates" moved out 3-months into the terms of the lease.

If I go by first-come first-serve, where the first qualified applicant gets the property, I'm afraid such a 5-person situation could occur next time I need to find tenants.

Is it possible to pick the cream of the crop? Wait for a period of time, then pick the top income-qualified tenant? Is this allowed practice for tenant screening, or do you always have to give it to the first "income-qualified" group of 5?

I was screening possible tenants in Nevada for a house, and I got a call from a group who all had very low income and loose-ties.

A woman and her 2-month boyfriend, plus three other friends whom they didn't know super well.
The group didn't meet my minimum income criteria unless ALL of them pasted together their incomes.

Because of the loose ties, and barely meeting the income criteria, I felt a bit worried if 1-2 people move out (1 friend, or 2 people because boy/girlfriend), because the remaining folks may not be able to pay the rent. (In my case, none of them met the credit criteria so I was OK rejecting on basis of credit - But if this wasn't the case, I'm not sure how to properly handle such situations?).

How do you folks on the forum normally handle these situations?

Do you put a limit on number of [tenants // lease signers // qualifiers] who can be pasted together to meet your minimum income criteria?
Do you ramp up your income criteria based on number of signers? (E.g. 3x income/rent ratio for 1 person, 4x income/rent ratio for 2 people, so forth?)
Have you never seen this before?

Anyways, I'm pretty new to this. Hoping to get some advice from all the great sages who lurk this forum :)