All Forum Posts by: Rich Schmidt

 I think the decision on who should "eat the fee" is going to differ from one landlord to the next. I don't force anyone to use it. They can (for free) drop a check off to me. Or they can (for free) link cozy.co to their checking account. If they'd rather use a credit card, I don't see why I should pay for that. 

I also use cozy.co for those tenants who want that sort of thing and are willing to use it. Most of mine don't want to, but I offer it.

Most of my tenants (5 units: 3 houses, 2 apts) pay in person by dropping off a check. But I've had a couple who have paid online through cozy.co, which we use for tenant applications/screening. Works just fine, though the money takes a while to "settle"/land in the account. I think it's free for the tenants if they link it to their checking account or costs them something if they use a credit card. It's free to me either way.

 See Steve's post right before yours. :)

That's what I would do if I were in your shoes, Mark. And I'd take it off the rent rather than buy something off the wedding gift registry. I'd say something like, "I apologize, guys. I thought we did a good enough job, but evidently we weren't thorough enough. Go ahead and knock $___ off the rent next month. We can't afford to do that kind of thing every month, of course, but this was my mistake. Thank you for caring about the property and working to keep it clean!"

@Tony Ngo, I'm curious, too. I stumbled across this thread thanks to a search. What ended up happening?

We have two apartments in our house that we rent out, but it's not house hacking, really, because they're totally separate units. One drops his rent in our mailbox every month. The other uses cozy.co. The upside to Cozy is the automatic payments. The downside is that it takes about a week for the money to land in my checking account. (The tenant has it come out of her checking. If she used a credit card, it would cost her a little, but land in my bank account faster.) It isn't really an issue for getting bills paid or anything... just an annoyance & something to be aware of. I'm too cheap to spring for their "Express Payouts" service, which speeds that up. :)

I'd start by finding out if she wants to stay. If not, there's no need to worry, and you can simply increase the rent for the new tenant. If she does, then you can tell her how much you love having her as a tenant and want her to stay, but you have to raise the rent slightly. You can give as much or as little explanation as you want. Have taxes or insurance gone up? If so, you can just tell her that your costs are increasing, so you need the rent to increase as well. If it's solely due to being below market rent, you could say you're losing $50/month compared to market rates and need to start making some of that up. Increasing by only $25/month will help her see you're looking out for her, too, and not just yourself.

Short version: I think a $25/month increase is perfectly reasonable.

Insurance agent: "Well, sure... but they don't smoke anymore!"

I want to KEEP getting the emails about updates to a forum topic I'm following that include the link to go directly to the most recent post.

I want to STOP getting the emails I've been receiving recently (the past week or two?) for the exact same forms topics that include a big "Join the Discussion" button that takes me to the first page of the topic... which currently has 36 pages. That does me absolutely no good. It's a wasted email. 

I'm not sure why I sometimes get one and sometimes the other. Or maybe I get both every time? I'm not sure.