All Forum Posts by: Rich Schmidt

I'm in Valpo, too. If there's going to be a local gathering of folks investing in real estate, I'd like to be there. 

I've offered it to all 5 of our tenants (I think), but only one is using it. My only comment was going to be how long it takes for the money to appear in my checking account. Let's see... this month, according to Cozy, the tenant sent the payment Dec. 31. It appeared in my checking account on Jan. 7. She sent her Dec. rent on Dec. 1, and it arrived Dec. 8. 

That's a bit slow, so I'm glad to see it's going to be "cut in half" soon. 

It really gets annoying when the tenant pays within the 5-day grace period... but of course, the money takes another 7-8 days to arrive. In Nov. she sent her rent through Cozy on the 4th, and it arrived in my account on the 12th.

 I don't think it's a big deal. My first thought when I read your post was that the guy probably works the late shift. He texted you back when he had the chance.

But even if it might be considered rude... I don't think it's "dumb."

BTW, if one of my tenants texted me in the middle of the night, I wouldn't know it until morning. My phone doesn't ring or buzz at night when it's in "do not disturb" mode. (Unless you're on my favorites list.)

Good for them, asking about the sex offender thing in advance instead of waiting until the showing! I know a guy who's on that registry, and it's tough for them to find housing.

BTW, I only have 5 units, and 4 of them are a block or less away from an elementary school, i.e., too close for sex offenders to live in them. I'm not sure if the 5th one is far enough away or not...

Great. So now I've just rewarded your bad behavior. :)

Seriously. Please don't do that again.

I look forward to hearing how this turns out @Sandra Holt. I hope they're able (perhaps through family? or other charities in the area?) to pull the money together and catch up on rent. I appreciate @Jon Holdman's comments comparing this to their other expenses (food, gas, etc). If they need help coming up with the money, there are people and places they can turn to for help to make sure they can pay their rent.

I manage a rental house for our church and had a tenant who started missing rent payments, always with a very plausible story... until finally we had to evict him. We lost around $6k on the deal that we'll never see because I kept giving him chance after chance. I wanted to be gracious! It's a church, after all! But really I was just being gullible. I won't make that mistake again. I'm not saying I won't be flexible... but not THAT flexible!

So now if anyone has come here looking for an actual post...

I've had a couple of calls from some college kids renting a house that I manage. One was because the lights had gone out on the main floor, and "it's too dark right now to go down to the basement to check the generator." Generator? I'm not sure what he thinks is powering this house! :) By the time I got the voicemail and called him back, one of them had managed to brave the dark basement and flip the breaker back on.

Another time, the thermostat battery died, so the heat wouldn't come on. It was 9:00 at night and starting to get cold, so they didn't want to wait until the next day, if possible. So I went over with some batteries, popped it open with my fingers, and changed the batteries (2 AA). When they saw how easy it was, one of them said, "Oh, we could have done that!" Another one said, "I didn't realize it was just the thermostat. I thought it was something with the furnace." Good thing I only live 2 minutes away!

I'm not sure these things count as "dumb," really. They've just never owned a house or had to mess with any of these things. 

Not cool.

I get an email saying a new post has been made. Get all excited about what dumb thing a tenant has said or done now. Looking forward to laughing. Only to find this.

I clicked the Vote button hoping I could down vote it, but it looks like that's not an option here.

What ever happened with this situation, @Jessica Hinman?

I used to use a sign in addition to a Craigslist ad. After a while I realized that even though I was spending lots of time on the sign folks, I always ended up renting to someone who contacted me in response to the Craigslist ad. So I quit using the sign.

Do I still get calls from people who don't have the ad in front of them? Yep. Often they've sent emails in response to lots of ads, and they can't keep them straight after the fact. "Which one was this again? Was this the house with the ____?" It's a little annoying, but not that big of a deal.