All Forum Posts by: Rich Schmidt

Wish I could help. Craigslist has brought us every single-family tenant we've had in the past 5 years.

I'll echo the advice shared above to make sure you have a good ad, with good photos & a good description.

Well, I'd only be able to help if it's in an older version of PowerPoint, as that's all I have in my old Parallels WinXP virtual machine on my Mac. :)

If Will created them, then presumably he could export them to pdf for you... right?

Some tenants may be "upset" not because they don't have the money but because they could get a better place for less. You have to be sure your rents are suitable for what you're providing when compared to their other options.

In my quite limited experience, yard signs (the generic kind) have brought lots of phone calls, but all my actual tenants have come because of free ads on Craigslist. So many of the calls were just basic "How much?" or "How many bedrooms?" even after I hung a little extra sign below it with those details. It got annoying. I didn't even bother with it the last two times we needed tenants.

Wait... I think our poster on the bulletin board at the law school may have brought one of our apartment tenants. So I guess it's not ALL thanks to Craigslist. :)

I'm not raising rents on any of our tenants because they're all at the high end of the market already.

Our two apartments have law students in them, which means they typically stay for 3 years, and we don't plan to raise rent on them during their stay. Perhaps in between tenants... but that will depend on the market.

One of our SFR's has a tenant nearing the end of her 1 year lease, and we told her if she'd stay we wouldn't raise her rent. She's staying. Our other SFR is between tenants. We tried going for a higher rent amount, but ended up coming down during negotiations to the same as what the last tenants were paying. We did this to avoid vacancy, and because we think these tenants will care for the property well. We'll only have a week of vacancy.

I'm resurrecting an old thread due to a new one making me curious...

It sounds to me like high-end rentals tend toward 1-year leases and low-end rentals tend toward month-to-month. Is that the vibe I'm getting?

We've always done 1-year leases because summer seems like the best time for people to be moving around here. I don't want someone moving out in November, sticking me with an empty house until spring. Not many people are looking for a house to rent during the winter around here!

We currently have two single-family homes and two apartments, and they're all on 1-year leases. It's actually helping us with one of the houses right now, as they bought a house and will be moving before their lease ends. We agreed to let them out early IF we find a good tenant to replace them. If we don't, they've agreed to pay through the end of their lease, even after they've moved. (And they would, as it's a small town, and we have family friends in common.) Fortunately for them, it looks like we've found a good tenant just in time.

One of the houses is high end. The other is probably middle-of-the-road, but definitely not low end. The apartments? No idea. :)

Anyway, that's my thinking.

I just meant that I wouldn't be doing it for free. What kind of arrangement would you suggest?

(As it stands, it looks like this particular deal isn't going to happen. But we may end up doing something similar in the future, so I'm still very interested in what would work best.)

They'd be paying me some kind of fee in return for helping manage the property.

Nothing is set in stone at this point. They haven't even made an offer. But we want to explore the possibilities. I don't think they want the headaches of management, and I have a few years of landlording experience, so it would basically be an investment for them (or us, if I put money in) and a side job for me.

My parents are thinking about buying a 4-unit near my house. Am I legally allowed to help them with the management of the property if I'm not a broker?

If being a broker IS required... could we get around that by my putting some money into it and being a partial owner of the property?

Thanks for any help!