All Forum Posts by: Jennifer T.

I would also be alarmed at 6 grown adults choosing to share a bedroom with another adult, plus four more people in the house.  That doesn't pass my sniff test.  People might choose to do something like that if they are desperate.  I don't want desperate tenants.  I just can't see the vast majority of working adults wanting to live in a permanent "sleep away" camp-style arrangement.  It's off.

Or is this more a situation where the tenants will come and go?  Like different tenants moving in and out each semester?  That seems more believable for why people would tolerate it, if it is just for a few months.  But then adds the additional risk to you, that you wouldn't necessarily know who was living there.

Especially since you aren't planning to be a landlord, hire an attorney who specializes in landlord/tenant cases.  I know you are worried they will trash the place if they are "forced out".  Anything could happen, but probably not.  They could lose their voucher if they cause major damage.  Especially if it is intentional.  It is already May.  These people aren't going anywhere until they are forced to.

Here is my S8 tenant holdover story.  This was a few years ago, before the pandemic.  45 days before her lease was ending, I posted a written notice that I was not going to renew her lease along with a Notice to Vacate.  She never contacted me about it, which was surprising.  But retaliated by making complaints, which resulted in an extra inspection.  Despite the fact that this home had cleared the annual inspection only four months earlier.  Her move-out date was Aug. 31st.

She and I primarily communicated via text message.  I sent her a text message a couple days before that, asking for a good day/time for us to meet, so I could get the keys back.  She totally ignored that.  No surprise there.  She had always been a difficult tenant, hence why I was getting rid of her.  This is where I got sly.  I sent her another text message on Sept 1st that we assumed she had vacated the residence and would be heading over to evaluate the home, so we could promptly send her security deposit back to her (if applicable).  Oh!  NOW she replies back they haven't moved out.  But when I try to come up with a mutually agreeable solution, like a move-out date that will work out for her, she will only give me the vague answer that they are "working on it".  Then she ignores me again.  I give her a last warning that I would rather work with her on her move-out plan, but will file for an eviction on Monday if I have not heard from her.  No response.  I filed for an eviction.  Our case was scheduled for Sept. 20-something.

She showed up at court with her free legal aid lawyer.  With the judge, we came to an agreement that she could stay until the end of Sept. if she paid her portion of the rent (she did).  It was less than 10 days before the end of the month, so that was even better than if she'd been ordered out the next day, but without paying rent.  The main thing I wanted was a court order with a specific date, because she never would have left without one.  And part of that agreement was she had to be out on Sept. 30th, per court order.  I could go straight to hauling her stuff to the lawn and changing the locks on Oct. 1st, if she wasn't gone.  Fortunately, she was.  They rarely/never cleaned the house, so it was disgusting.  But there wasn't any new damage.
   

I don't think being 18 in and of itself is a factor.  But it does make the things that are important more difficult.

For example, your credit score and report.  Many 18-year-olds have no credit report.  If that is yourself, open up a credit card.  Even if you have to resort to a secured one.  That will start building your credit.

Your debt-to-income ratio will also need to support what the loan payment will be.  And you need a down payment and closing costs.  For an owner-occupied home, it's typically a 3-5% down payment, depending on the type of loan.  For a non-owner occupied property, it is typically a 20-25% down payment.

The short answer is, "Yes, there is something wrong." I can't tell what the problem is by your post, but I'll make some guesses. I have nine rental properties and go months without a maintenance/capex issue. Much less averaging $2500/month in repairs/capex. We also DIY most minor/medium repair items. But I also buy distressed properties and fix them up like new, so I do put a lot of that money in on the front end. I also buy my properties at a price and ARV comps that make sense. It sounds like maybe the properties were in mediocre/poor condition when you bought them. Hopefully that means that, as you are fixing them up, you are increasing their value and thereby increasing your equity. Even if that isn't a value you can put in the bank right now.

When I am estimating cash flow for a property I am considering purchasing, I include an expense of 18% of the total gross rent for maintenance, capex, and vacancy.  So, if you weren't already including something like that in your monthly cash flow numbers, your expected $500/month net cash per property was already a false expectation.

I also know the approximate lifespan that's left for major items and keep that in mind for what my "all in" cost for a property will be.  For example, I drove by a rental property that was for sale.  On paper, the numbers looked good.  There were a lot of interior photos and, at least from those, the property looked to be in decent shape.  On my drive-by, everything on the exterior looked great, EXCEPT the roof and gutters.  They were bad.  Really bad.  Like the kind of bad that made me suspect there was probably some water intrusion in the attic and walls.  It was priced a bit lower than comps, but not enough to justify a new roof.  Plus this was a lower priced, small house that only rented for $900/month, so a new roof right off the bat would have taken almost 3 years of cash flow.  I thought about making a much lower offer, but didn't bother.

If you aren't doing this already, be very exact in your accounting and do this per property.  It should help you better analyze and pinpoint what is going wrong.  I get the impression you are not doing this and more just "feel" like there should be more money accumulating in your accounts.  But maybe you have had some "income creep" that is unrelated to the rentals so it feels like you aren't making a profit.  I'm sure it's not just that and might not be that at all, but wanted to throw that out also as a potential factor.

Section 8 tenants have a lot of pro's.  But one of the con's is they tend to be harder on rentals.  Plus the annual inspections means you sometimes have to fix things that don't matter.  

I just saw that!  And immediately came to Bigger Pockets, haha.  My hope springs eternal that this will stop the lawlessness of local governments giving unqualified tenants a silver platter to keep blatantly stealing services.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it will make a difference in my jurisdiction.  Orleans parish has been "accepting eviction filings", ie money-grabbing the fee, but "are not scheduling eviction cases based on non-payment of rent at this time".  And don't know when they will.  Doesn't matter if a tenant qualified or didn't under that CDC form.  Just a blanket not scheduling eviction hearings yet for non-payment of rent.

However, I strongly suspect that is tied to the CDC.  The city government here is lazy and dysfunctional in everything they do.  I think they didn't want to bother wading through the CDC forms to figure out who qualified and who didn't.  So hopefully this will prompt them to finally start scheduling the months-long backlog of eviction hearings.

I have one tenant who hasn't paid since Jan. this year.  At least she is the only one, I guess.  She got an agency to pay for Jan. and Feb.'s rent when she got the first eviction notice (no court scheduled, though).  But we had to file again when March came around and now she owes March-May.  We contacted the same agency.  They said they would probably pay her overdue rent, but she needs to initiate that.  We left a message and texted that info to her.  But since that would involve her making the "onerous" task of a 15-20 minute phone call, I guess she didn't do it because it's easier to shaft me for thousands of dollars.  She has avoided our calls and texts, since day one.  Plus it's three grown adults living in that unit, no kids.  They bring in more W-2 income then my household does.  They have no morals and I cannot wait for the day to get these horrible human beings out of my property.   

Caveat:  I'm not familiar with WV landlord/tenant law, but these are general guidelines.

The seller should be turning over the S8 tenant's SD to you during closing. Check your HUD statement and make sure it is included. If it isn't, I guess you could try to fix that in the 11th hour, but ultimately you will be one responsible for returning it to that tenant for whenever they move out whether you get it from the seller or not.

You can create new leases with your all's information as the property owner, but the terms need to remain the same until the end of the current leases.  If the current lease(s) are month-to-month, then you can change the terms.  Usually with a 30-Day Notice, but your area might require longer.

Assuming the no security deposit tenant is already a month-to-month or will be by the time 3 months are up and you raise the rent, I'd suggest keeping their new lease a month-to-month.  Paying the SD off AND higher rent might be more then they can chew, even if they lie to you and/or themselves that they can do it.  Then you can just give them a 30-Day Notice to Vacate if they fall behind in rent.  In the vast majority of places...including my sleazy New Orleans...even if you can't evict someone for non-payment of rent, you can evict them for being a holdover after overstaying their lease.

After closing, post a letter on their door and/or contact the tenants if you have their phone numbers, and arrange a mutually good day/time for them to sign the lease with you all.  When you meet with the no SD tenant, I'd give them a heads up that their rent will be staying the same for the next three months but, after that, it will be raised to $X and they will need to pay the SD in a payment plan over Y months.  I'd be sympathetic.  Let them know you realize that might make it difficult for them to stay, but they have time to decide what to do.  If they choose not to stay, then they can give you a 30-Day notice of their move-out date.  Since they'll be signing the new lease anyway, I would include the date and amounts that the rent will change to X and the SD payment plan for Y goes into effect.

Last, but not least, hopefully you have already looked into the process for S8 paying that tenant's rent to you.  But unless things have changed mightily from when I was last in a similar situation, I don't picture S8 being able to do it as fast as you closing today and getting a direct deposit from them on Monday (first business day after the 1st).  I personally would have pushed out closing to Monday.  The seller can get paid like they normally do by S8 and then the pro-rated rent would be turned over at closing.  Giving almost a month to get set up as a S8 property owner (if needed) and that tenant switched over to you. 

The only thing you mention that is probably against landlord/tenant law in your area is coming into your apartment without notice (assuming it wasn't an emergency).  Maybe the inadequate  number of dumpsters and trash pick-up is also against some kind of code/regulation.

If someone caused damage to your property, you should have looked for compensation at the time, but it's probably too late now.  Depending on how lawn maintenance is done at the property, it only would have been the landlord's responsibility if those are his employees.  If an outside company is hired, your beef would have been with that company. 

He's right, there isn't much he can do about the stray cat problem.  There are probably people at your complex feeding them.  However, there are probably non-profit organizations near you with a neuter/release program for cat colonies.  Contact one of those to see if they can help.  It doesn't help for the immediate future because the cats are spayed/neutered and then brought back to the same area.  But it will at least start to decrease the colony over time.

It sounds like you have already contacted your case worker.  If not, you should.  But, because none of the problems you mention are actually inside your apartment, I'm not sure if there is much S8 can do either.

Your best and probably only remedy is to move.  I'm sympathetic that it's not financially or physically possible for you to do that but, at the end of the day, no one else is responsible for those circumstances either.  Perhaps there are friends/family or even organizations/charities that would at least help you move your belongings if you found another place to go.  There are also organizations/charities that can help with security deposits (SD).  One to try is Volunteers of America.  I have a tenant who is a veteran and they've been helping her with her rent since she lost her job last Feb.  She paid her SD upon move-in so I can't speak to that, but I wouldn't be surprised if a SD is something they would also help with.

If something is already a good value and below comps, I'll offer the list price.  I'm not going to risk losing out on a good deal.

But if I've determined that a property isn't worth my spending more than $200K on it, then I'm not going to spend more or much more than that.

I have twice made offers substantially less than the list price.  Those were situations where a substantial rehab was needed and their list price was way off, once that was taken into consideration.  I would also include a brief summary with repairs needed an approximate cost.  The first time, the seller was insulted and wouldn't even counter.  They passed along through their agent it was "too low".  They started dropping the price every month.  6 months later, the list price was only $8K more then what I had originally offered them.  But I was on to better things.

The next one, I was under contract for two duplexes from the same seller.  I'd already considered in my offer about $10K-$12K/unit for major cosmetic upgrades and deferred maintenance issues.  But my inspection uncovered a lot more ugliness.  I countered for substantially less than my offer with explanations.  The deal fell through.  Only for me to pick it up again 3 months later when the list price for each one dropped pretty close to what my counter offer had been.  This time it worked out and I closed on them.  

Estoppels aren't something the seller necessarily has.  You create the form and give them to the tenants to fill out and sign.  Then the seller also signs them.

I think estoppels are always important, but they especially are when leases are lost/don't exist.

Estoppels protect everyone.  But they especially protect you.  Just to name a few things, it should include the amount of monthly rent, the amount of the security deposit, and the lease length.  For example, I assume these are month-to-month tenants which is also more advantageous to your plans.  So make sure there is something in the estoppel agreement about it being a month-to-month tenancy.

I've never been a "car" person anyway.  With the exception of I love driving convertibles.  I have never bought a brand new car.  I bought a 2007 MINI Cooper convertible about 6 years ago.  Still driving it.  I originally had a small loan, but paid it off within two years.

Then I "splurged" three years ago and got a second vehicle to help with our rentals/rehabs. Until I got into REI, I never in my life would have ever bought a pick-up truck. It's just not my style. But that second vehicle is a 2011 Ford Ranger, 135K miles (at the time). I bought it for $4500 cash. I recently spent $1600 to make a few necessary repairs. But, other than that, I've been driving it for 3 years with no problems.

I've been really pleased with how reliable the Ford Ranger has been.  The MINI Cooper?  Not so much, haha.  But I love my MINI anyway.