All Forum Posts by: Sean McKee

 It looks like technically, but it probably won’t be worth the effort of going back and forward. If you absolutely feel the need to confront her over it, you can serve her a notice to quit or cure. Essentially she’s violating the lease terms. And if she doesn’t remedy it, she must leave. My lawyer had me serve something like this before. However as of right now I would try and keep the calm. She’s not that late and I wouldn’t want you to cause yourself more issues. I know the exact feeling you are going through. It sucks sometimes to have to swallow your pride.

@J. Wang I’m sorry to read about this. It sounds like you have realized your mistake with this tenant and going forward I’m sure you will up your tenant screening.

As far as paying late, what exactly does the lease say? Your lease sounds like it has standard grace period.

I agree with @Kyle Mccaw. I’ve NEVER had luck with pit bulls. I’ve given up on complete dog bans as it limits tenant pool and people sneak them on anyways. I set a weight cap at 30lbs, $200 nonrefundable pet fee, and $50 dollar pet rent. 

@Kevin Hunter- I’m sorry to hear this. I have unfortunately been in your situation more times than I would care to admit. I can’t back this up with any statistics, but I’d say about 90% to 95% of tenants don’t actually want any kind of derogatory marks on their record. Some might care more than others, but most want to avoid trouble.

You have a few options that don’t involve court, which should be the last resort in a place like Cook County. Cash for keys has already been mentioned and is a great way to get people off quickly and without as much hassle as going to court.

Depending on your relationship you could try and come to a peaceful arrangement. But it sounds like you might be past that point.

You can report them to the Credit Bureaus. There are several ways to do this. But I’ve gotten a number of people to come to their senses this way.

If all else fails, then I would file for an eviction. I had a similar situation last year. I served the tenant  a 5 day notice and filed shortly after. The tenant was gone a few weeks later. She might be just seeing if you will call her bluff.

Thanks everyone for your input! Luckily I am getting back in a few weeks. I am in the process of turning it over to a property manager, but I will still retain control of which leasing agents show the units.

@Russell Brazil,@Drew Sygit,You are correct that leasing is a low paid job and not very rewarding. There were other agents involved with showing the property and had my other broker rent a similar unit for the same rate. I honestly think it was not a good fit for both of us.

@John Warren- You make a very good point about people only wanting to outsource the hard and low paying aspects of the business. I never thought about it that way. You must have a solid system if you can get away with showing it once per week! However it wasn't working with the broker I tried out. I'm glad you were able to get around HUD!

Hello BP!

I'm actually not that stuck with my broker and have recently parted ways. However this experience has definitely got me thinking about how to avoid this situation in the future. I've been overseas for sometime now and have become "out of country homeowner". Happily this is temporary and I return back to the US in a few weeks. This experience has definitely shown me how "passive" my investments are and some serious gaps in my systems(definitely a post for a different day). Long story short, I had a tenant move out suddenly and left me with an unexpected vacancy. Normally I would just show this myself, but being on the other side of the world makes this a little bit harder. My normal broker was not available, so I scrambled to get a new one. Naturally I went with the first one I found and since I was preoccupied with other matters there was not an in-depth conversation. 

Fast forward a few weeks, I find out the broker is not really that motivated and is showing it maybe an hour a week at the worst times. I've located a new broker and moved past this, but I am still bothered by my lack of screening in the first place. I have some thoughts on what needs to be done going forward as I transition more of my business to outside managers.

I would however love to hear other people's thoughts and experiences with screening listing agents to ensure they have the fastest turn and get the best tenants? 

@Binyomin Vann- I also forgot to mention this should remain on their credit history for 7 years. I think that's the same for evictions as well.

@Binyomin Vann- I probably didn't explain it well.  It's an open tradeline, like an auto loan. If they constantly paid you late and left owing a balance, it will show that.  So if a new landlord checks their credit, they will see their rental payment history.  The biggest drawback is they only reporting to Equifax. Hopefully they change that soon. However this, combined with the fact you can put an eviction on their record should keep most people in line.

@Jeyo Punnakottil- Front Lobby is a user friendly and affordable option if you don't have a lot of units. If you do it annually, the base cost is around $17 a month + .60 cents a lease per month.  I like this service since you don't need tenants to opt into the service to report them. Tenants can opt in to immediately to start credit reporting, however it is not mandatory. If they don't opt in and pay late, then you can mark rent as late in the system. It will then open a trade line with Equifax and report them as late. This trade will then remain open until they move out.

The biggest downside to Front Lobby, is they only report to Equifax . As far as I know you don't need a tenant's permission to report to the credit bureaus in the US, but I add a clause to my lease so they are aware. 

Honestly, I'm not sure if it's worth unless you have 8+ units. You can still send people to collections if they owe back rent after they move out, and that also gets reported to the credit bureaus.

I'm all for tenants having reasonable protections against bad landlords. However a lot of the tenant unions have a very different interpretation of "reasonable" than most property owners. Because of this I don't think there will be much middle ground in the fight over housing.

In my opinion tenant unions often have misplaced objectives. Most of their efforts don't actually focus on the actual problem of a lack of affordable housing. Rather, many of their objectives are aimed at creating restrictive and punitive laws on current property owners. The sad thing is many of these new laws make it much harder for smaller landlords to do business. They are less inclined to give second chances. Since smaller landlords provide a lot of the affordable housing units, this makes even harder for the tenants the laws seek to protect to find housing.