All Forum Posts by: Stephen Bishop

Isn't it lovely? There's always one in the crowd who basically wants to hop on to a thread, not so much to really offer advice, but to preen, posture and pontificate.

As a point of fact, we've had tenants do considerable damage in the past - more so that even this house - but we never bothered chasing them on that score  because it would have been a waste of money filing in the case. It should also have been self-evident from the thread that we've had past issues with other tenants, but clearly you were in too much of a rush to pat yourself on the back. 

Furthermore, where did I say i was hiring a lawyer? We always file ourselves and, as was pointed out earlier, it can reap results down the track. It also renders a useful service to other prospective landlords down the track as the action will show up on a background check, though I dare say that thinking of others isn't really in your bailiwick. In just about every case, the former tenant has never shown up in court, which means the judgement is made in our favor. For a couple of hundred to file it's worth it, just knowing that it goes on their record for seven years and sets a flag for others. 

As for the work we do, I grew up in a real estate family, spent my weekends helping renovate houses, and basically know how to do everything needed to a house short of building it from the foundations up. An 'investor' like you, on the other hand, no doubt has to pay a pile of contractors 3 - 4 times as much to get the work done, which means that we often pick up houses that people like you can't afford because the margins aren't there. Most of our houses have been purchased as foreclosures and short sales (an art in itself for the latter) that were in a very poor state and needed extensive work, costs that we could minimize due to the fact I can do 95% of the work myself. To prospective homeowners or investors without those skill sets, such houses are total anathema because of the associated contractor costs - we, on the other hand, can squeeze seamlessly into that groove and pick up houses that few people want, at great prices. Congratulations though on figuring out that you set up a rental property differently to how you would set up your own home - did you learn that at some real estate seminar, or work it out on your own? 

So here's a hot tip - if you want to go blow your horn telling everyone how great you are, start a separate thread, instead of looking for other people's posts as an excuse to wax rhapsodic about your extraordinary talents. It just makes you come across as a tiresome boor. 

Oh yeah. We have fallen for a few people, and paid the cost of it. My wife is a staunch Lutheran, and she's sometimes easy prey for people willing to play on her beliefs - the couple of crosses hanging from her neck are always pretty evident (I've joked with her that she she should hide them when we're meeting prospective renters). Some years ago we had a young woman, with a couple of kids, approach us for one of our rental properties. She claimed she didn't have enough money for the deposit because she'd been saving for an annual mission to Costa Rica with her church. That obviously impressed my wife - and me for that matter - so we agreed to let her move in and pay off the deposit. Well, within a matter of months she fell way behind on the rent, then just packed up and disappeared - she even left her dog behind, as well as a turtle - if I hadn't found them when i went round to change the locks they would have died. I managed to re-home the dog, and set the turtle up in our own home with a proper tank. We found out later from others that the young woman is a shameless con artist who owed money all over the area where this particular house is located. 

So another lesson learned - no matter the sob story, don't let anyone move in if they claim to be under financial stress - it's no way to start the business relationship. They have all the necessary money, or they don't. It's easier said than done, as we've had some people come through that broke my heart and left me wondering if I'd end up reading about them in the paper for having killed themselves. It's one of the hardest parts to this business, that you can be left feeling as if you're carrying the entire weight of someone's life and family on your shoulders when all you're trying to do is rent out a place. It absolutely kills us, which is one of the reasons we've been considering handing the houses to a property manager. 

From a business perspective, we have got better at picking people and we're small enough that we can discriminate, though not on racial, religious, or gender grounds - just certain personality types that ring alarm bells, based on our experience. Example? If we meet a couple, I look to see what kind of balance they have in their relationship. Why? Because if one of them really dominates the other, or comes across as the large and in charge type, they're going to bring that same combative and overpowering attitude to the relationship with you as the landlord. In every instance where we've had that type of person as a tenant, they've been a real pain to deal with.  Live and learn. :) 

Thanks. It wasn't much fun, I can tell you. At one point cancer reared its ugly head, but the doctors have since cleared me of that - thankfully. 

Sometimes it pays off, but not often. 

We had a tenant abscond from one of our houses owing us a great deal of money - this was back in the day when we only ever asked for the first month and a deposit. We took her to court, she of course didn't turn up, and the court found in our favor - but no money, of course. Fast forward three years, and we were approached by a collection specialist who offered a 50/50 deal to go after her. With nothing to lose we said 'go for it' - he ended up being successful, and with interest thrown in got her to agree to pay something like $5600 - I'm a little hazy on the exact figure. So we ended up with half of that in a situation where we'd written the whole thing off. 

As you say, the landlord is always perceived as the villain of the piece, a fat cat who does nothing more than sit back, rake in 'all the money' and count it. Never mind mortgages, taxes, insurance, repairs, etc. My wife and I are decent people who bend over backwards trying to treat our tenants decently and kindly, even though it's supposed to be a business with an appropriate business-like attitude. In almost every instance - as with the couple in question who were in this house for seven years - we've been burned for that kindness, and it can get very demoralizing, especially with a legal system that's so heavily biased against landlords. My wife and I have looked long and hard at putting our properties in the hands of a management company, and may well do so, as it will remove us from the day to day angst and put it all at a full business footing. 

It's what I figured. 

To give you an idea, the tenant asked if they could paint the interior of the house a few years ago, and we made our only ever exception in their case and said 'fine', as long as they returned it back when they left - of course they didn't. Not only that, I discovered on closer inspection that they never used a tarp, so there was splatter and fine spray all over the floor by the walls. Lesson learned - we will never again allow tenants to paint.  I spent nearly a week at the time - sick, going back and forth to emergency, and with a catheter and plastic bag attached for nearly two weeks - sanding the wooden floors with an orbital sander and by hand to get it all off. I got a quote from a painter to do the interior, and he gave us a price of $2600, not least because a good portion of it had to be done by hand because of the wood paneling. We just couldn't afford that, on top of everything else - if we had got contractors in it would have cost at least $15,000 to get the house back in shape. In small claims court we can only go for a max of $5,000 (which ties into why it's pointless using contractors, because you'll quickly exceed the limit) and if I can't claim labor we'll probably only get a few thousand out of them. So yeah, the laws are illogical and basically suck. Oh well. Thanks for the response though. 

We had a long term tenant move out in early November. They left the house in such a poor state that it took me over two months to effect all the repairs. We also live 45 miles away from the property, so I had to make something like 25 separate trips to the house - I ended up taking an inflatable mattress to the house and staying there for a few weeks to speed the process up and stop all the driving back and forth. 

We are taking the tenant to small claims court, and I just need to be clear on a couple of points - 

- Someone told us that, as the landlord, I can't claim the time I put into the repairs, only the associated costs - is that true? If so, it's kind of counterproductive, as I do all the work to keep costs down. If we got contractors to do all the work for the sake of making a claim it would end up three times the overall cost.

- Can I claim the gas and mileage for all the driving back and forth? 

Thanks

Thanks for the non-answer. 

Contrary to your assertion, the only 'emotion' involved is the basic background detail on the matter in the first paragraph, another point in reference to the fact that we typically aren't coldly calculating and trigger happy with regard to our tenants' transgressions, plus a summary to the extent of the personality type we are dealing with and the various permutations that we might consequently have to deal with. In short, the background details were provided for those with experience to digest and appreciate in terms of the various permutations this issue might take. It's easier to proffer the information from the beginning and thus save a lot of dialogue back and forth trying to explain the circumstances and personalities. Clearly if we were dealing with an agreeable and responsible personality we wouldn't be having these issues, so the fact I outlined the problems makes perfect sense in providing enough for others to digest and appreciate the matter. That logic seems to have escaped you. 

As for your deep insights into the industry and patronizing assumptions, my wife and I own real estate across central Florida and have done so for many years, on top of which I grew up in a real estate family - in another country - and spent most of my weekends as a child attending auctions on Saturdays and rehabbing homes on Sundays and on school breaks. So not only do I know how to invest in real estate and inspect a house from top to bottom to find its weaknesses, I can fix or replace practically everything in them from the roof to the ground. That makes us formidable investors in the buy and hold market, as we clearly have much more margin to take on homes that the majority of others, including those who flip properties, couldn't afford because of the associated costs. 

In short, your answer was less about me and more about you. Every forum has that type of personality lurking about, which is why I use them very infrequently. 

We typically are good judges of prospective tenants and their circumstances and pride ourselves on the fact most of our homes are rented out to people who've been with us long term. In this case we erred, and have been presented with an issue I'm not familiar with under Florida statutes. Clearly though I also erred in coming to this forum seeking an answer - instead of an appropriate response my post pandered to someone's vanity. 

We could use some advice based on Florida statutes.

We have tenants who've increasingly proven to be a pain. We've been patient and kind, gave them a break or two going in and along the way, but it became increasingly apparent that they were just the wrong fit, not least because they began giving us issues with the local HOA as it pertains to exterior upkeep, and because we discovered they'd breached the lease by basically turning the house into a family enclave that involved a number of people not on the lease living in the house. They even confirmed it in writing after the fact.

Both because of the fact they clearly have no interest in maintaining the exterior of the property, as required of the lease, and because they had no interest in resolving the issue of the additional people living in the house, we decided to gently suggest that they might be better suited to an apartment and that we were willing to discuss some form of negotiation to move them on somewhere else. We aren’t hard arses, we prefer a softly softly approach that avoids confrontation and animosity, even though this particular tenant had brazenly breached the lease and potentially given us grounds to evict them.

The tenant's response? Without any consultation whatsoever, he signed up for another place to live, notified us of it after the fact, and set about trying to set an agenda for his family to move out in mid-August on a time frame suitable to himself, even down to demanding to pay on a pro rata basis and be refunded the remaining portion for August! You'd really have to read this guy's emails to get a full picture of the arrogance at play. In his warped perspective, he and his family are the aggrieved victims in the scenario, the extra bodies in the house were basically an oversight, and the lawn care and garbage issues the HOA has complained about are a matter of harassment.

So at this point, short of referring the matter to our lawyer, we’re not sure how to progress. According to the terms of our lease, they forfeited the last month’s rent and deposit when they breached the lease. According the specific writing, the clause in question states that if the lease is terminated early, the last month and deposit is forfeited to us, whether they discussed it with us or not. They of course didn’t. By the strict wording of the document, I’d assume we could also chase them up for the remaining portion of the lease, though that isn’t a factor we were considering. Despite the fact we’ve repeatedly referred the tenant to the lease and clause in question, as well as reminding him of the breaches, he thinks he’s moving out in mid-August at his convenience, and is expecting his deposit back based on leaving the house in move-in condition, which I can assure you they won’t judging from what we’ve seen so far. Come the first of August we will not be receiving a payment for that month – the tenant thinks he’s covered by the ‘last month’s rent’ he paid when he and his family moved in.

So how do we move? By the terms of the breaches, the fact they broke the lease to sign elsewhere without any consultation with us, and by presumed non-payment for August, we feel we have multiple grounds to start the eviction process. On the other hand we’re concerned that doing so might appear to be some form of harassment given that they’ve stated they’re moving out on the 17th.

Any thoughts on the matter? We have tried being reasonable and kind with this young couple, yet at every turn they have proven deceptive, disingenuous, troublesome, and ultimately quite intransigent and arrogant when we finally voiced our concerns.