All Forum Posts by: Patrick L.

Check with your local building department.   Here a licensed contractor is required to pull any permit other than an owner occupied homeowner permit.  

Here you can encapsulate the asbestos but disturbing it would cause those same issues.  If you are going to demo a house here you'll need an asbestos inspection and abatement of all asbestos found as part of the permitting process.  Most of the homes that people are going to demo here have asbestos and the abatement generally costs more than the demolition itself.  

The SCRA provides members of the military being deployed for more than 90 days the ability to break any residential lease.  You can deduct any damages to the property from the security deposit but trying to keep any part of the deposit as a punitive action for breaking the lease will be a violation of the SCRA. 

If the carpet has been there for 10 years it is full depreciated and has no value left, you cannot charge for it.   Charging for carpet or paint over 5 years old is pretty questionable.   Replace it with something more durable and move on. 

I usually pay under $3k for a full change out from a licensed insured contractor if I go Goodman (straight cool, 2-3 ton), I'll usually pay a little extra and go for a Carrier brand like Payne.   I get a good rate because I do a lot of business but the units are cheap it's all just a matter of how much your contractor needs to make.   When dealing with HVAC make sure you're using a licensed guy and have him pull a permit so an inspector can verify the work.  

The police will not remove squatters, they will tell you it's a civil matter.   You'll just have to evict "Any Unknown Tenants in Possession".  If they are moved in with their belongings in the house the police will tell you that they're living there and there's nothing they can do.  If they have utilities on or receive mail at the address it's a rock solid case for them to show they are "tenants" even if they don't pay rent or have a lease.   

This has happened to me a couple times, once a tenant died and some homeless people ended up with her keys.  They moved in and we didn't know for a week and by that time they were able to establish that they were living there and the police wouldn't help me so I had to evict them.  

The second time we had a vacant rental and sometime in a 12 hour window between showings someone broke in through a window and moved a whole bunch of crap in there.   We called the police and reported the burglary and since no one was there, no furniture was in the home and no utilities were on there was no reason to think that anyone was actually living there.   The police told us to put any of the belongings inside out on the curb and secure the house.  The neighborhood vultures grabbed all of the belongings up in about 5 min, arguing over who got what (class D area).  

About 8 hours later we got a call from a neighbor that the same people were back trying to get back int he house so again we called the police.  Their story was they found the house on craigslist (at a price of about half what we were asking and all utilities included) and sent $1,100 via MoneyGram.   The police told them to move along and not to come back on that property.   I'm not sure if their story was true or not but if it was they are idiots for thinking they could rent a house without ever seeing the inside first, not filling out an application, not getting a lease, not getting keys and the house not having utilities on with"all utilities included." The police told me if they were there with their story about renting it and their belongings were still in the house I'd be stuck evicting them, even though they had broken in through a window in between showings. 

In the 2nd case I think that was borderline and would depend on the officer or department policy.   If they have utilities on and get mail there forget about getting any help from the police, you have to evict them.  

I don't send reminders but the best thing I ever did was buy custom printed bill pay envelopes that have my mailing address on them.  I give out a stack to each tenant with their lease.  I went with green because it stands out and I like seeing a big stack of green envelopes in my PO box.   They reminder they get is a call from my employee on the 6th telling them they owe a late fee and/or 3 day notice on their door. 

If the tenant submitted the payment on or before the 1st you have no business charging them a late fee.   I don't see a judge in the world siding with you.  This is on your payment processor, not the tenant.  You recieved notification that the payment was made and unless it doesn't clear there is no reason to consider the rent not paid on time.  What do you expect, the tenant to submit the rent a week early because your payment processor is slow?  A DIRECT ACH takes 1 business day but because payment processors like Cozy or erentpayment.com wait for it to hit their account and then send to your account it's slower.  That is a delay on your end and if you want the convenience of online payments that you don't have to deposit checks then it's something you'll have to live with.  It's like me charging a tenant a late fee because I wasn't able to get to the bank and deposit their check by the 1st.   

If I were the tenant I would not pay your late fee and I'd gladly take you to court to prove the principal of it if you tried to push the issue with me.  

This is how you get good deals in real estate, by solving a problem for the seller.   Seller wants to sell as a package so if you want the best deal you should buy as a package.   You can negotiate the price but at the end of the day the seller's goal is to sell all of them and be done with it so that's the one criteria that you should try to meet.    Just because you're buying them all doesn't mean you have to keep them all.  If you aren't interested in the 4th property then sell that one after you buy them.   It should be an easy sell at that price with a tenant already in it. 

I bought a package of 3 properties last year and all I really wanted was one of them and there was one in there that I didn't want at all and that the seller really wanted gone (I'm probably going to have to tear that one down).   The seller wasn't going to sell me the house I wanted unless I took the entire package so I made an offer for the 3 that was only slightly higher than the max I would have paid for the 1 I wanted.    

Glad you got him out.  Now you know not to rent to convicted felons or attorneys, both are nightmare tenants.   Add strippers and "self employed" with undocumented income to that list too.  

Personally I hate cash for keys, but when dealing with an attorney it may be been worth feeling out what he would have cost because this was going to drag out longer than any average tenant.   Normally I'm happier to give my money to my attorney rather than a scumbag tenant.