All Forum Posts by: Tamara R.

....You tell the kids that you are going on a fun family outing and they groal "not Home Depot again!!"

As I stated in my original post, this person contacted me through Craigslist and her response contained only her first name and telephone number. Since my current tenant was kind enough to agree to do some selected showings for me, I wanted to make sure the person was not a scammer and was a good potential prospect before I set up the appointment. Craigslist is always a mixed bag for me. The only thing I searched for was her phone number to make sure it belonged to a real person. The four or five google search items that turned up contained all the information I mentioned finding in my original post. It is certainly kind of disturbing that this information is out there and readily available.. .but that is the world we live in now. I would not be bothered to find out that someone googled me or my phone number...I am pretty boring and there is nothing out there I need to hide. Indeed we can all most certainly expect that potential employers, tenants, landlords and romantic partners are all doing the same thing.

Like many of you, I post my rentals on Craigslist and Zillow and other sites. On both of these sites, prospective tenants can reply through Craigslist or Zillow without you knowing their e-mail address. I also try to prescreen people because my rentals are thirty minutes away and I only want to show to people who will meet my rental criteria, etc.

I had one person contact me who sounded promising, however in her initial contact she didn’t give me her full name or e-mail address, so I didn’t know if she was legitimate or not. I tried finding a website that does a reverse cell phone lookup to determine her name, but everything that popped up charged for the service. Then I tried “googling” her phone number and got a wealth of information. Based on her postings on social media and online advertisement sites, not only did I find out her full name and e-mail address, I found out where she currently lives, approximately how much she pays for rent, how many children she has and their ages, that she is a single mom, that she has a side business, that she is looking to “meet adventurous people” etc. I was also able to corroborate a lot of her story later for when we actually talked to her on the phone. I imagine you can also do this with e-mail addresses too. Does anyone do similar? Any other tricks for finding out info about people before you waste too much time on them?

I would be interested to hear if USAA does get involved in this. My guess is, they will not. We had some tenant-related damage (leak that went unreported to us for a month that caused the ceiling to collapse) and they said they would not cover it becausse the leak had been going on so long. that our tenants had not reported it to us was inconsequential.

I require all of my tenants to have "tenant liability insurance" of at least $300,000, with us named as "additionally insured." It doesn't have to be through a specific insurer, though most of my tenants have the same insurance I have--USAA. I beleive this is what you are referring to--tenant liability insurance. Our tenants insurance came in handy recently when a townhouse next to ours caught fire and caused some damage to our unit. The tenants insurance covered their hotel stay while repairs were made and we still collected rent from them. Happy that we didn't have to pay it out, as it lasted about three weeks.

The $400 plus dollar condo fee is killer. I own rental in Nova, and there is no way that one would ever cash flow. The condo fee is the nail in the coffin. I like to buy places that cost no more than $215K and rent for at least $1700 (with low fees associated). My mortgages are no more than $1100. Needless to say those deals are long gone so its been a while since i have bought any.

I don't have a huge amount of rentals, and I have only been landlording extensively for about 4 years. When we started, my husband and I decided that we would allow pets on a case by case basis. We collect a REFUNDABLE $500 additoinal deposit (call it additional deposit instead of "pet deposit" in the lease as it allows you more flexibility to cover any damage at move out--pet deposits can only be used for repairing pet-related damage) for each pet accepted as well as pet rent at $25 per pet per month. I make it refundable so there is incentive to get it back.

My experience with this has been mixed. The first person we allowed to move in with a pet had an American Staffordshire Terrier (which I now know is a fancy term for a pit bull LOL). Luckily the dog passed after ingesting some rat poison the dog's owner put out in the yard. However, I learned later from the neighbor that the dog was a terror and she had to give her own dog away because my tenants dog became vicious and crazy in the presence of other animals--it even chewed up our backyard fence trying to get at the other dog. Although I don't wish harm to any animal, I have to say in that case I was somewhat relieved. We still have these tenants and they have lived in the property for going on four years, so I don't know yet what additional damage has been done.

We had some tenants that just moved out and had a pommeranian. No damage in that unit at all--yet we collected an additoinal $300 in rent while these folks lived there.

We have some other tenants that we allowed to bring a 90 pound Chesapeake Bay Retriever to. The unit had old (but not too bad looking) carpet and we didn't do a lot of upgrades when we bought it, so we thought making it large dog friendly would be fine. These people are our best tenants. They have beautified the yard and the house, and the house doesn't smell like a large wet dog at all:) I was impressed by that, since I can definitely smell dog (particularly retrievers) when I visit other people's homes who have them. The dog is always clean and well groomed.

I think whether there will be damage or not depends on the people.

Some things to consider:
-I am more willing to accept a dog in households where there is one person who mainly stays home all the time.
-Make sure the animal is current on all shots, etc (indicates a responsible owner who takes good care of their animals).
-Female dogs are better, as they do not mark their territory.
-Dog must be neutered.
-Meet the dog with its owners to ensure that it is friendly and can follow basic commands.
-If the people are well organized and have good attention to detail, they tend to be good pet owners in my experience--and good tenants in general.
-Write in your least that tenants must have unit sprayed and treated for ticks and fleas and provide receipt as evidence after they vacate.

That is all I can think of at the moment.

Thanks @Chris Martin and @Kyle Hipp for your replies. As it turns out the smoke and soot damage was fairly extensive, involving removing and cleaning tenants belongings, removing and replacing drywall in 2 bedrooms and a loft and removing and replacing insulation. In this case, I think filing the claim was a wise decision. Looks like the cost to the insurance will be $6-8K. You are correct about the negligence--insurance says they will try to recover our deductible if they find anyting in the report that indicates negligence, but if not we have to eat the cost. On a side note, I am glad that we require our tenants to carry their own renter's insurance. Their insurance is paying for them to stay in a hotel during this process--this could have been very expensive.

I give my tenants an option. They can sign a new year at the same or a slightly higher rate, or they can pay $100 a month higher for month to month My rents are all in the $1700-$1900 range). I give them the option, so they can either lock in for a year or have the flexibility of a month to month if they are planning on leaving anyway.

I own a rental townhouse and the house next door caught fire on the second level. Our tenants notified us and we went by to take a look---they were concerned about the smoky smell inside their home (our rental property) and maybe that the roof might have been damaged. The home did indeed smell smoky inside on the top floor(though there didn't appear to be any smoke damage), and we couldn't really tell about the roof from looking at it below. We did call our insurance to have an appraiser come out. What else should we do or look for? Anyone else have this happen? Could our home have been damaged from a fire next door? There was a firewall that kept things from spreading.

We have a $1000 deductible, so if they find damage I assume that will come out of our pocket? Seems kind of unfair to have to pay for damage caused by someone else's house fire. This is the first time we have had to make a potential claim on our home/rental property insurance in 20+ years so not sure what to expect.