All Forum Posts by: Tobey Porter

We have hook ups in our single families but don't provide the washer/dryer.  If you leave it on the tenant to provide the appliances, the maintenance of said appliances is also in their hands.  If you provide them, it's one more thing you have to worry about breaking and repairing/replacing.

If the daughter is an adult, I would talk to her.  Maybe mom had something happen.  I had a tenant once who was in the hospital 3 weeks before my property manager found out.  It may be something innocent like that.

The other side of me would argue mom is dodging you.  Maybe the daughter can tell you when she will be home and you can be there waiting on her.  If you have any idea where she works, you could check there for her car. 

If you ever do track her down, I would keep the conversation pleasant at first.  If she admits she's dodging you cause she doesn't have the money, I'd start the legal process. 

@Matt Leavell - sorry for the delay.  Instead of using a credit score to determine your worthiness of a loan, manual underwriting actually looks more at the person...do you have a job, where is the money coming from, etc.  Again, I know this is an option for personal loans but I am not sure that is available for investment properties.

Our SFR tenants cover their own; we cover it in our multifamily.

Call the utility companies.  They should be able to provide averages for the last 12 months.  That'll give you a good starting point for estimates.

I would be very hesitant with that kind of student loan debt.  If they're skipping payments there, what's to say they won't skip their rent eventually.  Consider that if they are deferred, they are going to have to start paying on them eventually.  With the rates they charge and pushing $200k, those won't be small payments once they are required to starting paying monthly.

Add to that they are new parents and probably don't yet understand the actual financial costs.  Like @Kim Meredith Hampton said, babies need a LOT of stuff (I have 4...I know from experience!!).  They don't realize that yet but in my opinion, this is trouble waiting to happen.

@Joshua Biondi - could you send me the info on the Columbus meet up please?

I agree with @Shannon Slade about the burglary.  That's something completely out of the tenant's control. 

It's a different situation if the tenant is being deliberately damaging, such as throwing a bunch of crap (no pun intended!!) down the toilet.  Saw a post yesterday where a guy's plumber has pulled a cell phone case out of his tenant's toilet.  In my opinion, that kind of deliberate damage should be thrown back on the client but a lot depends on how your lease is worded.

We experienced this situation as well.  Only instead of 12 responses, we got close to 30.  I think once you've listed it for a price, it would be poor form to go back to those people and raise the price.  However, next time you have a vacancy, if you feel 12 was a really great response, you might try raising it. 

We have a triplex with 3 1-bed apts we listed for $425.  After getting blown up with responses, we listed at $450 the next time it came vacant.  Might not seem like much, but the responses decreased and the quality of applicants increased...a little!!!

@Jason H. - my apologies for the delayed response.  PNC did a desk appraisal for us initially.  However, if you've done some improvements to your place, I would request someone come to the house.  We had a bit of an issue because I tried to explain to them we had done about $70k worth of improvements to the house so a desk/drive-by appraisal was not going to work.  They didn't honor that at first so when the appraisal came back at right what we paid for it, we had to go back at them & request an actual appraisal.  We also had our realtor pull better comps as the desk appraisal had used comps older than 6 months. 

It was a bit delayed but we eventually got an appraisal for about $42K more.