All Forum Posts by: Tracey Smythe

Most HOA's have a clause in their covenant that only allow rentals of a certain length. All three of mine do not allow rentals under 1 year. In one of my HOA's I know that they have evicted tenants when Airbnb was occurring. Some cities and jurisdictions require a similar minimum rental time as well. Just something else to think about. If you break these rules, you could put the owner at risk of big fines or civil action by the HOA or local municipality.

I would never allow any sublet or Airbnb of my rentals, no matter what the circumstances.  They are my rentals, I paid my dues to get them, and if someone wants to Airbnb or vacation rent they can buy their own home.

I accept Zelle from one of my tenants and I love it.  When they send me money it comes through to my bank instantly and I get an alert that it is processing.  

It works almost like any other check you might deposit into your account.  It shows up with the tenants name and tracking back to their account, and shows the total amount  I am a CPA, and I would be happy with the paper trail on it for any accounting work I do.  It has more info and trail on the checking account entry than a normal deposit.  

I have never allowed animals at any of my rentals, but we have a long term renter who has asked about getting a dog.  I told them I would have to talk to my insurance and get back to them.  I reached out to my insurance, and they told me that they don't have any companies (they are a broker) that cover animal liablity on a D3 landlord policy.  After doing a bit of research it seems that most homeowner's insurance in Florida doesn't cover animal liability.

So for those of you with homes in Florida, how do you deal with this and allow pets?  I was also told that my umbrella policy would not cover anything that the homeowner's insurance excluded.  I was planning on having the tenants get a renter's policy with 300k liability and name me as also insured, but I am not sure this enough.  Does anyone have a stand alone animal liability policy?  And advice is appreciated!

I finally managed to get ahold of both of my tenants that submitted their payments after the 12th.  They both state that the payments have not left their accounts.  I am going to pay for both of them to put a stop payment on the payments, and hope that it takes care of it.  

If anyone else has tenants with payments that fall after the 12th, you might have your tenants check to see if the payment actually never left their account.

I had two tenants submit payments on the 13th or later.  I would have expected the first one to clear by now, and the second one to clear today.  So far nothing has posted to my account.  I did see that they cancelled the $3 fee on both.  I will update if the payments clear my account.

We had 76 applicants for our recent vacancy.  Basic criteria of 3 times income, no pets, no smokers, no evictions, no felony criminal background, no more than three current negative credit items....one person met the criteria.  Probably close to half of the applicants had evictions, even after I spelled out all the criteria in the ad, and they all told me they didn't have any prior evictions or court filings.   One applicant had over 15 evictions that I found just on the local clerk of court records.  She wanted to fight with me because I wouldn't rent to her.

The tenant pool seems to be getting worse, compared to a decade ago when we started landlording.

I have been following this since the beginning.  Was the lawyer able to help you?  I am assuming that you haven't received any money back from the landlord.

Had a potential tenant respond to an ad for a newly renovated house, where all the carpet has been removed and it now has all wood or tile floors.  The ad has over 25 pics.  She fills out a pre-qual form and meets the criteria, so I show it to her.  

She looks all around the house, while letting her kid flush commodes and hit the walls, then talks to me for a few minutes.  She takes an application, and as she is walking out the door she turns around and asks "does this house have carpet?"  I wanted to tell her "yes, under the wood floor, you just pull it up if you don't like it and then you have carpet".  I told her that it used to have carpet, but we removed it and upgraded to wood flooring.  I told her she was welcome to put down throw rugs.  She told me wood was slippery, shook her head, and left.

I had a similar situation on one of my homes. I knew the boyfriend was technically living there, despite the lease limiting visitors and saying that additional occupants had to be approved. I turned a blind eye to it because she was a pretty decent tenant at that point. What I didn't know was that he had multiple children that moved in also (putting them over the occupancy limits for the town and HOA), and his car put them over the limit for the HOA allowed number of vehicles.

This ended up causing me all kinds of heartache from the HOA, and since I had turned a blind eye to it for several months, the tenant got REALLY mad when I brought it up at that point. They turned on a dime at that point and became nightmare tenants, and tore up my house.

For all the people that say "what does it matter" it really depends on the limitations the landlord has. If there are no occupancy limits, no HOA limits, or no code limitations on number of people and vehicles, then the landlord has to decide what is best for them. If any of these limitations exist, then I don't think you can just let it go, because the reality is that at some point it may come back to bite you. I have learned that the sooner you deal with the situation, the better it is. I think my tenant might have taken it better if I had addressed it up front, but since I let it go she took it as an accepted situation and then took affront to it when I decided to "change it". Even if she wanted to leave earlier in the lease, I don't think all the damage would have happened if it had been dealt with early, and all the anger over the situation hadn't built up.

The issue of the boyfriend becoming a squatter if the tenant leaves is also something I became concerned about.  

It's not about the price of the cabinet, it's about the brand new granite countertop on it.  I am not sure about removing it without it being damaged.