All Forum Posts by: Yan Yan

Hi BPers,

I have a potential tenant, no SSN (but has ITIN), credit score 653.I was told that without SSN, NTN background check will not return any useful information, is this true?

He showed me the most recent 3 months' bank statements, with balance much lower than my rent, his explanation is that as a restaurant owner, they use cash a lot and does not use banks often.

Given that I don't have enough information other than my gut feeling, I am thinking is it possible to add a term in the lease, say, if they don't pay the rent on time, I can use their restaurant proceed to pay rent due. Does this term help enforcement if we go to court?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Hi BPers,

I have a tenant who wants to move out in November for personal reasons while her lease ends in June 2020. 

Here are the steps I can think of before she moves out. Can you please check and see whether I miss anything?

1. 1. Request official move-out date in written. She told me a date in email less than a month ago, which we put in the listing. Only to find out last night that she plans to move out on a different date.
2. 2. Text, email and send her a letter to remind her that by law she is responsible for paying the rent on time until the lease expires. Security deposit cannot be used as the rent for the last month. If she doesn’t pay the rent on time, it will be treated as late payment and will trigger late payment procedure defined in the contract. After the new tenant moves in, the current lease terminates officially. She no longer pays the rent after lease termination. Remaining balance of the rent will be returned to her. Both parties sign the letter.
3. 3. The tenant should facilitate the showing of the property in order to reduce the loss due to early termination.
4. 4. All the small fixes she plans to do should be done before the move-out walk through. 
5. 5. We will conduct move-out walk through check right before her moving out, document the move-out conditions and both parties sign. 
6. 6. Return all the keys, including the copies she made.
7. 7. The tenant is responsible for paying her utility (gas and electricity) bill during her stay, even though the bill arrives after she moves out. 
8. 8. The tenant is responsible for closing her utility accounts at this address, including but not limit to gas, electricity, TV subscription. She should also forward her mails to new address. Give me the new address in case of emergency.   
9. 9. Depending on the move-out condition and the rent loss due to this early termination of the lease, full or part of security deposit will be returned to the tenant within 30 days of the current lease terminates (defined in step 2).

thank you all for answering my questions. I guess I should do a better job to explain my question. 

this is a hypothetical example: I have all the accounts I mentioned above: old 401k, current 401k, Roth IRA, personal trading account. let's assume the money parked in these accounts are roughly the same. if I want to use self-directed IRA to invest in real estate, I can roll money from my old 401k and Roth IRA.

now let's assume I find two properties, one is cash flow property, the other one is appreciation bet. I like both, I want both to be in my portfolio, so I am diversified. my question is: given that I have multiple properties I want to buy, and given that I have money from multiple accounts, how do I best match the money and the properties so that I can maximize the tax benefit, as well as cash flow needs? 

thru self-education, I think it's better to use SDIRA(rolled from my ROTH IRA) to buy value-add property, and buy cash flow property using my bank account(as I need to have stable cash flow that I can use on daily basis). but I don't know whether my answers are correct or not.