All Forum Posts by: Rick Bassett

I've been renting houses for some time now and I'm always taken back by the comment "I prefer to rent from an owner/landlord directly" from prospective tenants. 

My inclination is that this is a red flag as it immediately has me wondering if they are a problem tenant who thinks that they can get one over on an owner/landlord.

 Any words of wisdom  from the seasoned landlords out there?

Rick

No evictions is a good policy to stick with. 

Two in 5 years, Seriously??

We don't accept anyone with an eviction regardless of when it was.

In our State we can file a criminal complaint against tenants who steal property or intentionally damage property (not wear and tear). It's pretty good leverage. 

We evicted a family a few years ago and the housing court told the tenants about the statue and warned them against damaging or stealing anything. Except of the costly eviction it was a beautiful thing. 

Our leases spell out: No swimming pools, no soaking tubs, no hot tubs, no trampolines, no fire pits....under any circumstance.

We try not to include Ice Makers, Garbage Disposals, Washers or Dryers in our rentals as they do tend to generate service calls / maintenance costs but we do fix them if they are in the units.

We did include these things in our early rentals but we pull them out when the properties turn over. 

When possible we try to use what's there and either paint or stain them. When not possible we order plywood box RTA cabinets on the net as they usually cost the same as the particle board cabinets at the big box stores. Counter tops usually reflect the type of rental, granite for A rentals, custom formica for B rentals and box box formica for C rentals.

We've had some luck buying full appliance sets on CL when owners upgraded to Stainless but it does come with risk and takes some time. A new set of appliances is $1,600 - $2,2000 with delivery whereas a CL set might cost $500 - $700 but we have pick them up.

I've got an overly needy tenant who emails or texts with something new for me to do every few days. She's in a beautifully totally rehabbed house and there aren't any real issues with it, she is just over the top OCD. The messages/requests that I get from her alone exceed all the messages that I get from all of my other tenants combined. 

She's been with us for just about 2 years and has pretty much paid on time and it wasn't like this until about 6 months ago (or I didn't notice it) but the intensity of requests is definitely increasing.

I'm thinking about not renewing her and cutting her loose if I can't find a clever way to bring her in line quickly. 

Has anyone here had Success retraining an Overly Needy Tenant like her?

Sue, I agree with you to some extent. We are always very suspicious of references by current landlords for the reasons that you mention, although sometimes they are on the level. We place greater weight on references landlords which may be 2 or 3 rentals back as they generally will be honest and won't hold back. This process has saved us from disastrous tenants at least 3 times.

If the reference from the current landlord doesn't smell right then we may:

- Tell prospective tenants that they will have show me their previous lease and proof of the payment history for the past 12 months.

- Require them to pay extra move-in fees. We usually charge just first month plus 1 month security deposit so we might up that to first and last plus 2 months security deposit. 

We also use court records and social media to verify (or dispute) anything that they put on their applications. Looking for evictions, foreclosures, smoking, looking for large pets, looking for many pets...etc. 

Our State doesn't allow us to do anything (assess fees or serve them) until 10 days have passed.

Some tenants look at this 10 day period as a grace period, which it isn't. We tell them that they are playing in the margins as they agreed in the lease to pay the rent by the 1st of each month.

We also tell them that we do not renew leases for tenants who regularly play in the margins. Our properties are in a highly desired town with a scarce inventory of rental SFR's.

We use the Glidden version of Navajo White (Egg Shell) 6011 base @ Home Depot for all of our rental properties with B Moore Super White for the trim. It looks so nice that we did our house with it as well.