So you think you want to be a landlord (a vent)

[thatgirl2478]

Are you prepared to deal with:

People who don't / won't pay their rent on time / ever?
People who don't understand what 'cleaning' means?
People who don't get that 2 ft tall dandelions probably shouldn't be in the garden bed?
People who break shit and don't own up to it?

We went to our rental house (formerly our house) this weekend... that we were able to see in our limited time there, we found:

- a broken window to the underside of the porch (pointless window, but still)
- a broken fence gate (she ran into it with her CAR!?)
- a broken sconce on the kitchen light
- More grease and dirt than I've EVER seen in a kitchen
- a broken swinging (original to the 100 yr old house) door between the kitchen & the bathroom
- 3 completely broken screens (as in, broken off their window tracks)
- a broken vanity in the bathroom
- a completely different toilet than we left there (what?!)
- MASSIVE dirty greasy hand prints on the wall in the stair way (if you've seen the dirt on the walls in the show 'Hoarders' - this was ALMOST that bad)

There are only 5 months of her lease left. We're unsure if we want to put another renter in - but if we do it will NOT be her.

[pamela]

Is there anything in the contract about requiring her to maintain a minimum level of cleanliness/repair and if so, I'd kick her out now before she does any more damage.

[sporky]

wow... that really sucks. i'm assuming she won't be getting her security deposit back!

[rubytue]

Ewww!! And ditto Pamela - reread your lease to see if this is grounds for eviction.

Did you check her previous (and the one prior to that) landlord references? Is the your first time back at the property? We don't bi-monthly checks inside and outside. So far, so good.

[mellymel]

Agree with you. Being a landlord sucks. I think it would be better if I actually made money off the deal. I need to distance myself from my property emotionally - it was my first home and I have been renting it out for 4 years. We have had some disgusting tenants. Also, the property is worth 1/3 of what I paid for it in 2004. Financial advisors are telling me to short-sell it. I keep throwing good money after bad money. But I am scared to do a short sale. I have 1.5 years left on the lease with current tenants. Maybe I'll figure out what I want to do by then.

[thatgirl2478]

Yes we checked with previous landlords - no complaints. Though, they probably just wanted her out.

It's the first time WE went. Our 'property management' company has gone previously and said that 'everything was fine'. We will be going back more frequently now...

I will check the lease ...

[miss1991]

May 14, 2012 7:55:32 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

Are you prepared to deal with:

People who don't / won't pay their rent on time / ever?
People who don't understand what 'cleaning' means?
People who don't get that 2 ft tall dandelions probably shouldn't be in the garden bed?
People who break shit and don't own up to it?

We went to our rental house (formerly our house) this weekend... that we were able to see in our limited time there, we found:

- a broken window to the underside of the porch (pointless window, but still)
- a broken fence gate (she ran into it with her CAR!?)
- a broken sconce on the kitchen light
- More grease and dirt than I've EVER seen in a kitchen
- a broken swinging (original to the 100 yr old house) door between the kitchen & the bathroom
- 3 completely broken screens (as in, broken off their window tracks)
- a broken vanity in the bathroom
- a completely different toilet than we left there (what?!)
- MASSIVE dirty greasy hand prints on the wall in the stair way (if you've seen the dirt on the walls in the show 'Hoarders' - this was ALMOST that bad)

There are only 5 months of her lease left. We're unsure if we want to put another renter in - but if we do it will NOT be her.

I feel you! Me and my husband and BIL own a set of fourplexe's and me and my husband lived there and took care of it for awhile. We let a single mom, who was not very good at picking out men live in one apartment. Her and her BF where fighting and the BF went down by the car's and was yelling he was gonna take a baseball bat to all of them. My SIL was over and it was one of her car's and she was like no one is gonna hit my car. My DH told her not to that to wait until the police came and of course he had to follow her to make sure she was ok , he pulled out a gun, and another guy cracked my husband's front tooth ,awesome night! I called the police but he was gone by the time they came. She no longer lives there and his has been year's but it still scares me thinking about it.
My BIL takes care of it know, I want to sell it
Good luck hope things get better!

[monpetitchou]

My tenants are good but that still didn't spare us from $845 worth of repairs to the sprinkler system and pump last week. Being a landlord is the pits!

[thatgirl2478]

It pisses me off because my DH and I were AMAZING renters. We left places cleaner than when we moved in. If we broke something we could fix, we DID and if we couldn't, we let the landlord know BEFORE they noticed it.

[rubytue]

May 14, 2012 8:11:54 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

Yes we checked with previous landlords - no complaints. Though, they probably just wanted her out.

It's the first time WE went. Our 'property management' company has gone previously and said that 'everything was fine'. We will be going back more frequently now...

I will check the lease ...

Oh man... you had a property manager? I assumed you were doing your own management. In that case, I would be raising hell with them about what exactly their definition of "fine" is and how they are charging your for management when they don't even notice broken windows.

[Ashley&Scott]

My mom & her husband bought an apartment building a few weeks ago. In 2 weeks they've dealt with:

-late rent payments
-incomplete rent payments
-porch fire
-tenant having electricity shut off

I have no desire to be a landlord, especially for a residential property.

[bella90422]

eh that really sucks, sorry!

[imojoebunny]

May 14, 2012 8:28:12 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

It pisses me off because my DH and I were AMAZING renters. We left places cleaner than when we moved in. If we broke something we could fix, we DID and if we couldn't, we let the landlord know BEFORE they noticed it.

You are the tenant we have and love!

We have not had problems like the others describe. We have some friends who have inexpensive rentals, like $600-$800 a month for a 3 bedroom, they have way more problems than we do with tenants. We have more problems with our cheapest unit (a small basement 2 bedroom that tends to attract grad students) than with any of the more expensive ones. We also don't rent to people with bad credit... Just won't do it. Credit and behavior are closely correlated when it comes to rentals IME (I know there are exceptions, like hospital bills, but in general, and that is what I have to go on)

I used to manage apartments in college. The grossest and most problematic tenants were the ones with questionable credit, even if they could pay 6 months rent in advance. Want your apartment painted dark purple, rent to someone with a score below about 700, want fleas and roaches, check, want rent late, check, want garbage piled up outside the door, carpets stained beyond repair, check. Or in my friends case, they stole the appliances at one place and abandoned the other with out telling her, so homeless squatters lived there for two weeks before she knew about it.

[thatgirl2478]

May 14, 2012 8:52:32 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

May 14, 2012 8:28:12 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

It pisses me off because my DH and I were AMAZING renters. We left places cleaner than when we moved in. If we broke something we could fix, we DID and if we couldn't, we let the landlord know BEFORE they noticed it.

You are the tenant we have and love!

We have not had problems like the others describe. We have some friends who have inexpensive rentals, like $600-$800 a month for a 3 bedroom, they have way more problems than we do with tenants. We have more problems with our cheapest unit (a small basement 2 bedroom that tends to attract grad students) than with any of the more expensive ones. We also don't rent to people with bad credit... Just won't do it. Credit and behavior are closely correlated when it comes to rentals IME (I know there are exceptions, like hospital bills, but in general, and that is what I have to go on)

I used to manage apartments in college. The grossest and most problematic tenants were the ones with questionable credit, even if they could pay 6 months rent in advance. Want your apartment painted dark purple, rent to someone with a score below about 700, want fleas and roaches, check, want rent late, check, want garbage piled up outside the door, carpets stained beyond repair, check. Or in my friends case, they stole the appliances at one place and abandoned the other with out telling her, so homeless squatters lived there for two weeks before she knew about it.

LOVELY.

I know this, IF we decide to put another renter in it (which, let's face it, we will probably have to since the market can't support the price we'd need to sell at) we will be more picky.

The disturbing thing is that we were with this lady. We had other people with WORSE applications come through at the same time. And we are renting it out for $1100/mo! We will be raising the price and increasing our standards - even if we have to wait longer to find someone.

[thatgirl2478]

May 14, 2012 8:57:08 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

If you're going to keep the security deposit, make sure you have pictures to back it up. My dad had tenants fight him on that and he had to have an independent realtor take pictures and state that it was more than normal wear and tear and that the replacement/cleaning costs were worth more than the security deposit, so my dad was justified in keeping all the money.

Oh yes. We have pictures from this weekend.

There was some stuff that was just normal wear & tear - I'm honestly not worried about that. And even though I was disgusted by the level of cleanliness (and I'm not a neatnic), that's the least of my worries now.

Once she's out, we will have pictures. I will make sure to have an independent person with me to validate the condition as well. I have a feeling this one is gonna be a fighter. (we found a promissory note that was loose by the trash can - it was from her mother to her son - it gave us a chuckle because it said that if he didn't follow the repayment plan she would take him to 'small clams' court. In a sad, desperate situation you find your humor where you can.)

[dragonfly08]

This is one reason why two of our three properties are condos (no exterior maintenance required of the tenants), and DH is EXTREMELY picky about who he rents to...if you have so much as one late payment on your credit report, or your references aren't sterling, no lease for you!

That said, there are no guarantees. We did have a tenant who caused a couple thousand dollars worth of damage in a bathroom (he cracked tiles and didn't tell us or fix them, so water was getting back there for who knows how long). We kept his entire security deposit, which covered everything. And we make sure to have three months worth of mortgage payments in savings just in case. And I keep my fingers crossed a lot, because this sort of stuff worries me a whole lot more than it worries DH!

[isabel]

I'm glad you're prepared to deal with her if she fights you on the security deposit.

We have never been anything but excellent renters and have happily coexisted with our current landlord for almost 3 years now. But our previous landlord was a crazy woman who accused us of flushing things down the toilets to stop them from working (in reality, the plumbing was very old and had tree roots blocking the lines). In any case, she didn't return our deposit despite leaving the place in good repair and clean. We sued and won triple damages. Beware the feisty renter.

[bunch]

Ugh. I've been there. I hated being a landlord.

[thatgirl2478]

May 14, 2012 10:51:26 GMT -5 isabel said:

I'm glad you're prepared to deal with her if she fights you on the security deposit.

We have never been anything but excellent renters and have happily coexisted with our current landlord for almost 3 years now. But our previous landlord was a crazy woman who accused us of flushing things down the toilets to stop them from working (in reality, the plumbing was very old and had tree roots blocking the lines). In any case, she didn't return our deposit despite leaving the place in good repair and clean. We sued and won triple damages. Beware the feisty renter.

Our current renter actually did flush something down the toilet - or rather her kid did - the plumber fished out a juice box... Now, we did have some tree roots too - and we took care of those as soon as we were notified of them.

We try to be the kind of landlords we would want to rent from.

[racegrrl714]

My BFF is renting out her first house and she has repeatedly had to get on to her tenants about parking in THE FRONT YARD. We're not talking about a place without plenty of parking... there's a driveway, car port, and they live on a cul de sac of sorts with all kinds of street parking. We've had multiple large parties/showers there before they moved and never had to have people park in their front yard. LOL And this isn't JUST in the lease but also it's a city ordinance violation. Fun times.

As for us, we have amazing landlords now who are just super nice and on the ball if anything needs fixed (that we can't fix ourselves, because we do that too.) We are going to have to do some serious painting if/when we ever leave, because my terror of a toddler has taken crayon to the walls, and so far magic erasers haven't done a thing. But that's something we're prepared to do since it was our bad.

[octwed07]

I'm sorry -- that sucks. We've had to deal with our share of issues, but we have condos, which are a bit easier to manage. I'd be upset with your property mgmt company. How often are they supposed to come by to look at the unit?

[CloudBee]

A different toilet? Really?

[thatgirl2478]

May 14, 2012 14:41:14 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

A different toilet? Really?

Yeah - it was shorter and had a smaller foot print - I know because not all the tile under the toilet was grouted and it was poorly cut (we didn't put it in, we found it after we had to replace a leaking wax seal). The old toilet covered all that.... not the 'new' one. Oh - and there was no LID on the toilet - just a seat...

[Deleted]

My parents have two rentals (that they inherited from step dad's parents), they are out of town frequently, their tenants will call me if something goes wrong and they don't reach them immediately. I always ask did you leave them a message? No is always the answer. Well leave them a fucking message I'm not your damn landlord. We will never own rental property. Never.