Holy Crumbs!! $300- for a one bedroom? I live in one of the previously mentioned crappy slumlord-owned properties in Montpelier, VT. I pay $550 plus electric for a tiny one bedroom apartment in fair to poor repair! My previous apartment was a one room plus bathroom, very small, an it cost me $350 a month (at least the electric was included! There are never more than about 5 or 6 free appartments in Montpelier at a time. Vermont as a whole is moving into a really big housing crunch.
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Repeat after me, “it’s an INVESTMENT”. After you’ve bought one and had the same happen to you, get back with us.
Your points are good, however, they come off self-righteous and haughty.
Holly, get permission to do a credit check on them. We had out landlords pull our credit (with our permission, of course). She said they did it to ALL people applying to be tenants and they almost ceased having non-payment problems after they started it. Just an idea.
Jeez Holly, sorry to hear about your jackass tenants.
One question that maybe you could clear up for me, are you sure it’s so difficult to evict?
I realize laws vary quite a bit from state to state, but in my college days my roommate and I almost got evicted over rent that was 5 days late. Over break, he thought I sent the check in and vice versa. We came home to an eviction notice on our door that said basically pay in 7 days or your gone. This despite absolutely no problems before. We of course paid right away and everything was fine, but the lease made it seem like they could have us out in 2 weeks or so. I suppose the evictee can fight, but that would require them to get a lawyer ($$). Also, can’t you get them out quickly (like immediately) if you can document that they are damaging your property?
Anyway, good luck.
You got THAT from a simple, honest statement? Boy, now I remember why I rarely venture into the pit.
I will never own a rental property, becuase I don’t have the slightest urge to acquire material posessions that will worry me to death. Life is too short to waste on such trivialities.
I just bought a house with a relatively nice basement apartment and could really use the revenue a tenant would bring. The next time someone asks, “So why don’t you rent it?” I’ll show them a copy of Holly’s rant. <shudder> Memories of Pacific Heights isn’t helping me take the plunge. <shudder again>
Jodi, you are an inspiration. Surely good luck and a firm pay-or-go ground rule aren’t the only reasons for your great tenants – how did you find them? Newspaper ads? Campus leafletting? Help a sister out!
I work for a company that manages other people’s rental properties. The stories I could tell you…The best are tenants who leave owing rent, with the apartment in need of repairs, and then take you to court for return of their security.
My favorite story concerned a building the tenants turned into a drug den and then ruined. When the owner walked away, the furnace cracked and the building was condemned, the tenants moved and left their seven dogs in the house! Animal control contacted us after a month, when the neighbors started complaining (good thing it was in the winter; image the smell in the summer). The police tracked down the tenants and arrested them for animal cruelty. Their excuse? “Well, we had to move and our new place didn’t take pets.”
Hint: If someone asks if you take pets, ask them what type of pet. Someone once answered “A combination German Shepard and Akita…but he’s nice.”
Cajo, since the rental unit is in your own home, you’re much more likely to attract better tenants, Pacific Heights notwithstanding. Careful screening is important, as elbows has detailed. Having your tenants so close also gives you the advantage of knowing if any major monkey business is happening.
A good tenant is a blessing. They really do exist. If you don’t have to get and keep the place rented you can afford to be very, very choosy about it, and you’ll likely end up with decent tenants. Those of us who are pressed to rent a unit as quickly as possible to minimize our losses are more likely to get screwed, though I firmly believe that it’s cheaper to leave a place vacant than to rent to a loser buttmunch.
Cato, also check to make sure that your basement apartment is “legal” - that is, that your zoning laws and the condition of the apartment will allow you to rent it. If you have tenants in an illegal apartment, you’re opening yourself up to a huge potential liability.
Chas E.:
Well, for one thing, we consider investing in rental properties to be an investment in our future. Also, we love old houses; we enjoy restoring them to their former glory, and making them beautiful and functional for our generation so that these beautiful houses won’t simply disintegrate.
We enjoy the hard work involved, the sweat and tears. We love to see a neglected old building come to life again.
We enjoy knowing that these properties will someday pay for our kids’ educations and our retirement.
We definitely go to the opposite extreme, much to our own destruction. That is, we are honest and loving people, and we are (too) quick to believe that our tenants are honest, too. There have been many, many times when we’ve given a prospective tenant a chance, believing that if that person just had a little help, she/he could succeed. More often than not, this idealism has screwed us deeply in the pocketbook. Most people are shitheads; that’s just the facts of life. Very, very, very rarely a person who looked on the surface to be a “bad” tenant has turned out to be an excellent one. (And those people are very grateful to us for helping them to pull themselves out of despair.)
So be it. In my universe, money is necessary to buy food, education, all the basic needs of life, and after that to pay for vacations/leisure/hobbies, etc. Personally, I thrive on owning property. When I visit a rental property, I feel euphoric when I think, “this is my lilac bush. This vinca, this tree, this lawn- they’re mine.” I’m even more euphoric when I know that I’m providing a decent, clean, attractive place to live for my tenants. When I fix a leak or repair a roof or spray for bugs or plant a tree, I’m happy that I’m able to bring happiness and contentment to someone else. That is what owns me; those are the “trivialities” that make my life worthwhile.
jk1245:
Yes, it is difficult to evict, because tenants hold the good end of the stick. If rent is late (Texas law) the landlord can post a notice on the inside of the tenant’s door, or hand-deliver it. Several days after that, the landlord has to file another notice with the court, and pay for a police officer to deliver the notice to the tenant. Eventually, (who knows how long?) the case goes to court. Meanwhile, the landlord pays all his usual stuff, plus court fees, while the tenant lives in the place rent-free. The landlord cannot shut off the utilities, even if the landlord pays for them. The landlord cannot remove the tenant’s possessions from the place until the appropriate (and expensive) legal procedures have been met.
In short, the tenant gets several free months of squatting on another person’s property without paying a dime. Yes, according to Texas law, the winner of the suit is allowed to collect legal fees from the loser- but if that shithead won’t even pay the rent, what do you think the chances are of getting him to pay the rent and the legal fees? We’ve had one tenant who regularly changed her name to avoid having her paychecks garnished. It would cost thousands of dollars to prosecute her and make her pay the several hundred dollars she owes us. She wins.
It’s much (much!) cheaper to approach the fuckweasel tenant and say, “Look. I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you get the hell out of here tomorrow.” Once the eviction gets near the court system, the landlord is screwed up the butt and out the eyeball, even if he wins.
The last two house/apartments I lived in had the same problem, backed up sewage. Not just a clogged toliet; I had to go get pallets so I can walk through the apartment. The owner could be reached in the first case. The second place I knew to cut off the water but too late the second occurence in the last apartment. Then the owner wanted to raise rent the next month. And it was not because he cleaned the place.
So the next time you take on a tenant realize the type of slumlord he is used to.
Holly, from someone who has been a tenant for nearly half of my life (I’m 34), I just wanted to say that you sound like a great landlord, and good tenants like me appreciate that very much. Don’t let the bad ones get you down too much; us good ones (I’ve never left an apartment in worse shape than when I moved in - usually it’s in better shape) are out there, and we value you and your efforts.
Thanks for the input Jodi, and ENugent you make an excellent point. I think my basement unit is borderline – best to be sure I’m up to code before putting myself in the line of fire.
While househunting, I saw many houses that were “power of sales” – repossessed houses owned by banks. The very worst of the bunch featured a kitchen with tipped-over appliances and cabinets pulled off the walls. The bathtub appeared to have been sledgehammered in, and tar had been poured down the toilet. How sad do you have to be to carry tar upstairs and pour it down the toilet? “There! That’ll teach you to evict me for not paying my mortgage!” Feh.
CAJO –
My first piece of advice would be to check your local laws and regulations regarding rental units and zoning. It is not true that every apartment must be “up to code;” many older homes have rental units that are (or can be) “grandfathered in” – that is, deemed okay because they existed before the regulations were passed. That was the case with mine – it does not have “egress windows” (windows of certain dimensions, big enough to get out of in case of fire) or a second exit, both of which are required on new rental units in my town, but it’s still legal. In my case, I applied for and got a letter from the city attorney confirming that my unit was okay to use as an apartment, despite being in a residential (non-rental) neighborhood and despite not being up to code, because I could show that it should be grandfathered in. (I don’t think it is necessary to get such a letter, but it seemed wisest in my case, since I am a government lawyer and therefore especially interested in NOT breaking any laws.)
Second, do what you can to make your rental unit both safe and attractive. In my case, I put in a larger window in the bedroom (big enough for a person to crawl out of) because I wasn’t comfortable having a tenant sleeping down there with no way to get out in case there was a fire. As I said above, I didn’t legally have to do this but it just made sense to me. I also replaced the carpeting (which was old and ugly) and gave the place a fresh coat of paint. And I installed a carbon monoxide detector (that cost, say, 30 bucks) because the heating system for the entire house is in the basement apartment.
Third, collect and read a bunch of rental applications to see what kind of information landlords ask for. (You can pretend to apartment hunt yourself and pick up a few locally, or you can download lots off the internet – I would do both). Pick one out that asks for the information you want, or create one using the others for reference. Have every applicant fill one out. Especially ask for rental history, references, and whether you can contact their current landlord. And do so – I had one prospective tenant who seemed just perfect until I called her current landlord who said “she’s nice, but never on time with the rent” – which knocked her right out of the running with me, since it’s crucial to me that the rent be paid on time.
I have twice gotten tenants after running a newspaper ad, and once via word of mouth. I just try to pick someone who appears nice and responsible and sane. (After I check their references.) I listen to my intuition; if something seems “off” then I don’t rent to 'em. They have to have a steady job – preferably one that doesn’t involve leaning out a drive-through window, since I’m not really looking for transitory tenants or ones that might have trouble making the rent. Basically, the most staid, boring, anal-retentive neat-freak you can find is my idea of the perfect tenant. I don’t have to be his or her best friend; I have to know they will pay their rent on time and not mess up my place. The extra money comes in very handy (like I said, without it I couldn’t afford my house), and for me the bothers (a leaking sink, a cracked window) have been very minor. But I may be singing a different tune if I ever get stuck with a Tenant From Hell such as some others have reported.
But definitely check the zoning laws and regulations; illegal apartments are all over the place, but that doesn’t mean they’re a great idea – especially if you later get in a dispute with a tenant that looks like it might end up in court.