So, just out of pure curiosity, you knew college students who would rent out houses with land for themselves and their horse?
Billfish78 - LOL! Did they say why? What happened with them?
StG
I am a landlord, and the only way I would be one is to have my property under the care of a property management business. My tenant doesn’t even know my name, much less my phone number or address.
When I started looking for property to buy as a rental, there were several minimal requirements: floors must be entirely ceramic tile, walls must be brick or cement (slump block), there must be minimal wooden trim, and so forth. This was to avoid damage from renters - of course they can break windows, screen doors and so forth. And I accepted from the beginning that the plants in the landscaping would die, so I put in gravel in the appropriate places.
So far I’ve had one horrible tenant, and two great ones over the years. And for the bad one, my property management company took him to court and won all of the claims for damage and non-rent…that is part of what they do for their $100 per month. They had the renters out in a month, and I did nothing except say “please get them out”!
I would never be a landlord without the management folks.
sugar and spice - Around here, horse board is about $150/mo for pasture board, $3-400/mo for stall board… If you bring a horse or two, that really adds up. If you get three girls who can rent a house for the same as they can rent an apartment for the same as a 3 bedroom house and they can keep their horses there, why not?
StG
No, they were meth heads by the end. Nothing they did made any sense.
Imagine this. The yard is destroyed. The giant garage is full of junk AND literal garbage. The HOUSE is destroyed and full of junk and litteral garbage (like waist deep). Six months behind on the rent (which we never got). 10’s of thousands of dollars worth of damage. You’ve seen those hoarder shows where people just hoard literal garbage? It was like that plus serious damage to the house.
We have finally got them evicted. When they had moved in it was nearly pristine house and yard. Now its a fucking disaster of epic proportions.
We are there just to survey the disaster some more and supervise them leaving. The guy (and family) are getting the last of the crap they want to take with them. I havent said a word, gotten close, or even looked at em much cause I was pretty damn mad and knew better. Then the guy TELLS me something along the lines of “I dont wanna hear it, I am having a bad day”…
Its a miracle I didnt kill him right then and there.
The upside was this was right after the hurricane, so you couldnt rent a shithole for what they HAD been paying in rent for a whole house till they fucked up. Fuckers probably had to live in the woods after that.
It used to be in Michigan if you rented to a person on public assistance, the agency would send the money directly to you. That took a lot of worry out of it.
Well because then they have to deal with living further off campus plus furnishing and doing yardwork for a house. And all of that is extra money and responsibility for a busy college student. But like I said this isn’t my area, just adding my $0.02 if you’re looking for general comments.
You have to understand that for horse people the equation is different. St germain is talking about people who live & breathe horses. They will ride/see/care for their horse every day, multiple hours per day. My friend who did self care, would go to the barn, and sit in her horse’s stall and study “with” him, as she prefered his company. Full board is expensive, and full board that’s convenient is VERY expensive. The work they would do either way, and living off campus they are saving themselves the daily hour or so they would spend otherwise commuting to the barn. Of course it is extra responsibility – owning a horse at all is a lot of responsibility.
Living off campus is usually cheaper than living on campus anyway, I don’t get that part of the critique. There is no doubt they will save money on the deal. And horse girls usually think driving a tractor is a fun way to spend time. If three girls can get a deal that’s cheaper than 3xrent+3x board, I know (or knew at the time) lots of people who would jump at it. And my college did not have a full-on equestrian program, just an intercollegiate club team.
St. G if you’re not already there, you should hit the Chronicle of the Horse Forums and shop your idea around there. www.chronicleforums.com
Hello Again - The COTH idea was great. I’ve posted in the Off Course forum.
sugar and spice - Horse people are weird. I can’t imagine anyone preferring to live in an apartment with people all around rather than live in the country, but I know lots of people who say they’d hate living in the country. I guess I would need to get the right kind of tenants.
billfish - What state was this in? I looked at the “Tenants Rights” brochure from the local Legal Aid, and they said if your lease states you don’t pay your rent you don’t get a notice of intent to evict. The landlord can go directly to the court. And then the tenant has 14 days to fix the problem. If this is the second time in 6 month you’ve been under eviction proceedings, then you don’t get a 14 day opportunity to correct the problem. If you lose in court, the sheriff can turn you out in 10 days.
StG
Well I learned something today, it sounds like you deal with a whole different set of college students then I do. Good luck if you go for it, I hope to follow along.
Check with your local police to see if they know your prospective tenants.
In this day of cell phones, do not trust the landlord’s phone number. Get their address and go see them. Too easy to ave a friend’s cell phone give a “landlord” recommendation.
My mother has been renting the old farmhouse on our west farm to college students for years. Some suggestions:
- rent the whole house to one student, and tell them they can have roommates to help pay the rent. But the rent to you is $300/month, regardless. Otherwise if you rent to 3 people for $300 (resulting in $100 each), and then they have fights and 1 moves out, you will have real trouble getting the 2 remaining people to see that the rent is still $300 for the house, thus in effect raised to $150 each.
If 1 person is responsible for the whole $300 rent, they have a real incentive to minimize fights between the roommates, and to find a replacement one quickly if needed. And they can probably do this much better than you.
- When renting to college students (often the first time living away from home), get the address & phone number of their parents. My mother has settled problems several times by calling the parents and saying “your child is 6 weeks behind on the rent, and I don’t want to evict them in the middle of the semester and mess up their schooling, but …” or “It’s really a mess, especially in the kitchen – unsanitary, and I’d hate for them to get sick and mess up their schooling – could you maybe make a ‘surprise’ visit this weekend to see the living conditions?”. Parents will deal with these problems much better than legal proceedings.
Now this is a small college/vo-tech, and most of the parents are only 50-75 miles away – that may not work in your situation.
I’d go the other way and make each occupant a tenant who is jointly and severally liable for the entire rent. That way, if anyone moves out, you have no problem going after any one or more of the tenants for the entire rent. All three of them are *each *on the hook for the entire rent. This gives all the other tenants and incentive to find new roommates if their rent goes up if one person moves out unexpectedly.
Just make it clear up front and in writing that each tenant is individually, jointly, and severally liable for the entire rent payment regardless of how the tenants decide to split the rent among themselves.
If you have 3 tenants, and one of them leaves, you still have 3 people who are each responsible for the entire rent. If they don’t pay in full, then you can sue all 3 of them. If one of them has money, then you can get all your money from that one person and leave it up to that one person to try to collect from the other two.
If you rent to just 1 person and you allow that 1 person to sublet, then you have only 1 person on the hook for the rent even though you have 3 occupants. If your 1 tenant moves out but leaves the 2 subtenants in the unit, then you can’t go after the 2 subtenants for rent because you don’t have a contract with the subtenants. You are left with seeking back rent against only the 1 tenant.
After reading the advice on the COTH forums, I’m really beginning to think that students might not be the best way to go. I won’t rule them out, but if I go for the house, I’ll generally market it, mentioning proximity to the college and see what happens.
I went over today and walked the acreage, and just generally looked it over again. The auction is Tuesday and I’ve prequalified for the mortgage if I decide to go for it.
StG
That’s what we had done originally, but it turned out that it just didn’t work in practice.
These are students, with no fixed abode, very temporary type jobs, not much credit (so not concerned about their credit history), etc. It wouldn’t matter if you had a dozen of them on the hook, if you can’t locate them and when you do they don’t have any money to pay or assets to seize.
For us, it worked out much better to have just one person owing the entire rent, and to keep close watch on them, and get to them quickly (like within 24 hours) when the rent was overdue.