Rental Application Procedure The way we take rental applications has changed over time. When we first started, we would take lots of pictures, a video tour and then upload all that material to a website that we could advertise on for free that would also syndicate to other sites like Zillow and Trulia. We would then put hand-painted red signs in the yard of the property listing all the…
You have to go inside the house My sister and her three kids are moving cross country — and I mean literally from one coast to the other. On the fifth day of their long car trip, they finally made it to Georgia and stopped in to spend the night at our house for some family time and a much-needed reprieve from hotel rooms and restaurant food. We…
Tenant at will Well, I recently found myself in court with an inherited tenant. When I say inherited, I mean the tenant was in place when we bought the property. Our problem was not because of nonpayment but instead because of an unruly dog. Now, I like dogs. And our company is pet friendly. But when I did the inspection on the house, I could see this animal…
A lose-lose situation We try as real estate investors to create win-win situations when constructing our deals. This endeavor takes a lot of practice and a lot of training to accomplish. We spend countless hours reading books about negotiating and creative deal structuring, and we regularly attend seminars on the subject. We do this so we can be prepared to help as many people as possible solve their real…
Letter of demand Most landlords in our area have their residential leases set up so rent is due on the first and late after the fifth of each month. That scenario means that on the sixth of the month, a letter of demand should be issued to any tenant who has not paid. This letter is often referred to as a “pay or quit” letter, and it should read…
Explaining the four jobs of a tenant I’ve written to you many times about how we “hire” people to do the four jobs of a tenant. And I’ve said those fours jobs are the standard by which we choose our tenants and also how we decide to “fire” them when they’re not performing. And just to remind you, the four jobs are: 1. Take care of the house….
Train, train and retrain your tenants I tend to be an open book, especially when I mess up, because it holds me accountable and helps me to learn from mistakes. So, with that fact in mind, I’m going to tell you about something I messed up on with a rental, and then, I’ll tell you how we remedied it. I got a little lax with doing inspections…
Do you take pride in your rentals? As I’ve told you before, I like doing service calls on our rentals. One of the big reasons for this is I get to see how our tenants are keeping the properties. We pride ourselves on good customer service, which includes a fast response time on service calls. So when something breaks, I’m often there within a few hours. As such,…
A good property management system I have been out working on rentals a lot this past week. Contrary to what you hear about most landlords, I actually like working on our properties. The reason for this is because I get to see how our people are doing, how they are keeping the house up and if they are doing the four jobs of a tenant. And just to…
Learning new things at eviction court We are 0 for 2 in magistrate court this month. How’s that for starting a real estate investor column? Truth be told, we didn’t lose both cases. They got dismissed. The first one, which took place about two weeks ago, I wrote about in “COVID, cabinets and courthouses.” But we had to go again for a different property this week. During…