Paying on-time is not a favor We experienced an anomaly this month. We had three different tenants who experienced difficulties paying on time, and they all had different circumstances. The first tenant actually did get his payment in on time. Truthfully, he was early. But the difficulty stemmed from the fact that his personal bank account had been closed down due to fraudulent activity, and the rent…
Writ of possession I meet with a tired landlord recently at a property where they’d just finished the eviction process. And this person said multiple times during our meeting that they never wanted to be a landlord ever again. The reason for this was the tenants owed the landlord quit a bit of money. Months prior to the eviction, one of the tenants had moved out. Because of…
Friends, family and business I was talking to a landlord recently who had been put through the wringer by her tenants. You see, she had bought a freshly remodeled, four bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 2,000-square-foot home and paid retail price for it. Now, this landlord was not a hedge fund, and she was not a high roller looking to put lazy money to work. She was just…
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…