House Rules and Resonable Fines

[Brett Roth]

Hello

      The time has come for me to implement and post "house rules" and put fines in place for stupid things like littering, giving out front door code etc....   My understanding is that house rules in Alaska can be updated and changed at any time for the benefit of the living environment, however I'd like to roll them out in a smart and friendly way that gets tenant buy-in and don't want to have to change them constantly to try and keep up with the infractions......   Anyone have a good example that they can share for C/D class properties?  I have the template from the BP "Book On Rental Property Management" and will use it as a starting point but need some additional language.  Any examples?   I didn't see anything in the fileplace but maybe I used the wrong search terms. 

      For an example of what I'm concerned with :  My tenants are actually really good, but right now I have an issue where a friend of a tenant literally just drops trash out the window!!!   Pretty unbelievable if you ask me.  I'm thinking broad language such as "All refuse shall be kept in a trash receptacle inside the building and disposed of permanently in the dumpster only.......no littering!  Fine for not following this rule is $50 per occurrence".  Hopefully this incentivizes the tenant to police his friend better.   Don't want to reinvent the wheel though...

[Marcia Maynard]

@Brett Roth Well, as we know common sense is not common! That's when property rules come in handy. We have a core rental agreement, which is what the judges want to see when we go to court. And we have "Property Rules" which are an addendum to the rental agreement and something a judge has never had an interest in reading since all of our evictions (only 3 in 20 years) were for non-payment of rent and not only for breaking our property rules.

I posted our Property Rules in the BP File Place in 2014. Go to Tools/FilePlace/OtherDocuments and look for my name in the Uploader column. There are 3 documents of mine there: Rental Criteria, Tenant Screening Questions, and Property Rules. 

Our property rules are in alphabetical order so a tenant can easily reference them, hopefully before doing something they shouldn't be doing. There is a story behind almost every rule, from my 20 years of residential property management. I make sure to discuss all of the property rules with tenants, before they move-in, at the time they are signing the rental agreement. We do charge a fee for a few of the most common and more serious violations. The fees are all flat and range from $20 to $50 per violation.

Rent Late Fee ($50), NSF Funds Fee ($20), Guest Fee - for guests staying more than 14 days ($5 per day), Unauthorized Occupant Fee ($50), Unauthorized Pet Fee ($50), Smoking Penalty Fee ($50), Smoke Detector or CO Detector Tamper Fee (Up to $200) [we charge $50 first time, $100 second time, $200 third time- this is allowed by our state law], Posting Fee - for posting legal notices regarding lease violations ($20). In addition, we charge for damages as they occur or as we discover them. This requires us to do periodic "maintenance inspections" and we keep an eye out for rental agreement violations at the same time.

Hope this helps!