House Rules and Resonable Fines
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...
Found this article and will peruse it and the comments...
@Brett Roth That's a great idea that I have never implemented. I have not seen a template though.
I would start with thinking about all of the actions a tenant does (e.g. parking, visitors, taking out trash, flushing the wrong items, ect.). After you've listed them, put a reasonable fine.
Hi James. I wrote them up and took them over the building last night...I also brought cookies and icecream in case anyone felt like I was targeting them (which I wasn't) but also made it clear that I thought there have been violations done by guests of some of the tenants. Most of the stuff is "common sense" and most of the important things are covered in the lease. I made all fines a blanket $50 per occurrence for simplification, but I am curious what a judge would think. Anyway its a work in progress but if it has the desired effect of getting some of these friends of the tenants to clean up their act it will be a success.
@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!
Thanks Marcia. My thoughts exactly and I look forward to checking out what you created. It seems like people are having good luck in terms of catching maintenance issues before they get huge if they take the time to do the regular inspections.
You do realize you cannot add rules or implement fines on existing tenants without their permission, right? Are all these people on a month to month?
#2 General Landlording & Rental Properties Contributor
Stupid question but what does you state landlord tenant regulations say about rules and fines.
To me fines, aside from late fees, seem rather childish.
How do you prove who violated the rules. How do you make them pay.
Include all the rules in your lease not as a separate list. Then evict for violations.
Probably need to wait till you get new tenants. In the interim tell them you will evict and serve a no trespass warrant on guests you suspect are the problem.
Originally posted by @Thomas S.:To me fines, aside from late fees, seem rather childish.
I would have to agree with that. If I saw a landlord doing that I would not consider renting from them at all. You cannot treat your tenants like you do your children.
Guests dropping some trash out the window and giving out the front door code honestly does not sound like an issue. Most property managers would be very happy if that was their biggest concern. Some landlords don't know when to leave the tenants alone...
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for you input. I'm definitely looking for help here as I'm not an expert and I don't want to steer other in the wrong direction.
I'm not sure that you are correct about rules and fines in my state. For one thing, my lease does state that the property manager can adopt rules and regulations for the benefit of residents and the building. It also states that failure to honor the rules and regulations can result in a fine or even termination of tenancy. On the other hand, I read somewhere that rules can't be added or changed if they would substantially modify the lease or the like.
In my case, I'm trying to clarify what is the lease already and am not trying to add new rules or modify the lease. For example lets say that a tenants boyfriend or girlfriend moves in and isn't ever approved by the property manager for tenancy. Lets say that the lease states that the tenant may have guests for up to 14 days without notifying the manager. Hypothetically, every 12 days or so the boyfriend or girlfriend stays somewhere else for a night thinking that they are "reseting the clock". The landlord, on the other hand might interpret that to say that it is a 14 day limit during the entirety of the lease agreement. We all know that the real reason such a rule is in the lease in the first place is to prevent unapproved tenants. A house rule could be added that would clarify and help avoid misunderstandings if it stated, for example, if a person stays there more than 14 days in a 30 day period then they need to be approved as tenants or have some other sort of approval from the landlord.
I can think of other examples and that's probably not the best one but I don't want to get into to many specifics. Appreciate the comments and help as I'm definitely a newbie in this area.
Thanks for the input. I'll stand by and listen to others experiences on this because I find myself wanting to defend the idea when really I started the thread in order to learn, not teach :) Thanks all.
Hey @Marcia Maynard....this is Wes in NC, just about to rent out our first property and was looking for a good starter list of "property rules" and it seems the link from this post several years ago is gone. Would you be able to provide what you use in another form. Would love to see it. Thank you!!