All Forum Posts by: Adam Moehn

I had an applicant look at my house for rent and applied on the spot. He had a friend with him that spoke better english that actually filled out the application. He said he moved to the US a few years ago but only had 1 year of rental history on the application. I tried to get him to fill in more address history but he kept telling me he lived with family the first couple years in the US but didn't know the address. I eventually gave up trying to convince him he needed more address history and just took the application as is.

Seems odd to not know where you lived. Would you deny an application over this?

Congrats Thomas. I just recently bought my first rental in Cedar Rapids.

Really? I was a renter in the recent past and I recall most places wanting an application fee. And some of the people looking at my house have asked what the application fee is as if they were expecting there to be one.

My application is 3 pages with a $20 fee per person. Application fees seem to run about $20-$35 around here so it's on the low end. I haven't tried asking anyone to fill it out on the spot. We at least have phone numbers for all of them though from when they contacted us to set up the showings.

Oops, I actually started advertising April 1st, not March. That's what I get for having a day job where I'm always doing reporting for the month prior. A yard sign would probably be a good idea, I should get one.

I recently bought my first rental property, did some renovations, and now I'm trying to rent it out.

We started advertising March 1st on Craigslist and Postlets. We’ve had 8 people contact us, five of which we’ve done showings for. All seemed interested and took applications. But we haven’t gotten any applications returned yet. We also haven't had any new leads contact us for almost a week.

I guess I’m not sure what to be expecting since this is my first time trying to rent out a place. Is this amount of activity good or not enough? Is it normal for people to take a while to return applications, or is the fact that none have been returned yet an indication that the rent is overpriced or the house has something wrong that tenants don't like? There are plenty of photos in the ads so they should have known what to be expecting when they looked at the place.

Welcome Kelli! I'm in the cedar rapids area and recently bought my first rental property.

Congrats Derek! I'm in the same boat as you. I just bought my first rental property in Cedar Rapids.

Do you test for radon when doing an inspection on a house? Why or why not?

I'm in Iowa which has high radon levels. The required paperwork they give you on radon when you buy a house here says that 50%-70% of houses in Iowa have elevated levels. So if elevate radon is "normal" here, then is it really worth bothering to check?

No I won't live in it. It's for a 1-4 unit rental property.