All Forum Posts by: Anna Sagatelova

She does not sound like a great roommate, and you shouldn't let the fact that she "plans" to rent your whole house when you're gone manipulate you into letting her continue this behavior. How many clauses of your lease do you think she'll break when you do move out and aren't there to see? That is, if she actually stays to rent as she's saying...

When it's time to rent your home, work with a realtor or PM and find yourself a qualified tenant with proven history.

It's actually easiest with a SFR to have tenants responsible for most lawncare and snow removal. I say "most" because of course if you have extensive landscaping or a garden, you can't expect any tenant to take care of that. Not only is it time intensive, but tenants aren't going to want to foot the water bill to keep landscaping up.

Just put a clause in the lease that makes the tenant financially responsible for any violations, citations, or the cost of you or the city cutting the grass in the event that they don't keep up with it.

This is a duty of care question best addressed with an attorney licensed in your state.

This is generally a good thing the city is trying to do, and even if they pass it, it's not like it's going to be instantly implemented. When it is implemented, you'll likely have annual inspections, you might get a list of violations, and then you'll have time to cure them. Penalties accrue when you don't comply with the order to cure violations, but usually municipalities are reasonable about things like weather deferment.

Learn as much as you can about these tenants and their payment history. If you can't get info, and you're really worried about being "stuck" with them, move on, another deal will come along. But if everything looks solid, it may not be that big of a deal.

Also is the lease itself 1 page, or is that just the renewal agreement?

When you run a background and credit check (you need to get written consent to do this), it's based off their SSN, not driver's license. It's not so much a database.

Think about it, who is reporting all the things you are asking about? And where would they report it to? 

There are voluntary programs tenants can enroll in that track their on-time payments for rent to help them build credit. In those cases the landlord can report when rent payments are missed. This is... super rare.

There is nowhere for a landlord to report that property was damaged, etc. In some cases you can find the details of an eviction, but first of all, many landlords don't go through a formal eviction process, opting to do cash for keys instead, and those who do don't always make it to second cause/damages. And even if they do, you're not going to dig up the full details in most court records/dockets. Usually just the judgment amount, and you won't know if it's all unpaid rent or what.

A driver's license doesn't make much sense for this sort of thing; people's driver's license numbers change all the time as they move across states, not to mention plenty of qualified renters don't have a driver's license. This is why credit/background checks go by SSN.

Finally, if such a theoretical database existed, how could anyone verify the information contained therein? A disgruntled landlord who lost a tenant fair and square due to uninhabitable conditions, harassment, or any of the other myriad reasons a tenant might leave, could just write that the tenant destroyed the property - and who would verify that? Such a database could not really exist. You're asking for something akin to a review site for tenants. Even the average landlord can't be "reviewed" by their tenants, unless they are a company listed with Google, BBB, Yelp, etc.

It can get really complex when you try to split the "sprinkler allotment" from your utility bills. It's much simpler to have the tenants pay, as long as you set up expectations from the very beginning - like at the showing stage! "Hey, look at this beautiful lawn. Good news, you won't even have to water it manually, the owner has sprinklers installed." Then down the line in the process... "Of course you are renting this beautiful house with this beautiful lawn and you'll be expected to maintain its condition by running the sprinklers."

And it should of course be in lease.

Hi @Chris Vazquez! The point of using addendums is to add terms to your lease agreement. Some things, like a Lead Based Paint Disclosure Form, are required for all properties built prior to 1978. Others are not required, but might be a good idea, especially for terms that might vary from lease to lease. For example, my company manages a variety of asset types, from SFRs to townhomes, to high rise condo units, to multifamily buildings. There are terms that apply to some of these assets that are entirely irrelevant to others, like specific landscaping and snow removal responsibilities. So we do use addenda for that sort of thing. How utilities are paid and distributed is also something that varies. Instead of having a blank form on the lease and having to manually fill it in one of 6 ways, with room for human error, it's helpful to just have a utility addendum version for each option.

Everyone's rental business is different. Your lease and documents appurtenant need to reflect and best describe your own processes and procedures. The addenda our company uses works with our lease, but might make very little sense in tandem with the lease you borrowed from someone else's operation and are applying to yours.

My advice to you is to outline your processes, and determine variations, if any, based on the horizontal spread of your business. Then you can determine what clauses your lease needs and what addenda might be necessary.

This question, as nearly all threads in this forum, are very market dependent. Have you narrowed down a market yet, or are you going to find a market based on whether you decide to split up your capital into multiple investments?

As a PM, I think that there is a legal way to do what you are proposing. I am not familiar with Virginia's laws, but you are essentially using your friend as an employee of your property management business. Work with a CPA/attorney to properly arrange payment.

Just be sure that your friend really does have the knowledge and processes to deal with ALL the things that come up in the course of property management. Finding tenants isn't hard; properly screening them, however, takes experience and procedure that usually takes years to build. And you won't find out if they were properly screened for a little while...

Also, nobody likes to hear this, but you are mixing business with friendship, and unfortunately things can and do go wrong. Are you willing to either lose money to preserve your friendship, or lose your friendship to save your business/prevent losses?

Property managers are great because they're the ultimate third party, and it isn't personal. That holds true for when they are enforcing your lease agreement as well as if you have an issue with their performance.