All Forum Posts by: Anna Sagatelova

@Joe Splitrock I agree that this puts landlords in a very difficult position, but I disagree with your interpretation of due process and equal protection. I'm not a practicing attorney, and I'm not here to give legal advice, but I also don't think it's constructive to read a few words from the 14th Amendment and declare a faulty interpretation.

All of these measures, even if they do get extended for another term, are temporary in nature. The government certainly doesn't want an uptick in foreclosures again, barely a decade after the last housing market crash. This is why it's more constructive for owners to look at their mortgage forbearance options and remind tenants that there will be legal recourse for back rent in the coming months. And then SCREEN SCREEN SCREEN. We do each other a huge disservice by not adequately screening tenants, and I'm talking specifically about landlord references. And how about when you (the general "you", not specifically you, Joe) get a call/email about one of your past tenants? It's beyond unfortunate how many of those go unchecked and unresponded.

Any tenant who is blatantly taking advantage of courts being closed and a moratorium on evictions/collections didn't just become this way overnight. We landlords and PMs need to be much more cooperative with each other as well as more diligent in our tenant screening. Especially moving forward!

It really depends on your market and the quality of your rental. If you are competing with other similar listings, professional photos will set yours apart. Also, if you are marketing a high end property, amateur photos often don't do it justice and don't convey the high quality, spacious rooms and closets, etc. On the other hand, if you are in a market where housing is tight, applicants just need photos to convey enough information that they apply or schedule a showing.

$175 sounds high, I would advise you to shop around.

If you are within 30 days or less of lease expiration, and they haven't given notice to vacate, they should still be liable for the rent next month. The logic is that if they give 30 days notice today, 30 days out puts them past the expiration date. Does your lease have a month-to-month clause? Something that gives you a right to increase the rent? You need to give notice ASAP of what the new MTM rate will be. That way they will have more incentive to sign before the lease expires, because your renewal rate should be less expensive than the MTM rate. Or, if they don't sign, you are charging them more.

Check your state's laws for how much notice you must give in case of rent increase.

Not if you're doing everything yourself as the owner. If you hire a third party to do the leasing (as a service contract, not as a W-2 employee), they should be licensed in that state (I believe this is the law in all states, but you should check).

Absolutely no good property manager takes on properties in D or F neighborhoods. If you find a PM that is willing to take these on, they are desperate and not operating well. So your assumption that you will have it managed may be flawed...

Overall I echo what everyone else said, it's a terrible idea all around, but especially if you are brand new to investing. Glad to hear you are backing off this idea.

A tip for you - vet property managers in your desired market FIRST and find out where they do and don't manage. It's a big bummer when you buy a property only to realize that none of the good PMs will touch it.

 The "attorney general" threat is a favorite of mine, too! 

As a property manager, if you called me today and said "Hey Anna, I am buying this property, it already has tenants in it, will you manage it for me once I close?" - I would absolutely require you to have the lease and payment history before I could agree to bring this property on board. If the lease is missing/expired/etc - that may all be fine! But we would never agree to manage before knowing what the real story is. So I can't imagine buying the property without knowing the same.

Ken, these are people who apparently:

1) Lied on their application

2) Are not giving their current LL adequate notice

So I don't think it matters if he is willing to divulge anything positive or negative - you have all the facts you need to reject these applicants.

As for whether you can get in trouble, it really depends on your application, but probably not. Any solid application will state that the applicants are providing you truthful information and that they are giving you permission to verify it. So for example, if they list one address on their app, but a totally different one comes up on the background check, of course you'd check into that. I'm sure they won't be happy with the fact that their current landlord now knows they're about to bail, but that's just their own lie catching up with them. I don't know what sort of recourse they might have against you for divulging this information as part of your ordinary course of vetting the applicants.

@Cameron Tope Fair Housing would come into play if we didn't apply our criteria and candidate scoring system evenly, but we do.

@Mark S. If you are asking whether this applicant meets my company's rental criteria, the answer would be no. However, your PM needs to clearly define what THEIR criteria is, and stick to it with consistency. What I or any other BiggerPockets member would do is irrelevant, especially once other applicants have already been evaluated and rejected on whatever criteria they had in place.

I'm sorry if this is less helpful than you were hoping for, but coming from a Fair Housing perspective this is really important to emphasize. Frankly, I'd be worried about that PM's compliance.