All Forum Posts by: Bocondo Williams

Thanks for response, I am trying work out a some deal with them at the same time I will be contacting a lawyer to start eviction process so they can see the worse is coming and force them to negotiate instead of being aggressive.

Quote from @James Mc Ree:

You might be missing the forest for the tree.

You wrote you have a good tenant who pays on time, but has a friend and smokes. I would ask the tenant to have the friend apply to join the lease if you have no objection to the person otherwise.

Smoking is problematic if it has been going on for a little while because the damage is done. Keep charging the smoking fee if they are paying it. That fee is good to have. Be careful to not set an expectation smoking is allowed with payment of the fee.

This is interesting take, I might try this before going into eviction process. There are multiple violations and they may not change the behavior after adding this extra person to lease, but seeing the cost of eviction, plus lost rent plus risk of damage to the property, this may also be a good idea.

Thanks Brandon for reply. I have not done any eviction yet, but I know it will be expensive and since the tenant is being hostile, they might turn to property damage. How do we ensure minimum damage to the property?

Hello,
I bought this multifamily property few months ago and acquired the lease of tenants. One of the tenant who pay rent on time seen smoking multiple times, I gave him a warning notice first and then after a month of so sent another notice for smoking and charged him for smoking fee as defined in the lease. This tenant has list 1 occupant in the lease while there are 3 people living in the apartment. I have also received multiple complaints about loud music from his apartment, which I have sent notice to him.

After multiple notices for smoking and noise, I decided something needs to be done therefore I sent him notice of lease violation with mentioning all 3 violations.
1. More occupants than listed in lease
2. Multiple instances of smoking
3. Multiple instances of nuisance, loud noise.

I also had a verbal discussion with the tenant about these issues but he refused to talk about any of these issues. In my notice, I gave him option to either vacate the property in 30 days or cure the lease violation and gave him 2 weeks time for curing the violation (removing extra person from the apartment). Today after 2 weeks of sending the notice and verbally telling him, when I went for inspection and found the extra person was still in the apartment. They threaten me to leave the apartment and provide them privacy and told me I do not have any right to enter their apartment. Even though I gave them 24 hour notice for the inspection as per the lease. Since the situation become very tense I decided to walk off and discuss it later.

Need advice, what should be my next step? Should I pursue to evict them? I know eviction can be expensive, but do I have reason to evict them? This property is in central Virginia.

Thanks for so many reply, here are couple more things people are asking...

1. State is Virginia.

2. Here is language in lease for renewal " REQUIRED NOTICE TO VACATE / INTENT TO RENEW. This Lease shall automatically renew for an additional one (1) year term upon the expiration of the Lease unless either Landlord or Tenant gives written notice by March 1 each year. If Landlord or Tenant does not give notice to vacate the premises, the lease continues on the same terms with a rental increase 4% for an additional 1 year term. Landlord may lease the Residence for the following term to other parties as the market demands. Tenant agrees to provide Landlord access to the premises at reasonable times for purposes of showing the premises to future tenants"

3. Lease term run from Aug 1 to Jul 20.

Quote from @Matt Devincenzo:

How far out is the renewal date specified? Typically it's only 30-60 days. 

5 months. Longest I have seen is 90 days, but 5 months in a 12 month lease is ridiculous.

I am in little bit of mess right now... We bought this property where tenant was already in place and we assumed current lease. Soon we discovered tenant have pest issues in the property and also had history of paying rent late. During my discussion with him few months ago he mentioned he don't want to renew the lease. I also don't want to renew his lease. I felt the feeling is mutual and we have no issue at renewal.

But I made a huge mistake and did not read the lease completely, it had a auto renew option if written notice is not given by certain date. We showed the apartment to future tenants and signed a new lease starting from Aug 1, 2023 and then sent notice to current tenant that their lease will not renew. In response he referred to the lease section which talks about renewal and said the lease is already renewed also the rent is $200 (10%) lower than market rent or new lease we signed.

I know this was a huge mess created because of my negligence and not giving him notice by deadline, but what can I do at this time?

Option 1: I challenge the lease renewal and say we have a policy of giving notice 90 days before lease expires and since current lease is not signed by us, it does not apply to us?

Option 2: Accept the lease renewal, but since he is trying to play dirty, I become really strict Landlord for him and find a way for tenant default and terminate the lease?

Is there any other options?

I think this discussion is important in term that most of us signed with TenantCloud for their low cost $40 a month, but now with ACH fee if you have 50 or more tenants it a adds up to hundreds of dollars per month, so why not use a feature rich software like Buldium which don't charge for incoming ACH. In my own research I found following PM software which don't charge for incoming ACH. Buildium, RentecDirect and TurboTenant. I like RentecDirect so far and thinking of switching to it.

Quote from @James Schulz:

Hey Bocondo.
I would suggest looking at a software that has the tenants pay the ACH or cc fees. We use Innago, and costs us nothing, and we typically wait 1 business day to get funds. I am sure there are others out there that may be a better fit. Cant hurt trying them out and find one that works for you. 

 Just to clarify, Tenantcloud also has ability to defer this fee to Tenants, but that's not the point. When we signed up it was free, now there is a fee and total fee paid to them is much higher than what they advertised.

Quote from @Calvin Thomas:

Quote from @Bocondo Williams:

I have been using Tenantcloud to manage my 40+ units and so far I was satisfied from the features they provide for $144 per year. But recently they switched their payment provider from Dwalla to Stripe and Stripe started charging $1.50 for each ACH deposit for rent collection. This amount add up pretty quickly. Most of the units I owned have room partners so they pay rent by their own individual bank ACH. On top of that TenantCloud treats every lease add on (parking fee, pet fee, late fee etc.) as new ACH deposit. So now this month only we paid more than $200 in ACH fee only, which was $0 for last 2 years I have been using TenantCloud. So we paid $144 total for TenantCloud subscription in 2022 and now we are paying $144 plus $200+ per month in 2023, that's a significant jump. To make matter worse the ACH deposits are even slower than Dwalla, it can take anywhere from 4 days to 7 days now.

TenantCloud was good till now, with this $200+ ACH fee and delayed payment, I need some better software out there. Can anyone confirm if Buildium, AppFolio or other big one also charges per ACH? And what's their turnaround for ACH deposit?

Yea, the slowness of Stripe and the fees are adding up for us too. We were big fans of TenantCloud, but it might be time to switch. We've added Zelle as a payment option as tenants were very upset in regard to the new fees. I cannot see this ending well for TenantCloud. We have 75+ doors, so we're not going to absorb those fees. Buildium and Appfolio seem more expensive, but I have setup calls with account managers with both. I understand they need to increase fees, but their fees are now higher than others and their payment time is so much slower with stripe...

I created support ticket with TC about 3 issues and their response...
1. These charges were a surprise to us. TC: An email was sent with these charges explanation back in Sept '22.
2. Multiple ACH charges for single tenants (Rent, Pet fee, Parking etc,). TC: No response.
3. ACH Deposit taking up to 5 business day. TC: They are working through an issue and next day deposit should be available next month.
4. We had issue where some tenant were not able to pay with error "ACH Limit has reached". TC: Issue was resolved after 1 day.

With these payment, my confidence in TenantCloud has gone down significantly and looking for better solution. If they can make ACH next day deposit and also charge 1 single fee for 1 tenant payment, that can bring their fee to tolerable level else I will have to ditch them ASAP.
Please update me with your meeting outcome with Buildium and Appfolio.