All Forum Posts by: Carolyn Fuller

@Spencer Dillinger I use Cozy.co and it is free as long as you don't mind the rent taking a few days between the tenant paying and the rent hitting your bank account. Cozy.co allows my tenants to schedule their monthly payments to automatically be withdrawn from their bank account or credit card account. If the tenant chooses not to schedule automatic withdrawals, Cozy.co will send them reminders. I have never had a tenant be late, but I would be stunned if Cozy.co did not alert me to the fact. Most of my tenants op for the automatic withdrawal. 

@Robert Biggerstaff It is illegal in Massachusetts for the security deposit to be more than the monthly rent.

@Leroy Wallace Jr First and foremost learn the laws. A great place to start is a PDF published by a Massachusetts lawyer: http://www.attorneyross.com/landlord.pdf

I agree with all who are saying you should treat this as a business. I use Cozy.co for rent collections. The tenant can schedule their monthly rent payments to automatically be deducted from their bank account. If they choose not to do that, Cozy.co will send reminders. I don't have to nag. 

Also, I have to admit that I was uncomfortable renting our in-law apartment on the long term market. We have to share our washing machine & dryer and our garden & patio with our tenants. If the tenant got on my nerves I didn't want to be stuck with them for eternity. So we rent on the extended stay market instead. Boston, with all of its universities and hospitals, has a pretty large extended stay market so that is something for you to consider. On the other hand, extended stay tenants, much like a hotel visitors, expect everything to be provided. Our in-law apartment is fully furnished. We provide everything a guest needs except their clothes and their laptops. 

@Bernie Neyer I hope the heck you don't use something like a birthdate code for the master code on all your units. Perhaps it is because I live in the heart of a city where students cut their teeth on hacks but your birthdate code habits scare the living bejesus out of me! My recommendation is to use a password manager such as LastPass to store your codes and make them randomly generated codes. In the case of your tenants, allow them to choose their own code. That way if someone breaks their code, it isn't your responsibility. 

@Ned Carey I think I'm going with the spirit of the laws instead of the letter. Since we rent on the extended stay market for these 2 units, or in the case of the one on our first floor, sometimes the short term market, we can learn to breath through any concerns we have and treat prospective tenants or guests with service animals or support animals exactly the same as we treat other prospective tenants or guests. So if someone with a bit bull as a support dog wants to rent our first floor apartment for an extended stay, I would ask them how the bit bull would handle sharing the building, backyard & patio with a cat. In other words, I would not expect anything of that prospective tenant that I don't expect of other prospective tenants.

@William Clark Thank you for your service AND your passion. The one piece of advice you have that I have a bit of an issue with is "the ONLY alternative is to find a more qualified tenant and rent to them instead." Doesn't that defeat the very heart of these laws? I don't normally wait around for the most perfect prospective tenant to apply and I'm definitely not going to do so in order to circumvent the ADA or FHA.

@Doug Pintarch The ADA covers a lot of things in our world. I'd be stunned if it did not cover STRs. This does not mean we can't advertise our STR as not allowing pets. It just means we need to deal with the relatively rare occurrence of someone requesting a booking and telling us they have a service animal or support animal and gently pointing us toward the ADA rules. It behoves us to either breath deep and allow the booking or to check with a reputable lawyer before declining the booking.

@Alvin Sylvain I have a close friend who has a dog for EMOTIONAL SUPPORT. I really disagree that they are a BS scam. It is true that someone could probably get by better without their emotional support animal than someone trying to get by without their service animal but I, for one, am glad that the ADA encompasses emotional support animals. 

Yikes! The legal system is soooo complicated! 

I think we have avoided this issue for now because we are charging a security deposit for all human renters, regardless of whether they have a pet. 

But we have an in-law apartment on the first floor of our home. We already have a cat and don't allow our tenants to have pets. We don't charge a security deposit for this apartment because we aren't so concerned about the apartment being damaged but we are concerned that a dog might damage our cat so we'd prefer to avoid that scenario all together. I guess we have to trust that a service animal would not go after our cat...

@Filipe Pereira She made it clear, it had to be the same deposit required of all pet owners but moot point for us because we now require a security deposit from everyone.

I was told by a Massachusetts tenant/landlord lawyer that we could require a pet security deposit for service animals. 

@Jim K. Next month we are remodeling a high end apartment, removing a gas range and replacing it with an electric induction cooktop and convection oven. We know we are risking a cracked cooktop but...

We have an induction cooktop in our home and we LOVE it. After owning gas for all our adult lives, our architect convinced us that induction cooktops were as responsive as gas and much, much cleaner. And she is right. 

We rent the apartment on the extended stay market which means we must do a deep cleaning frequently between tenants. Gas really is dirtier. It is close to impossible to clean the sticky residue that coats the surfaces near the gas range. That just isn't an issue in our kitchen with the induction cooktop. 

If you are concerned about a cracked cooktop, you can always require a security deposit.