All Forum Posts by: Susan M.

• Applicant drives to your appointment but when you ask them for their Driver's License they don't have one, they only have a State ID.
• Say they are looking at the place for someone else.  In this case, it's generally a "granddaughter" looking at the place for her "grandmother" which means the grandmother will be renting it for said granddaughter and her 6 children who cannot qualify to rent a place on their own.  Anyone looking at a place for someone else has always been a problem, in my experience.
• I have to re-iterate the one above about "looking around the place for 30 seconds" then stating they are in love and wanting to rent it. This type has always been trouble for me. Serious, good tenants look around a lot, they have questions, they bring tape measures, they ask about the neighborhood, they CARE where they are going to live.
• Too much information.  Similar to above about "stories".  If it takes too long to explain an answer to any question, there's usually trouble. If there is a "story" about any particular subject there's usually trouble. I don't know why this is, but the longer the explanation the more drama and lies that explanation seems to include.

Thank you for the responses.  I perhaps was misleading in my original post when I said the tenant wanted to "keep" these items.  I meant simply that they didn't want them removed from the property, which I offered to do.  The tenant wants to use these items while they live there.  I'm not really interested in selling these items to the tenant, especially the freezer as we may want to use it ourselves one day, or at the very least allow future tenants to use it and the dehumidifier assuming they last a while.  

I want to mention the items in the lease so that the tenant just doesn't take them when they move out, but I don't want to be responsible for repairing them if they break.  I just can't figure out the best way to make that clear.  

As a landlord I take responsibility for keeping in working order items like the furnace and AC, refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, etc.  However, I have a property that has an extra freezer in the basement and a dehumidifier that was left by a previous tenant.  The new tenant would like to keep and use these items, but I want to be sure that my lease is clear on the fact that should these two items no longer work that I take no responsibility for them.  Basically they are "extras" and they are for the tenant to use until they no longer work, and at that time they just don't get to use them anymore, or they can replace them themselves.  How on earth do I word that in the lease?

Thanks!

Did this occur AT the property, or near it? If this occurred in or on my property I'd probably at least make some inquiries with the police to see if they had any more details.  If there was something I could do to help prevent similar situations, like a security light or something simple, I would probably do that.  But ultimately I too feel that this is not your responsibility.  Stuff happens in good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods and everywhere in between.  

If a tenant of mine were to ever have this happen in/on my property and came to me saying they felt unsafe living in one of my places I would let them out of the lease immediately.  I wouldn't jump through hoops trying to make it more secure, I would simple tell them they were free to move. Nothing good can come from someone living unhappily in your unit, especially if they fear for their safety.

Go with one of the month-to-month cellular providers.  I can recommend PagePlusCellular.  They resell the Verizon network.  You can bring your own phone.  You can apply $10 to your account and make it last 4 months if you don't use it often.  I buy these plans for parents that only have cell phones for emergencies.  Phones were old phones of mine, or purchased from Ebay.

I would never rent to these folks.  Too many people, too many issues.  Red flags all over the place.

I struggle with this too.  I've been given the advice that in a roommate situation, every single adult should meet your requirements, so if your requirement is 2.5x rent, each individual should meet that.  Reason being if one roommate moves out you want the remaining roommate(s) to be able to cover the rent.  That makes sense.

But in reality, that doesn't seem quite fair.  As someone mentioned, if you had a husband and stay-at-home wife, obviously she wouldn't qualify since she has no verifiable income, but you would probably rent to them as long as the husband earned enough money.  So why would it be different for roommates?  Obviously it's easier for roommates to split up leaving one behind, but plenty of married folks split up too.

Marital status is not a protected class in Ohio which I think makes it OK to use different criteria for roommates vs marrieds, but I try to be fair.

I just wanted to provide a real-life example of what a little research can accomplish. 

I just listed a unit for rent this morning. I have a "pre-application" that interested parties must complete. It's on my website and I get the responses emailed to me. Applicant answers question "have you ever been served an eviction notice" with "no". The rest of her pre-app looked good. I went to our county court website and she has been in court THREE times for eviction, multiple times for speeding tickets, once for a disorderly conduct and another time for some sort of dispute that I can't figure out. Regardless, she has now lied on her "pre-app" which automatically disqualifies her, not to mention the THREE evictions. 

I found all this out in 5 minutes. Now I don't have to waste my time talking to her or meeting with her or anything. Next!!

@Ariel O.

Excellent points.  I guess I forget sometimes that although I'm super familiar with all this stuff, everyone else may not be.

@Donnie M.

I Google their name, I search county court records for their name (criminal and civil), I search social media sites for any information I can find.  Sometimes I will Google the addresses of their previous residences to see what type of places they have been living in, or Google their employer if I'm not familiar with it. That's about it, and that's usually more than enough information, in addition to the information provided on their application, to decide whether I want to move forward with credit/background checks.  Remember that by this time I've alrady received a "pre-application" from them before I ever approved them to see the property and I've met them at the property in person.

You'd be amazed at what some people put out there on the internet, free for everyone to see.  Lots of people have blogs. Lots of people talk on message boards.  You can sometimes find all those things Googling their name, or their email address. You can find out their hobbies, the groups they belong to, the pets they have, the music they like, the friends they hang out with. Googling their phone number can sometimes turn up interesting results too.  Use the tools at your disposal to find out what you can. If they're putting it out there, I have every right to look for it and use it in my decision making process.

I always have applicants submit the full application before doing credit/background.  I don't even charge for applications.  I take them, review all the information, do my "googling" and general research based on their application and only after I'm ready to move forward with them do I ask an applicant to do the credit/background portion, at which point they pay MySmartMove directly.

What kind of personal information are they reluctant to give?  They're not even giving it to YOU in this case, they're giving it to TransUnion.  I guess I don't understand the reluctance.