All Forum Posts by: Cory Melious

I've been using Facebook marketplace to list my apartments for the past 5 years. I only have 3 units and it's been pretty reliable to find good tenants.

Post pandemic....that approach is a disaster. I've posted my place but the responses are bananas. The people responding have little to no credit, or are vastly under qualified with the income requirements. Many of them aren't tech literate enough to do the typical application (I usually have them fill out a pdf and we go over it together). 

It's almost like they don't read the ad, or are simply clicking the automatic "Is this still available" button. I've gotten 3500 clicks and nearly 200 inquiries. I have resorted to copy and pasting a response to their initial "is this still available" question. Probably 50% of those never get returned to me. It's a pretty easy way to weed through the non-interested.

Many of them are looking for an in person tour, yet they are not interested enough in responding to the chat conversation THEY INITIATE! 

I use apartments.com for tenant payments, but I don't know how they are for tenant screenings or applications.

Has anyone used apartments.com or zillow for tenant applications and screenings? My understanding is that they pay for the application process. I'd like to pre screen tenants before they pay to ensure they aren't wasting their money.

Hi there;

I have a tenant who's terminating their lease early due to being relocated for work. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything in the lease language regarding this process. I thought that was strange since I am using one of Bigger Pockets NYS leases.

Anyway, I'd like to add some language into the lease addendum for the next tenant that requires a penalty for simply walking away.

One thing I've read is to charge a 2 month's rent penalty fee for this. In my case this will be nearly 7K. That seems astronomical for me and I would be frustrated if I were in a tenants shoes (considering they are probably dealing with security etc on their new place). I think for my purposes though, I'd prefer to have the tenant as helpful as possible with finding a replacement, so that I don't have to constantly be running and doing showings, etc.

So here's what I was thinking of doing:

1) Must give 60 days notice of intention to break lease.

2) Penalty of 2 month's rent if they've lived there under one year. Penalty of one month's rent if they've lived there over one year.

3) Must pay building managements application fee for the replacement tenant (or maybe they split it with the replacement tenant?). The fee's this management company charges are upwards of $750 dollars for the opportunity to apply to live in my apartment. I'm finding it frustrating to explain to new incoming tenants why they have to pay a huge fee just to live in my condo. I'd rather put that burden on the outgoing tenant who will likely be more than happy to cover it rather than get saddled with a lawsuit or an extra month's rent.

What do you all thing about those stipulations? Are they reasonable or unreasonable? Should I go more?

I understand that events happen in people's lives that require them to change jobs/locations. And I'd hate to get into an argument or lawsuit with a tenant over trying to force them to cover their lease. Remember this is New York State, one of the most tenant friendly places in America. It's nearly impossible to sue someone for back rent and win. I'd much prefer their cooperation and assistance with finding a replacement rather than get into a legal battle.

Basically the title. I got an email that the tenant needs to relocate and needs to move at the start of the year. Their lease ends in July 2022. 

This is NYC, so it's impossible to keep them. They've given me enough notice at this point. 

They have offered to help in any way possible to facilitate their replacement. I think there's value in that, as they can facilitate in-person viewings, and answer questions of new tenants. I HATE the idea of having a new lease rollover during the holidays, which can be a real PITA in future leases.

Before I respond to them, I was wondering y'all's thoughts and/or suggestions.

1. 1. I'd like them to find someone to take over their lease rather than start a new fresh one on Jan 1. That means their lease will still effectively renew in July instead of January.
   
2. 2. If the replacements want to do an 18 mo instead of 6 that will be fine, so long as we can build in the rent increase into the renewal in July 2022.
   
3. 3. The HOA's management co charges a $500 fee for new tenants. It's a ******** charge (I was on the board prior to moving out. It's literally just a money grab). Do you guys think it's reasonable for me to request that either the new tenants or the outgoing tenants cover this fee? It's stupid for me to have to absorb that fee considering their early departure.
   
4. 4. I would DEFINITELY get credit checks on anyone they find. 

Are there any other considerations I should think about before I reach out to the outgoing tenants?

I tell prospects during a pre-screening that all adults 18 and over are required to be on the lease, and all will be subjected to a credit check. Requiring guarantors to have a credit check has also weeded out some people.

I'm not trying to get rid of all potentials, but if someone loses interest because they have bad credit and their "guarantor" won't agree to a credit check then they are probably not worth pursuing!

Thanks for the quick response! I think the apartments dot com application will be sufficient. It basically has all the criteria of the BP one, minus these four pretty direct questions: 

Have you declared bankruptcy in the past seven 7 years?
Have you ever been evicted from a rental residence?
Have you had two or more late rental payments in the past year?
Have you ever willfully or intentionally refused to pay rent when due?


Although it's useful to give the applicant the option to explain on paper, I believe [I'm not entirely sure] that the answers about being evicted and bankruptcy should show up on a credit check. The only one I'm curious about is the willfully or intentional refusal to pay rent. I think my pre-screening process is pretty good...but with the moratorium I'm still trying to err on the side of caution. 

Below is an example of the apartments credit report. Do you happen to see any glaring omissions I should be concerned about? Things that you require that might be useful in my application?

In the past, I've used the BP created rental application. Prior to this year, I used the Cozy (now apartments.com) credit/background check to perform the necessary background digging. For this next apartment application, I'm noticing that the BP application and the apartments dot com applications have much of the same questions.

Is anyone still doing both paper plus online applications anymore, or have most of you made the leap to trusting only the online questionnaire?

Is this legit? I've never heard of this before, and would be curious how it could weed out potentially bad tenants. One of the tenants I inherited cost me a fortune to evict, so I have an understanding of the headache it becomes. It didn't help that I had a bozo for a property manager. Turns out I can do a more thorough job myself. In short, I completely agree with your statement that Due Diligence is the most important part. 

I've owned my places now for about 4 years, and have only placed 4 tenants. I feel like I'm getting better at my screening process, but I'm always looking for ways to improve it. It's more important than ever to perform thorough screenings since the pandemic has happened. Thankfully all my current tenants paid their bills throughout, but I don't want to make a costly mistake moving forward!

Btw you've piqued my interest. How do you know about NY/NJ?

Thank you all for the response. I'm mostly curious if asking the question would result in any hesitation, etc. Probably most would never tell me, but with the pandemic moratorium, anyone who stopped paying rent would not have a judgement against them yet, and even if they had, it wouldn't show up on their records for a few months while governments are slow to get caught up.

I'm just trying to determine some good questions to ask that would give an indication of something fishy.

I actually DID raise the rent a little bit, which slowed the responses. The other thing I added to the listing which I think had a more significant impact on the reduction of interest, was to add the words "Favorable credit check require". I think many of the responses I was initially getting were some really low scoring individuals.

I have received an incredibly high amount of interest in my 2 bedroom, fairly basic apartment.

One thought I've wondered to myself is if some of these interested people are facing an eviction now that the moratorium is ending. I'm not sure if NY state has continued their moratorium since the CDC kind of took over that role.

Is it legal/wise/an option to ask tenants straight up if they ever stopped paying rent to their prior landlord during the economic shutdown?

This property is located in upstate NY FWIW.