All Forum Posts by: Fran Flanagan

When my tenants told me months early that they wouldn't be renewing their lease, as they had to move for his job, I asked if I could show the place a few times before their lease was up. They were interested in moving out a week or two earlier than their lease, so I agreed to give them back 1/4 of their last month's rent. I took one day to change the locks and touch up a few things (the place was near spotless when they left) and my new tenants started that week.

It ended up being win / win for everyone. I'm sure you can work something out if you're permitted to show it 2 or 3 times. They have it clean enough to show, and if you have a lease signed before they move out then you give them $100 or $200 to help cover the cost of their move.

The rent on my place was $1750/month, so having time to screen tenants + a short vacancy is way more important to me than a couple hundred dollars.

Basically, 50% is for expenses which INCLUDE Taxes and Insurance. The other 50% is to pay the principal and interest of your loan + cash flow. It appears that you may be counting the taxes and insurance twice.

You need to consider if there are any major expenses coming up, etc... but at first glance if the rent coming in is double the monthly money going out, this should allow you to build up a reserve fund decently quickly. Just make sure that you don't cut corners on tenant screening.

If you have a person taking good care of the place and paying on time, the numbers you've shared so far look like pretty good start.

I'm relatively new to this, but I found that the application fee can be off-putting to some people. They don't want to put it in until they're sure they want it. Considering that the rent is $1750 / month, I was shocked by how tightly some held onto that $30 PP fee.

I had a better response when I let people kow it was refundable. Basically, I told them that if I had chosen another applicant first, I would refund their fee. I would keep the money if I chose them and they changed their minds or if I ran the credit and found something bad that wasn't disclosed. (That money is spent then). I also added that I'd credit the fee to the 2nd month's rent for whomever got the place.

Also, I never got a single application sent back to me via e-mail or regular mail. If more people are coming to see it, people are more likely to sit down and fill one out right there. Make sure that you have a table and chairs for them to comfortably do so. Your place looks nice, but I don't see anywhere for someone to sit down and fill out an application. Throw a few drinks in the fridge and encourage applicants to have a drink, sit down and fill out the papers.

Late and application fees count as income just llike rent. The cost to process credit etc is an expense. You need to list them all separately but the expenses essentially subtract from income.

If they move from one of your places, that leaves a vacancy... but if they move into one of your vacant places, that removes a vacancy. On the surface, that's net neutral. Charging them a fee for this is little different than if you tried to charge a lease renewal fee.

However at the end of the day, you're in a better spot than you began. You had a tenant wanting a better place, they were going to move) yet they stayed with you, reducing your screening costs. You already screened them once, you shouldn't need to do it again if they were a good tenant.

If they left their old place in such a condition that you needed thousands of dollars to clean it... I probably wouldn't want to rent anything to them again.

Definitely buy a good cordless drill first. Ryobi sells the little kits of like 100 bits that are a great accessory as well. My drill is the DeWalt 18V that can also be used as a hammer drill. Thing has a ton of power and the batteries can also be used for flashlights, etc.

I like to do a lot of projects on my own house as well, so I have accumulated many tools. Other things to accumulate as you need them would be a decent wet tile saw (< $200) since tiling isn't that hard... and a good miter saw and trim gun. With these two last two tools, you can learn to put in new trim, chair rail or crown molding. This can really dress up a room pretty quickly.

Having the right tool makes work a lot easier.

You probably alreadly realize this, but any tenant who was having trouble paying low rent on time will have almost no chance paying 30% more. In your OP, you seem to be planning for them to simply move out when you raise the rents. Make sure you familiarize yourself with the eviction process in your state if you choose to proceed.

Read about estoppel agreements as well. You don't want tenants claiming after the sale to have prepaid rent, owned the appliances or that he had some other agreement with the prior owners.

I might say, "I suppose that if you wanted to wait months or years, paying the mortgage, taxes and upkeep while waiting, then you might find someone willing to pay close to that. Of course, I'm not giving you an optimistic guess, I'm offering to buy your house right now with actual cash."

To be honest, if i was your tenant I would probably look to move as soon as possible. I wouldn't feel bad about walking away from the lease and I certainly wouldn't feel bad leaving the place a bit of a mess.

Hopefully you have better luck than this. Interested to see how she replies.

While I think that you will still need to offer 3% to the buyer's agent, your 3% is certainly negotiable. You don't want buyer's agents to steer their clients elsewhere, which could happen if you did not offer the customary 3% to them. If I was in his position and you refused to budge from your 3% in return for 5 listings, I would take my business elsewhere.

Depending on the expected sale prices / work to sell the properties, I would think that you should be willing to take 1.5 to 2.5% commission on each. Offering to list them at 3% buyer's / 2% seller's commission seems a reasonable position to me.