All Forum Posts by: Fran Flanagan

It's easy to be competitive with this, perhaps something like "NO Move-In Fee!" up front followed by security deposit in the small print. If you really feel like getting creative, you could even offer the choice between a $500 move-in fee of a $1500 refundable security deposit.

There are a lot of different ideas on here. Some will appeal to you better than others. Everyone makes mistakes or wishes that they did things differently from time to time. Just learn, adapt and move on; trying to do better as you go along.

If you ask for more money, deposit or rent, that becomes more adversarial than asking for the ability to show it early. You have no leverage really here. You may as well get a small, reasonable concession in return and maintain an amicable relationship.

Good luck. Let us know what you decide to do and how it works out.

I've found that most other people will treat you as you treat them. (Some people are bad, try not to rent to them.) This request is really an opportunity for you.

I would shorten the lease to one year at the same rent, with the condition that they allow you to show it to prospective new tenants x times for y hours with suitable notice. In this way, you have 6 months to market your property, and should be able to line up a new tenant within 1-2 weeks of their lease ending.

By treating this person respectfully / nicely, there is a far greater chance that she will reciprocate. The new applicants may run into her and ask "How's the landlord / place?" And she should only have nice things to say about you... And how fair and reasonable you are. Also, she is much more likely to leave the place in good, clean condition for your turnover.

Tom Goans, I think you may have mis-read the direction that the $2000 would be flowing. Andrew would be paying the tenant to leave so that he could re-list the property for closer to market rent with a new tenant.

I'm confused. Since he is a realtor and has easy access to the MLS, why not just reduce the price there? If he's willing to go a "lot lower" it seems to make sense to drop the price to some middling range before going straight to his bottom limit.

Jon Holdman, do you think that the state in question matters at all for this? Or is it simply that it's always easier to evict when a lease is finished in time duration as opposed to any other rationale?

Apologies to the OP for the partial hijack here.

I've been amazed at applicants who are surprised that I ask for financial info. One in a group asked his friend if he should fill it in and the guy's reply was "you don't have to tell him that." So the whole group of applicants didn't even fill in the part of the application for them to list income and checking / savings accounts.

I wonder what goes through people's minds but I love when people self-reject themselves.

IMO tax returns is overkill. Paystubs make sense to most people.

I had a similar basement. Turned the corner toilet into a half bath, drywalled walls and put down carpet. I would have tiled if I had water issues. In older houses it seems the basement is often the largest contiguous space. I was amazed how excited it made nearly all prospective tenants. Probably let me get more rent, definitely let me select from better applicants.

I went through a broker and put 10% down (paid MI upfront) on my primary, Still got 3.5% at 0.3 points (last May). I'm sure the broker made money somewhere in there, but they did the brunt of the work, so I'm ok with it. I used zillow to find the brokers, ended up using federated who sold my loan to Wells Fargo.

Wells at the time was advertising mortgages for 3.75%, 1 full point, 20% down. Strange to me that they make it cheaper to go through a broker.

Agree entirely. I imagine their thoughts were that they would 1) get rid of problem landlords and 2) force sales to owner / occupies at reduced prices through making properties ineligible for rent. I'm not a lawyer, but this doesn't seem right.

So many unintented consequences possible here. I suppose that one could be forced to evict tenants in good standing. Especially if the property in question was a duplex or bigger. If a multi can't be rented for three years, the only choices would be to operate outside the law or keep it vacant for three years. Hard to believe that this would improve the local neighborhood.