All Forum Posts by: Gwen Fyfe

I'm laughing like a ten year old boy over here. :)

@Jay Hinrichs, I don't know if it was clear from my post, but I didn't think it was actually "smoke and mirrors". I was just saying that unfortunately the way it was written is the same way a lot of scam posts are written and maybe that was why you didn't get immediate responses.

Yes, exactly what @Chris Mason said. @Jay Hinrichs, I don't know if I'm the type of person you're looking for, but I might be. (Few years of high pressure finance experience, a lot of interest in real estate, tend to work until I drop, live in Cleveland.) And the way that ad is written, I wouldn't apply. It sounds like it's entirely commission based.

I immediately pass on job ads without a lot of details or requirements while promising hundreds of thousands of dollars. Especially if they include the terms "self starter" and "gig". They are almost entirely scams. You've unfortunately written an ad which fits right into that mold! :)

@Michael Jones Yeah, I don't think they would have any case, as I said in the original post. @Sam C. seems to think that there are only certain things you can base your decision on, which is pretty much the opposite of how it works. Unless there's something strange going on in PA that I don't know about.

My question is more... does that rule make sense to others from a business perspective? (And/or a moral one?)

@Sam C. I really don't think you're correct here. You can't discriminate based on a protected class, but you can "discriminate" based on just about anything else.

 So here's my question though - how is "we do not rent to close family members of tenants we have had to evict" different from "we do not rent to anyone with a credit score below 600" or "we do not rent to anyone with prior evictions"? What's the distinction? It's still consistent.

They are not both on the lease, Nora is the only one on the lease. Cora, supposedly, doesn't live there. And yes, I post it on the door. I'm just giving an example of the type of thing Nora would try to pull. :)

Good thoughts, though. I always have sympathy for a really good person who comes from a bad family... but it's so hard to know if that's what they really are.

 And you just pissed off everyone with a Cleveland keyword alert. :P

This is a bit of a hypothetical, but I'm starting to think it's going to happen at some point. It's also a funny story. :)

I'm currently in the middle of evicting one of my tenants, Nora Jerk. Nora is a single lady with a young daughter. Nora has an identical twin sister, Cora Jerk, who also has a young daughter. (Names changed, but yes, they are identical twins with rhyming names!) Nora works a lot, so Cora is often at the property watching both girls. Or maybe it's Nora. To be honest, Cora could tell me she was Nora and I wouldn't be able to tell. They look that much alike. I would definitely not put it past Nora for her to use it to her advantage, for instance by saying "I never got that notice, you must have given it to my twin while she was here."

Since I can't tell Nora and Cora apart, and I'm evicting Nora, I'm considering blacklisting Cora too. And then I thought, well, at that point I really shouldn't take anyone from the Jerk family. I don't think that "being closely related to at least one jerk" is a protected class, so I think I'm in the clear legally.

But the community I live in so tight-knit, that I might just want to make that a policy for all family members of an evicted tenant. I think it'll come up again in the future. (For added context, Jim lives on the other side of the duplex, and Jim's sister has already said she'd like Nora's unit when it's ready. Lots of families stay right in this town forever, and word of good landlords spreads quickly.)

What would you do? If you've evicted someone, would you accept one of their family members as a tenant?