All Forum Posts by: Henry T.

Take all their stuff and put it outside the garage and make sure they dont get back in. Tell them that is not what you meant. Tell them if you meant for them to share the garage you would have put it in the lease. Take your chairs back too. Grow a pair and dont take any crap.  Study more being a landlord and the importance of agreements and especially sec 8. Call the sec8 case worker and tell them what your doing with the bedroom. Tell the case worker they are illegally in your garage. Dont let time pass, fix it now. 

Yes. Those look like Pyramidalis (Thuja occidentalis). You can dig those up. Go with a base about 2 feet wide or so,  all around, then lift out with your shovel, maybe put on a tarp and slide them where needed.. In your new hole, supplant with a high quality mulch soil mix. You should have a fairly good success rate. I did the same thing and only lost one.

Many places only allow utilities in the owners name. My properties' utilities are all in my name, but the tenant must pay them. It doesn't matter who's name is on the bill. You simply have to specify in the lease that its their responsibility to pay the bills

Your lease needs a re-write. Something like : Tenant is responsible for ALL utilities.  Failure to pay the utilities when due is a lease violation and will result in a notice to pay or vacate. Tenant will also be responsible for the additional cost of any legal notice.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Gonna blow up in your face.  Fix it properly, then rent it out to a highly qualified applicant. 

Sorry to say so after the fact, but you need to learn some landlording basics.

Never give the keys to anyone without a proper signed lease. 

Download the landlord/tenant handbook and read it all. 

https://dca.georgia.gov/housing-choice-voucher/landlords/geo...

You're in a dangerous place landlord wise. Join a local landlord association. Find out everything you can about how difficult it will be to get your tenant out when you decide to move in. Generally speaking, on the west coast,  tenant protections increase on month-month contracts.

If you're building for yourself, great. If you're building for rental, I think you're better off as an investor buying another property, thinking long term. There's no way you're gonna build a LEGAL ADU for that price, at least five times that, maybe. No way.

 Got my vote!

If you bought at a peak, you still did ok.  For you number crunchers out there, I found this interesting.

https://blog.firstam.com/economics/housing-affordability-imp...

I have one of those. Been with me for over 10 years. Nathan is right. My guy is under market. Not a hoarder, he's organized. But everywhere is dirt. You don't even want to touch a door or cabinet handle, not to mention corners of the house or bathroom floor. Gross! To top it off people like this, that are so normalized to their filth don't understand why deep cleaning eats their entire deposit. A set of pictures usually resolves that issue. I do inspections regularly and make suggestions, but nothing changes. I'm ok with my guy for now, if he leaves, that house will be sold (I'm thru with Seattle) and I'm not ready to ditch this place yet. If there's garbage doing damage around the house or  exterior, that's something to correct or evict.   If you want to keep your places looking sharp, try to time your turnovers around 5 years or so. Its' not the rule but certainly common that filth grows with long term tenants. Then when the rats come ITS YOUR FAULT(sarcasm). Nathan is spot on.