All Forum Posts by: James DeRoest

It comes back to damages.

Everyone thinks that damages can be added to just about anything, but damages have to be a real loss. If you trip over your shoes laces, you can't sue the shoe lace manufacturer for damages unless you have real damages, like you knocked out your tooth.

You also have to show mitigation against your own damages. You do this by tying your shoe laces in the first place. You can't leave them unlaced, trip over them, and sue for non existent damages.

With that in mind, when your lease is being broken, you are obliged under FL law to keep this to a min. Essentially, the damage is the broken contract and unpaid rent, but you have to show mitigation by getting it rented again.

By taking it out of service, you are not mitigating your damages if you've refused another tenant, even if it's just for two weeks.

If your tenant is working to minimize the damages, the least you can do is play along.

There are a lot worse situations to be in than a tenant trying to find you a new tenant so they can break the lease and move on. 

Also, I wouldn't be too worried about the dates either. If the tenant is moving out to move in with someone else, and they are arranging a new tenant for that date, then things look pretty good from here.

Simply run your screening, and run the dates back to back.

If this is in Florida, then I would look at this way.

The landlord has an obligation to rent the empty property (from a broken lease) as quickly as possible. This is state law. 

But what you are suggesting is having the property empty, so you are forcing the property into "out of service". You are then going to use the tenants deposit and advanced rent, whilst the property is "out of service" to complete your checks.

I do not believe that this would not be acceptable if you were hauled up on it if the outgoing tenant took this further.

The tenant is giving you an option to keep the property "in service", and you have an obligation to go down that route, qualify the new tenant, and hand the property to the new tenant, to keep your losses as low as possible, and to keep your claim on the outgoing tenant as low as possible. 

So the Dollar goes broke, closely followed by the Euro.

Real estate will still be real estate. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. It's a bit of land with improvements that fulfills the basic human need (Maslows Hierarchy of Needs), shelter. People will always need shelter.

So your real estate holdings will always have a value and they will retain that value. So you get inflation, so your rents go up. You still own the asset, and the asset still has a marketable value.

Look back to the late 1940s iirc, Germany hyperinflation, so they ended up tagging the value of the currency to the value of land. No one wants to sell a hectare of land for an egg, so it prevented further inflation.

Land has and always will have value.

Why would you do that? You start your relationship with your new customers by lying to their face! You'd think badly of someone if they did that to you - so why do it to them?

Grow a backbone and introduce yourself as the new owner.

Why are you intent on opening a can of worms? So you don't want to lose a months rent, but that will seem rather insignificant if this goes south, which it might well do. 

Tenant is leaving, show the place after they are gone and save yourself the headache. If you can't afford a months downtime, this isn't the game for you.

Don't beat yourself up over it, that's what we're all here for!

Wouldn't worry about making mistakes, there are more to come, trust me on that one.

Show me a landlord whose never made a mistake and I'll show you a liar. Show me a landlord who says he wont make a mistake in the future, and I'll show you another liar.

I really don't mean to harp on about the screening process, but this is useful for the noobs.

Something like Transunion would have shown everything from every state, not just like the last year. So it's odd that nothing came up. Did the realtor just run through the county records?

And again, you are living proof of why "previous landlord details" are utterly useless.

As for realtors, don't feel bad about dropping them. Ten a penny, and it's hard to make a case that they are a good realtor when you're going through this.

I don't understand something.

In your first post you said that your realtor screened this guy.....

How did this guy get past this screening? Did you really screen this guy or take a recommendation?

Depending on their visa they will already have gone through a criminal record check. I know for instance that a CR-1 requires a certificate from the home country to show any criminal records. Students aren't CR-1, but you could easily check if you know the visa type (which is in their passport).

As for SSN, not sure if they get one, they'll get something but it may take a few weeks. I know my SSN was meant to be 3 months and arrived in 10 days but that was a few years ago now.

 Company would save precisely $0, and probably end losing money.

People talk a good game, "would you accept a pay drop of 10%?" "Yeah, why not?"....but you watch if a company ever tried that. You would lose all your top talent in a heart beat, the staff would ***** endlessly, and you'd destroy morale. 

Not to mention the reputation the shareholders will get when "they screwed their staff". Recruitment would be something of a nightmare as well because who exactly drops staff salary by 10%? Would that really be your first choice of an employer? "Hey, we're a really great company, here's a pay cut to keep you happy".