All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Streamer

I have a property that I'm taking applications for.  It's a nice brick home in a B area with great schools.  Rent is 1325 per month.

I have a tenant who applied who is being transferred back to our area after several years in another state helping her company to open another branch and then continuing in the new office.  Everything looked perfect: 5x rent in income, 17 years on the job at a stable company, credit score in high 700s, and glowing references from 2 past landlords and boss.  She also seems like a great fit for the house.  She grew up a few blocks away, her mom still lives in the original home, other family members live nearby and she wants the school district for her children.  No pets, non-smoker.  

There was one catch - during the recession she foreclosed on a house that she couldn't sell after being transferred to another state.  I checked this out.  The dates match up.  She bought a house for 112,000, a few years later got transferred out of state, the house went into foreclosure and eventually sold for 27K  (oh the deals in those days.  Today it would sell for 80k).  The house is currently a rental and I can see from the pictures that it's a nice little place.

We're not going to hold it against her - it happened to lots of people.  But here is the weird thing.  She did the credit/background check with MySmartMove and it shows that she was evicted from the house that was foreclosed on 2 months after she moved out of state.  

We asked her about this and she had no idea she had been "evicted".  She wasn't sure what she could do to prove she had not been.

Has anyone heard of anything like this?  Is there anything I can ask her for to demonstrate that an eviction did not take place?  Is it possible this is a practice from the bank to ensure the house is vacant?

Thanks in advance!  

What ever happened with this one?

Thanks for the correction. Sorry - I should have used Google to find a more precise comparison rather than just picking a couple of cities I'm familiar that I thought the original poster would be familiar with too.  My aim was to indicate that in both cases, the cities are few hours apart and do not have a city/suburb relationship.

 It is beautiful there! I love my visits.  I wasn't comparing the Kelowna to Detroit- ha ha.  Just the distance between Vancouver and Kelowna to the distance between Detroit and Grand Rapids.  I figured that would be a point of comparison for the original posted. Grand Rapids is a larger city in it's own right and not a suburb of Detroit - way too far away.

One branch of my company is in Kelowna.  For perspective, Kelowna is about as far away from Vancouver as Grand Rapids is from Detroit.  You'd likely fly into a different Airport if you're considering Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids is a VERY interesting place to look at for investing.  It has it's own suburbs to consider.

South Warren can be a little dicey, but I wouldn't call it dangerous.  The other cities you mentioned are fine.  

I never have any special safety concerns flying in and out of DTW, day or night.

As others have mentioned, follow normal safety precautions no matter where you are.  Even little Kelowna is known to have shootings and violence.  Bad stuff can happen anywhere.  But the risk is not elevated beyond normal considerations in the places you mentioned.

 We have a property in Warren. It is a great place to invest.  It's a nice place to live, too! We have several family members who live there.

Good luck as you get started and let me know if I can provide any assistance.

Welcome to the site! I am in Royal Oak, Michigan.  There are many people from Michigan on the site.  I recommend that you post questions as you have them.  I find the answers are so good it's almost like having to dozens of mentors.

Be sure to set up keyword alerts so you can see when people are talking about topics that interest you.

Where are you from in Michigan?

We also tried to schedule all of our showings when we are working on the house anyway. We say we will be there from 6 to 8 PM and to stop by if they are interested. We ask them to send a text 15 minutes before they arrive just in case we need to run to the hardware store.  Then we don't feel obligated to stay.

I find my best respondants find us on trulia and zillow.  I'm not sure why better quality tenants use those sites, but that has been our experience.  Maybe we get better matches because there are more criteria for tenants to search by.  We use Postlets as a starting point for advertising.  It's free and propagates about 20 sites including zillow and trulia.

 Whether tenants initially call text or email, I asked them to send me an email address so I can send them an email with a series of prescreening questions.  The questions include:

When are you looking to move?

Why are you planning to move?

Who will be living in the home?

Do you have pets?

Do you smoke?

Do you earn a three times the monthly rent in income each month?

We prescreen for evictions, credit score and criminal background. Is there anything we should be aware of that will appear in those reports?

I find that about 50% of potential tenants do not answer the questions and do not ask to see the house.  Another 25% rule themselves out with their answers.  The final 25% are good candidates and most seem to show up for the showing.

I suspect that someone willing to take the time to answer the questions is more serious than someone who will not answer the questions.

 I very rarely have a no-show.  Maybe if you try the prescreening email, you will have better luck too.

Good luck!

 Thanks for the response.  It came at a great time.  We were working on a lease for a new tenant and a different property and I took this opportunity to put in careful wording that requests for repairs will be responded to within 24 hours during normal business hours, except in the event of an emergency.  We specified that A/C and furnace repairs are not an emergency except during extreme weather events.  We also stated that the landlord reserves the right to refuse to pay unauthorized repairs.

Of course, we'll always try to respond and repair things in LESS than 24 hours, and we would pay for an unauthorized repair in the event of a true emergency, but now there are appropriate expectations outlined in the lease.  

The tenants with the original A/C problem seem to have gotten over it and all is going smoothly again.

Thanks to everyone who responded.  It was so helpful!  I love this site :-)