All Forum Posts by: Jim Shepard

@Justin Johnson You are right in drawing up a new lease with her name on it along with the kid’s names / ages. She should have to go thru the same approval process that the guy went thru. Hopefully you do a criminal background check as well as credit? How often does the mother not get custody of the kids? Red flag! Probably the criminal background check will explain that.

I had this same scenario happen to me but it was the girl with a young baby on the lease. Every time I drove past the rental early in the morning there was an extra pickup truck in the driveway. Confronted tenant and it was the baby’s daddy. Told her we had to do a criminal background check and credit check on him. He was a felon (sex) with poor credit. The rental has a daycare 250 feet away. He goes or you both go! They were gone in 10 days.

As far as not putting her on the lease goes & then claiming trespassing, all she has to do (my state laws) is get some mail there & she has tenant rights. Easier to evict with her on the lease after Covid.

@Andree Axinn my first thought is “run baby, run”! Previous owner / bank could have sprayed a toxic bug spray which could be an irritant if not done properly. Maybe check police records to see if it was a meth manufacturing house? I would hate to rent it to a family & have them get sick. I also wouldn’t want a possible lawsuit from any illnesses. Your contractor probably won’t finish the job if he or his crew start having problems. Sometimes you are better to just pass...

@Eric Kulling I hate dealing with cigarette smoke! No short cuts to getting rid of the smell and probably $4000. You need to start by washing everything (walls, ceilings, cabinets, doors, lights, etc with a generous portion of tsp (trisodium phosphate - available at your hardware store). Use a scrub brush and dunk it in a bucket with the tsp solution. Yep it gets sloppy! Rip out the carpeting and paint the floor (concrete or wood) with Kilz. Then paint the ceilings and walls with Kilz. When that is dry you can paint the ceilings and walls with regular paint. The Kilz seals everything. Throw away any drapes / blinds etc. You may have to have the ductwork professionally cleaned as well. In a sfh I would turn on my ozone generator at the end of the day to do its job. Plan on airing out the house every morning for 30 minutes before starting work. One last thought, throw away the bulbs in every light! Otherwise when they heat up, they will emit cigarette smell. If I am looking at a house that has been smoked in, I automatically discount it by 10 grand or I’m not interested.

@Lenor Sherman Since you are out $170,000 I would suggest hiring an experienced attorney that is use to fighting with insurance companies. Beware it may takes years to settle.

@Jay Garrison besides getting to know your State landlord / tenant laws I believe Chicago has stricter laws. One that I remember is you have to put their deposit immediately into an interest bearing account with their money only. The tenant gets the interest when they move out. If you don’t do this in Chicago the tenant can go after you in court and get 3 times their deposit back! So if their deposit is $1000 & you don’t give them their $3 worth of interest, they get 3 grand from you! Ouch!

@Jeremy Mangen I would also recommend that you get a professional since it is a duplex. You don’t want to end up in court defending yourself against a poisoning case. The professional will have to come out twice. One to kill the reproducing adults and a second time when the eggs start to hatch which is about 2 weeks. Have them do the other side of the duplex at the same time since they share common walls. A little known fact is the only thing that survived the Hiroshima blast were cockroaches! Yep, their eggs can survive 7000 degree heat!

@Liz Faircloth I have been using Christian Healthcare Ministries.  Just make sure you have an adequate amount of cash in savings since you have to pay it upfront and then get reimbursed.

@Elizabeth Faircloth I have been on a Christian based program for almost a year now when I turned 60. Blue Cross / Blue Shield sent me a “birthday” present raising our insurance from $2000 a month to $2400!!! We switched and it’s only $340 a month for my wife and myself. With ours you tell the doctor / hospital that you don’t have health insurance (which you technically don’t) and write a check at time of service. You then submit the bill and get reimbursed which a friend that has turned in bills says takes 6 months. One thing they won’t pay for is prescriptions but they will help you get the best price possible. I like the $20,000 savings so far!

@Llewelyn A. I had a similar prospective tenant a couple of years back. Something didn’t seem right so I decided to stop by their current apartment to have them sign something. To my surprise a deputy sheriff answered the door in his uniform. So does so and so live here? No! I showed him the application to see if he recognized the name. He didn’t but I feel like a little investigation saved my bacon that day.

I'll throw my vote in for semi- gloss paint and here's why. I can go in at turnover, fill the holes and touch up the paint in 2 hours in a 900 square foot house. A few tricks to get it to match perfectly everytime. 1. Use a good quality of paint around $25 - 30 / gallon. 2. Use the same color in ALL of your rentals so you don't have to figure out which color it was. You always have leftover paint this way. I have been using a custom color of "rental beige" on my rentals. I just tried "Zehn Grey" from Ace Hardware utilizing the Royal brand. Not sure if I will continue on it or not. Will see what the renters think. To get the paint to match, just put a small amount of paint on your brush and whisk it over about a 6" round area. When it dries you won't see it. I just turned a house that I painted 7 years ago. I thought I was going to have to repaint the entire house. 2 hours later it still looked new. I use white satin trim paint and flat white ceiling paint.