All Forum Posts by: Kimberly T.

If there are other tenants (she wasn't the only one on the lease), like a husband or adult child, then there likely isn't much you need to do, because they still have rights to the unit.

If she was the only tenant, you'll want to look into the legal requirements regarding how to handle her possessions and security deposit. DO NOT let anyone just go in the unit and take stuff, as you don't know what's in her will or who has rights to her possessions (you don't want to get sued because some diamond rings are missing...).  You need to find out what your state and local laws are regarding the tenant's estate, executors, etc.  It wouldn't be a bad idea to contact a lawyer to get some advice on how to proceed.

From what I've heard, month-to-month agreements generally terminate with the death of the tenant (unless there are other tenants still there), but a lease continues and the estate is responsible for the remainder of the rent due for the lease period (unless you re-rent it).  This may vary by state, though, so look into that.

Not a lawyer, not legal advice.  I recommend contacting a lawyer who specializes in landlord-tenant law to get input.

I'm in CA and don't even ask that!  It's none of my business which constitutional rights people choose to exercise.  If they aren't legally allowed to own a gun, that's between them and the cops, I'm not law enforcement, I'm a landlord.

We require holding deposit (we require a few hundred bucks to take the ads down and hold the unit until they are ready to move in - it gets credited as rent - and won't hold it more than 1/2 month), security deposit, and first month's rent in cash, cashier's check, or money order.  No personal checks - you might hand them perfectly good keys, and they'll hand you a bad check, and you are left with nothing but an eviction, trashed unit, and several months' rent.  We had a new tenant ask us why we require that (she was just curious, since they had the money), and once we explained that to her, she said oh, that makes complete sense!

It helps if there are 2 of you there for the showing.  When my husband and I are showing a unit, one of us will stay out front and "wait for our next appointment to show up" (even if we don't have any more coming) so we can go check out their vehicle while the other one shows them the unit interior.  Unless we manage to get a good look at it when they show up, then we don't have to pull that stunt.

If you can't have 2 people there, you can still try to sneak in a quick peak when they show up or leave.  We usually schedule one appointment every 15 minutes (or 2 appointments every half hour) so we don't get overwhelmed with people coming all at once.

I should mention that we also do the same for their clothes.  If their clothes are stained, have holes, dirty, etc., we won't rent to them.  No slobs allowed.  If it's for their work (say, a mechanic coming straight from work to see the unit), we'll allow that, but we still scrutinize their vehicle.

Oh!  I almost forgot one other "odd" thing we do.  We only show the unit by appointment; no open houses.  One of our big screening criteria is that if they are over 15 minutes late to the appointment for the showing (without a phone call to let us know they're stuck in traffic), we automatically reject them.  If they still want to apply, fine, but we'll write "over 15 minutes late to appt" on the back of their app and that's the end of that.  Someone who isn't timely and responsible, and doesn't respect our time, is not someone we want to rent to.

Our main screening criteria include: income must be minimum 3x rent, no evictions, credit score at least 600, no pet dogs, maximum occupancy of 2 per bedroom + 1, etc.

One of our "odd" things we do (by odd, I mean a fair amount of landlords don't do this) is we check their car.  If it has a lot of trash/dirt in or on it (fast food wrappers, etc.), we won't rent to them.  If they'd do that to a car they own, imagine what they'll do to my unit!

Another is, we ask them when they're looking to move.  Sometimes we get the "oh, we haven't given our 30 day notice yet" so we know they aren't looking to move soon.  So far I don't recall getting the "we need to move in asap!", but I know some landlords do (red flag - probably being evicted!).

They want to put a french drain under the basement floor?  The only way for water to get to the french drain would be for the basement to flood.  Unless I'm misunderstanding what the plan is.

French drains are normally installed on the exterior side of a wall (the side that's retaining soil).  The purpose is to provide a sort of freeway for the water to have somewhere to go before it starts building up behind the wall and leaking into the living space on the other side.  Here's an image I found online that shows how it is typically installed relative to the basement wall:

Whoa, that is some serious settlement in those pics. Yes, definitely get someone out there to assess it. Not sure if it is related to frost heave, the fact that it used to be a marsh, etc., but a local engineer can probably assess what is going on.

We bought a fourplex in CO last year that had some frost heave issues. The first floor slab on grade had settled a little, so there were some bumps in the floor that we had to address when replacing flooring, but the foundations were fine and there were no cracks in any drywall and all doors and windows worked fine, so we knew there were no settlement issues with the structure itself. Since this house has cracks in the bricks (and you have not yet determined if there are issues with doors or windows or cracks in plaster), it may be having significant settlement issues affecting the structure, which could be costly to fix.

 Source of income refers to things like unemployment payments/welfare, Social Security, pensions, etc. It does not refer to the applicant's job. It is perfectly legal to not rent to someone with a specific type of job (lawyer, stripper, etc.), you just cannot insist that their income comes from a job because that would discriminate against the disabled (who get money from disability insurance instead of a job), the retired/elderly (who get money from SS or pensions), etc.

Not a lawyer, not legal advice.

Well, the next step depends on what is causing the cracks.  If it is thermal expansion/contraction, you need to find a way to allow the bricks to expand/contract so they don't keep cracking (filling the cracks in the mortar with more mortar isn't helping anything).  To be honest, I'm not sure exactly how you'd do that with a brick house, but I'm sure there are engineers/contractors in your area who know.  Somehow you need to add expansion joints, if that's the problem.  Of course, if the cracks are due to settlement, then the next step is going to be addressing what's causing the settlement, whatever that may be - soft soils under part of the foundation, slope starting to slide down the hill away from the home (think of it kind of like a 'very slow landslide' as the side of the hill is slowly moving downward), etc.

I don't know your area, but here, hourly rates are around $100-$200.  You can probably find one to come look at this place and give you a report for something like $500 or so (maybe more, maybe less).  I'd just google structural engineers in your area and call a few companies.  I wouldn't bother calling large companies, they won't be interested in that, but there should be some local small companies/individuals who'd do it.  My parents live in a small-ish town in AZ and had a local engineer come look at some cracks in a wall about 8 years ago, and i think he did it for around $400.