All Forum Posts by: Karl Hadley

@Tyler Labelle - The answer really is upto you, if you don't want to keep the tenant you should consult your attorney & get the ball rolling.  If you want to keep the tenant, then you may want to give them a little lead way & advise that if this every repeats, they must contact you immediately otherwise an eviction will be filed.

@Nik Moushon - Here are a few other threads you might find useful regarding background checks & online payments.  I tried using the background checks a year ago but found their support to be sub par - on the unit I tested it with I suspect I lost about 8-10 applicants in the Zillow Blackhole, ended up having to switch back to paper applications.   I've since started using Cozy.co for my background & Credit checks as well as payments.  I find the support to be a lot more responsive & there is also more information on where the tenants are stuck at in the process.

Other threads on the topic:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/681...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/585...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/704...

@David Andrzejek - I can't speak for everywhere but in NE Ohio, yes - Just went through this last year for 4 properties that I purchased over year prior to the reassessment, in all cases the only evidence I submitted were the purchase contracts & appraisals to dispute the value increases that were assessed/proposed.   All were successful.

@Patrick M. - It's my understanding that even ACH can be reversed if the account holder reports the transaction as fraudulent so it's a similar risk.

I personally use a PO Box for mailed checks/Money orders (I have a couple tenants that don't trust online payments), and Cozy for ACH.  I've found cozy support to be pretty responsive & they've built in the invoice generation & reminder emails which is nice.  While I don't want to baby my tenants, but the reminders have helped so far with increasing the on time payment percentage each month.

@Troy Toliver - if you don't mind sending the link I wouldn't mind taking a look at it.

@Roberto Hernandez - You also need to check with your local court for their rules, some courts require that an attorney represents the landlord in eviction cases & in others the rules are more relaxed and the owner can represent themselves.    

@Tyler Labelle - As others have mentioned I'd start looking for an attorney if you don't already have one - on the first occurrence as a policy I give folks until the 7th either explain & work out an approved payment plan (including late fees) or pay in full (including late fees), after that I let legal council handle it.  One thought on your messages though you may want to set a hard deadline with a threat of escalation, sometimes you need a carrot and a stick to get tenants moving.

As others have mentioned, you can stop by the property to do an external inspection & hope to run into the tenant which can work or at least get you more information (they could be in the middle of a move out for example).

@John Vietmeyer - there maybe some information for you here on a few previous threads:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/585...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/576...

Personally I've tried it in the past but it didn't go very well, I've had much better luck using them as a channel to generate interest and then use services like Cozy to manage the application/Background/Credit check process.  My frustration was 2 fold, generally Zillow support was not responsive to issues (took 1-2 days on average) and their tools aren't straight forward to track applicants through the process... I ended up with a lot of folk who thought they applied, but it ended up in a black hole.

@Zachary Bellinghausen

Whats the rental market like out there now and how closely is your rental cycle tied to the academic year? If there are a lot of units currently available and it doesn’t look like you’ll get 1400 again anytime soon you may want to offer a month free at the end of a 2 year lease or something like that... To be honest I did this back in 2009 with my NYC landlord, they raised rent at a time when I could get a larger place for a few hundred less per month... needless to say the women wasn’t happy, but took 150 off my rent for a year, I moved after that and she was stuck with the vacancy for about 15 months...

I'll bite as well, I list my rentals on the Zillow sites, Craigslist, Facebook &move.com automatically when you list it on cozy (not much traffic though),.  I've had pretty good traffic & found tenants from the first 3.