All Forum Posts by: Kathy Johnson

That would depend on the size and location of the home and what comparable market rents are for other recently rented houses in that location.  Los Angeles is a large area.

It can be prudent to have a real estate attorney look over your contract with the property manager.

We don't hide who we are, but we do have an attorney who is on retainer that we use as our legal Wisconsin representative for receiving legal notices.  For maintenance requests we use our own address, but have also provided the tenants with our handyman's contact information for those plumbing and heating emergencies.

Try contacting the manufacturer to determine if they will fix under warranty.  

Silly us, we clean AND paint.

Only tried it once.  Tenants can destroy anything.  Enough said.

One way to do this is to install an electric 'false fire' in the fireplace and damper the chimney closed.  This way, the tenants can still get the 'ambiance' of a fire in a safe insurance friendly way.

Wisconsin is a whole period state which means that even if the tenant were to successfully argue that the lease terms went away they would still have to give you a full notice.  For example if they gave you notice on the March 15th, they would still owe for the next full rental period through the month of April.   Some states such as California are a strict notice period which means that even if the tenancy is month to month, the tenant can give notice on March 15th and only owe rent through April 14.  This assumes they actually moved out by that date.

The above reply talked about the legal requirements answering the question Can a Realtor manage someone's property.  In addition, there is the question of whether the Realtor has the skills to manage the property and the residential rental knowledge to manage the property.  We have had varying experiences.  Some Realtors have a patronizing attitude to property owners assuming that the owner doesn't know anything and doing things like refusing to give the owner enough information to screen while not screening prospects either.  

Some don't take the time to find out what the local rental market is like but others apply a uniform rent based on square footage and not taking into account other market influences such as location or amenities.

So it pays to ask specific questions about experience, knowledge, licensing, training, and simply to find out if the Realtor is someone you can work with in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

If you let the prospect know that until you have a signed agreement, the unit could still be rented to someone else, they may light a fire under the inspectors.