All Forum Posts by: Kathy Johnson

Be careful of info that floats around.  I recently heard from another landlord that a property manager told her you can never raise the rent unless the tenant moves.  This is not in a rent controlled area or property.  A local real estate agent told me that landlords can't discuss things on a forum because they would run afoul of the law because they aren't licensed real estate agents.  There is a lot of misinformation floating around out there.

Does the new tenant have pets?  We don't change carpet if the new tenant has pets because we did it once and the carpets had to be changed again after the pet owner moved out one year later.

We let the machine take a message, then call right back or pick it up near the end of the message.  We do this because we then have a recording of the message.   Since my husband is hard of hearing, I have trained him to do this so we both can replay the message if needed for details.

Check to see if there have been police calls to the units.  We had to evict one because there were calls to the unit which involved underage girls being provided alcohol.  Drunk tenants are more likely to break things in the unit even if by 'accident'.  Things like broken doors, vomit on carpet that isn't properly cleaned, etc.

Send the deposit money balance to the last known address and if he has mail forwarded it will get to him.  If he doesn't have forwarding setup, and the deposit letter is returned to you,  put it in your file unopened so you can produce it if you should be sued for the deposit later.

Your only hope is if your lease specifies that all changes to the terms must be in writing.

Compare the high points of your listing with the high points listed for recently advertised/rented units in your area.  Before I place Craigslist ads when we have a rental coming open, I check the ads for comparable houses in the area.  It gives me a good idea of both comparable rent rates and the things that I might want to list in our ad.  For instance, access to local services, the kind of heat source(s) in the house, if applicable the local school district/college district and if open to pets or not.  One of our units is targeted to those who do not drive (an efficiency unit near downtown services such as senior center, library, county offices, public transportation, located on ground floor but no parking.)   

If you are targeting a specific market, sometimes you can let the appropriate organization know of availability.  Because our efficiency unit was a good fit for a disabled person, we notified the local social services agency and a couple of churches.  For some of our other houses, we also put listing up on the local laundromat bulletin boards in addition to the craigslist listing.  We have seen better responses from laundromat and craigslist than the newspapers in our area.   We have also gotten good responses from the local Pennysaver paper but our units are targeted as affordable.