All Forum Posts by: Keith Jablonowski

I wouldn't advise leaving it there.  That leaves you liable if the tenant or guest injures themselves with it. 

Selling it to them is an option that lessens your risk but make sure write up a bill of sale, offer as-is and state that it is their responsibility to make sure the item is safe to use and to maintain it.   

Your best route though is to sell it to someone not associated with the property at all.  

A lot of people use Zelle, but I don't recommend it. It's secure, but doesn't give you control over payemts.   We use Rentvine.   Most PM softwares will also handle payments.  

With Zelle it's either on or off.  You can't turn it off for a single tenant who you don't want to accept payments for.  You can't set it to only accept payment in full.  These both are an issue if you need to evict someone. Every time you accept a partial payment from them it delays when you can file. 

What does your screening process say?  Ours says the 1st application to qualify get's the lease offer.  No deciding between multiple prospects which can lead to claims of discrimination.   

As others have said have a screening process (in writing) and follow it to the letter.   

Need to reach out to the current PM and get started collecting this information.

You have a few options.  

1) Hire a local Realtor to do a lease only.  It costs you around 1 month's rent but they would handle everything.

2) Sign up with a company like Showdigs that you just pay by the showing.  They recruit and train local RE Agents to do showings as needed.

3) Setup a Sentrilock or Codebox and do Self Showings.   I would still want a local realtor or manager to have eyes on the property on a weekly basis though to make sure property is clean, safe and showing well.  

We offer tenants for a small charge the ability to have all of their rent payments reported.  We don't just do positive.  Knowing that their credit can take a hit if they are late is a little extra incentive to make sure they get that payment in on time.  So it helps them and it helps us and helps the owner.  Win, win, win is always the goal.  

If he is really trying and eventually pays in full every month and it is truly a timing issue with him getting paid you could consider changing the due date on his lease or accepting multiple payments throughout the month.   

But if he is just being difficult and he owes anything more than 30 days then don't mess around.  Serve the proper pay or quit notice for your state and if he doesn't pay start the eviction process.

But you need to enforce the late fees regardless.   You can give a 1 time get out of jail free card but after that if rent is due on the 1st and late on the 5th, then on the 6th the late fee get's added, do not budge on this.  If you do he knows he can work you.

NACHA is the best option if you have a PM software that supports it.    You can output a file of all payments from your software and upload to your bank.  It's faster, done all in one and cheaper than ACH.  Worth looking into. 

I wouldn't overcomplicate things. One account with three different payment methods is enough to know which LLC to charge each expense to.

Brian Krause with Castle Law  https://www.castlelaw.com/brian-krause-2

Justin Abdilla https://thechicagolandlawyer.com/