All Forum Posts by: Lily R.

I'm a fairly new landlord so I don't know how hard it is to actually find good tenants yet as I've only had one who is clean but sucks at paying...until in the near future.  But, I would start the notice process as soon as your lease agreement states so that in case they don't actually pay rent you are ahead of that in case you need to evict.

After all the reading on various threads, I'm beginning to think turnkey is a fancy name for multi-level-marketing.  I'm new to this...so what do I know?

In my area the sewer utility can place a lien on the property for non payment so we pay the sewer bill but have the price built into the rent. It has gone up a whole lot in the last several years so now it's about $400 per year. Tenant pays all other utilities as those follow the tenant and do not stay with the property.

 I've been thinking about this very thing a lot lately, mostly due to the fact that I have family members in that demographic. After hanging out here and reading posts from some investors, it makes me incredibly glad that my family members own their homes. The area they live in has been invested in by people on either coast who want a return and cashflow (not saying it's wrong to want to make money), but the city has a high homeless rate and low wages. My family members could not afford the $800 average rent that outside investors are trying to create in order to "profit". Makes me wish I could win the lottery or something and actually build affordable "homes". Minimum wage jobs are the norm, but that makes it hard to meet the income requirements for renting, not to mention the elderly with fixed incomes.

It's possible to hire bug sniffing dogs to check for bed bugs if you aren't sure. Often the same companies who provide dogs for sniffing out other things and not just the pest companies who have the dogs.

I wouldn't. Ever. I'm not a parent and that would totally piss me off.

I've considered doing probate real estate.. The child doesn't/didn't own it, so I would never approach a family for that under those circumstances.

But, I'm new to REI, so I know nothing.

Bed bugs are becoming a lot more common. I know two families dealing with them, one in St Louis and one in California.

Get a pest control company out to assess. I plan to have my unit (I only have one so far) checked for bed bugs between tenants so that I'll know if someone brings them in and make them responsible. It's a difficult and expensive thing to take care of.