All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Roy, normally I would agree with you regarding the length of the contract (M-T-M vs Annual).  However, in this case, they didn't move in, therefore no damages to be made.  

I believe the courts will not treat this case as a normal case, due to the tenants not moving in and will thus reward the landlord one months rent.

If they had actually moved in.  Set one box of stuff in the unit, it would be a different story.  But they never moved in at all, and that is a different scenario.

Nancy Neville

A contract is a contract no matter what state you live in.  They signed the Lease !

They didn't pay rent so rent for that month will be deducted from the Security Deposit. 

Normally they would need to give you a 30 day notice (or whatever your state law requires when moving) that they are leaving, but in this case since they didn't move in, you should return the balance of the security deposit.  (All but the current months rent)

Once again, a contract is a contract.  If you had taken the first months rent and they changed their mind you would have kept the first months rent and returned the Security Deposit in full.  But in this case, they didn't pay the rent, so you can deduct that rent from the Security Deposit.

If you do all this via mail, then yes follow your state law regarding how you used their Security Deposit.  If you hand give them the balance of the SD, then have them sign a document that you returned the Security Deposit less Rent.

Nancy Neville

Yikes!  Since you are the landlord you will not need a lease.  A lease is a contract.  Would you make a contract with yourself?  So you are going to live with your tenants, and then if they do something wrong and you have to kick them out are you prepared to do battle?  Nightmare in motion is what I see for you. 

Think long and hard before you do this.  Life will never be the same as you know it now.

Nancy Neville

An applicant applied for my home and for their employment listed Mortician.  I said wow, where is your funeral home, and they said it will be in the basement.

Had an applicant apply for our home and as she was talking to me a roach crawled out of her sleeve.

Had a house for rent at $750.00 a month.  Gal applies for the home and lists her income as $500.00 a month. 

While doing an open house two large men tried to rob me, luckily people started coming into the home for the open house and the "creeps" ran away.

Had an applicant's mother co-sign for a house for her daughter.  I gave her a pen to fill out the application form and she refused to give me back the pen. 

Just some of my first impressions.

Nancy Neville

The important thing is what is in the Contract between you and the Realtor. 

Usually Realtors will only find you a tenant for the home, and that's it! 

Property Management companies will manage your properties and therefore be responsible.

At any rate, the cost of you fighting this (loss of your stuff and damage of furniture) would exceed, most likely, the cost of the damages you are seeking.  Since you live out of the Country, you  would either have to come here to take care of this matter, or hire an attorney to take care of this matter, which means communicating with you via International Communications.  (Cost more money- time consuming due to time zones - a mess )

I'd say write it off as a loss and sell-or never rent it out again!

Nancy Neville

To Thomas: 

The reason you want to have all rents due on the first of the month is to not have to be in court (or hire an attorney) to be in court every single day of the month for tenants who don't pay their rent. 

When you have various due dates, this creates various court dates when tenants don't pay.  Evictions are based on the number of days that Notice to Quit was sent to them.  Since a Notice to Quit is based on a contract due date, you have created multiple due dates, especially with 300 tenants. (So you need to pro-rate rents in order for them all to be due on the first of every month)

Lawyers will give a discount when they only have to go to court one day with multiple evictions taking place from you.

Let's say out of 300 tenants 75 tenants didn't pay their rent.  These 75 tenants were sent a notice to Quit (all rents due on the first) but they still didn't pay.  So, 75 Evictions are filed in court and the lawyer handles all the cases for a discount per tenant eviction.

However, if all 75 tenants who didn't pay had a due date of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and a due date of every day of the month, then you would have to pay a lawyer to go to court every single day of the month because you would have evictions every single day of the month.

This is why you always want to have rents due on the first of every month!

My answer to the original poster, put a tracer on the money order, and they will reimburse you for it.  

Many times my tenants have sent me their rent in the form of a money order via the mail and it got lost.  I put a tracer on it and was reimbursed.  However, some people lie that they sent a money order, so I make them pay the rent first, and when I receive payment from the money order tracer, they will be reimbursed.  But in the mean time, rent is due because I don't have it when it is due. 

In your case, the tenant has a receipt, then they would not be required to pay me again.  It would be my fault and I would do everything to make this tenant happy!

Nancy Neville

Upon signing of the lease I tell my tenants to call my office any time of the day or night if they have an emergency, and I would take care of it immediately.  (I'll be right over).Then I would list what I considered an emergency.

• Leaking Roof
• Toilet constantly running
• No heat
• No water
• Gas smell

Then I would tell them that any general  repair requests other than the above must be submitted to me in writing and they will be taken care of in the order they are received.

Once I receive a repair request either for an emergency or a general repair, I would call my work crew (or my husband and I would go over there immediately) and take care of the problem.  When I would get back to the office I would type up a work order in QuickBooks, print it out and keep it on my desk until the repair was completed.  (Our work crew would have to FAX US or E-MAIL us) their invoice for the job done in order to be paid. Then I'd mark the work order completed and file it in the property address files. Both in QuickBooks and in real file cabinets. 

For General Repairs I would fax the work order to my work crew, r e-mail them  and they would then do the job and fax over or e-mail their invoice to us for the work done and I would pay them post haste.  They were responsible for contacting the tenant and scheduling the appointment.  (Both for General Repairs and Emergencies)

For Emergencies tenants are usually there.  But for general repairs it's  a different story so this is what I would tell the tenants at the signing of the lease and it is in the lease as well.  If an appointment is made and our workers go out there to take care of the repair and you do not show up to let him in, then you will be charged a $75.00 service call fee.  And the tenants definitely were billed for it.  Because many didn't show up, and our guys were sitting in the driveway waiting for them.  The $75 went to our work crew for their time being wasted. 

All our workers have a master key to all of our properties, however, I prefer to have the tenants be there when someone comes in because they will always accuse you of stealing their lap top, Rolex Watch, and the $10,000.00 they have in a sock in their drawer.  But if they don't show up a 3rd time then we issue a 24 hours notice that we will be entering the premises to take care of that repair without them being there.  

Nancy Neville

Take pictures of the blinds and all damages and send them to the tenant with an itemized bill for damages.  A picture speaks 1000 words!  Also the pictures are good for taking to court in case they contest it.  

The cords tied up like this is overkill.  You can tell the blinds are in good shape and clean.  But once again as stated above, who can use them tied up like this.  

Nancy Neville

A tenant can leave any time they wish if they have given you proper notice.  However, they are still responsible for the rental unit until the lease expires.  If it is winter time and you don't have an automatic turn on of utilities in your name when a tenant moves out, you will indeed want to have the tenant keep the utilities in their name until their lease expires.  You will have to keep an eye on that. 

Once the tenant turns over the keys, they have left the premises.  They are saying they no longer occupy the building. (I would check the utility companies to see if they transferred the utilities over to you or had them turned off)

However, it doesn't mean that this is the date their lease terminated.  The written contract is the legal date.  However, as was mentioned before, if there were a lot of time involved when the tenant left the premises, giving keys or not, but has vacated the building, you do have the obligation to rent out the unit.  (Check your state laws, they may different in your state)

I have had many tenants leave earlier in the month after they gave notice, and they knew they were responsible for the rest of the lease.  No problem.  Keys were given, and they were happy and so were we.  (We were able to get it up and ready sooner, and rented quicker.  Yippi.  I like those type of tenants!

Good tenants!  Rent to them again if they should ever need a place in your area.

Nancy Neville

Back in the "old days" all of us used huge ledgers and pencils to do our book work.  (Remember Scrooge) Pages after pages of documentation and one must have good penmanship if others were to read the figures written on the page. 

Then we progressed to computers and excel.  Still great and nothing wrong with using that.  However, printing out your data can entail many pages, and if not, can you print out information you need for just one property at a time?  Or does the page print out all the properties over many sheets of paper?  Or do you have one property per tab in excel?

QuickBooks was made for small businesses (QuickBooks Pro).  It's easy to use, it has Excellent Reports with just a click of a button, and you can tell where you stand financially on anything you want to know, without using an adding machine, any time of the day, hour, week, month or year.  

Let's say you wanted to know how much you spent in paint this year.  If you have "paint" setup in your Chart of Accounts, all you have to do is look at your Chart of Accounts under "paint" and click on Paints and then choose Quick Report.  Voila, you can see everything you need to know about paint, what properties you used it on, etc. 

Do you want to know how much money you put into your apartment unit number 1 for this month, just run a Profit and Loss Report by Class and bingo, you've got it. 

You know, one has to even learn how to use Excel in order to use Excel.  Some people don't even realize all that Excel can do.  I have been studying it for some time in its entirety but I will tell you that my eyes still go glassy, trying to figure out the formulas for more complicated scenario's.  Why use it when QuickBooks will do all the formulating behind the scenes for you?  (Is there such a word as "formulating", if not, I've just created one!

But for QuickBooks, it's my little Genie in a Computer.  I tell it what I want, and it produces.

Neat, clean, professional.  It just doesn't get any better than that.

Nancy Neville