All Forum Posts by: Karen F.

Eviction moratorium, Connecticut.  Wanna know if it precludes suing a tenant in small claims for unpaid rent, who has NOT yet been evicted?  Of course we cannot file eviction yet, because of the eviction moratorium.

Yeah, I kind of figured that the good relationship with our tenants was why (until just this month) we had NO ONE who was behind on rent during the pandemic.  We haven't raised rents in probably two years, and we were limping along with a couple of inherited tenants who were either way below market, or slow payers, or both.  In my area, in non-pandemic times, it was a three month process to evict for non-payment of rent, and at least twice that long for "staying over".  End result is no one is getting evicted before the moratoriums are lifted, which I suspect will not be until late spring, at the earliest.  I feel really bad for the landlords who have tenants who haven't paid a penny since the pandemic began, or even earlier.

Not for them, it wouldn't be.  All the risk, and splitting the potential benefits.  What makes you think that at their stage in life, they want to get involved in playing monopoly?  If you cannot do this on your own, if you need investors to bankroll it, the YOU go get the investors, buy the property from them at a good price for both parties, and proceed with all the risk on you and your partner(s).  

Last March, at the beginning of the pandemic, one of our tenants didn't pay, and didn't answer our texts.  Finally, she contacted me.  Her husband had left her.  She had no food.  She had no dog food.  She had no money.

I packed her up two bags of groceries from our stockpile, and bought over-the-phone an enormous bag of dog food for her dogs that the store then loaded into my husband's van.  He delivered it all to her.  She eventually was able to catch up on the rent, and has paid mostly on time since.

Recently, on a Wednesday evening (snowstorm here), she called saying no heat.  Husband drove to her apt in the snow, got the heat up and running.  But Thursday, no heat again.  That afternoon, he brought her two oil-filled electric radiators, got in an HVAC tech.  They spent hours working on the unit, but were left with the risk of replacing a valve in an old gas pipe in the unit (which was old), so decided to do a replacement.  The HVAC tech and husband installed a brand new unit on Saturday.  Meanwhile, she had the two electric oil-filled radiators, and gas hot water, and gas stove.  She complained vociferously throughout.  She wanted the furnace instantly repaired or replaced, and she meant instantly.  She bitched that her electric bill would go up from using the electric radiators.  On Sunday, she called complaining that some of the vents were cold.  Husband ran down there - turned out that she didn't know the difference between a return and a heating vent, but new furnace was functioning perfectly.  On Monday, she complained that the programmable thermostat was broken.  He went down there yet again. Turned out that despite my husband having shown her, she didn't understand how to simply override the programmable thermostat by putting it on HOLD mode, so each time she put the temp up to her preferred temp (78), when the thermostat moved to the next time setting, it would drop back down to 68.  (She pays her own gas and electric).

We're furious.  Immediate response, temporary provision of electric radiators, and a new unit within less than 72 hours of the first problem with the furnace, and it's just not good enough for her.  And this is the woman that I gave my own stockpiled food to, and purchased dog food for, at a time when we didn't know how soon we could safely go into stores again.

She's on a month to month lease.  I swear, the minute the eviction moratorium is over, I plan to raise her rent by 20% (it would still be arguably within market rates in that town), and the second she is late, file eviction on her.

Luckily, he paid.  I'm pushing my husband to raise the rent (it's currently about half of what an unheated storage unit of that size would cost).  My husband is pushing back, because my husband likes the guy, even though he has to chase him down for the rent every quarter.  I'm going to insist that we raise the rent.

If you have an understanding of how to do it, then you are far better off self-managing those that are close to home. We self-manage about 30 units, make much more money out of them than we would have if we'd paid a property manager. It's very common to be taken for a lot of money  by a property management company.  BTW, my friend has property in Springville, UT.  He lives out of the country.  He FINALLY got a really great property management company in place for his units, is very happy with it.  If you're not happy with who you're using in Provo, send me a message.

Document every threat.  When he gets home, he needs to go to court to get a restraining order against her.  If he can possibly get her arrested, he should.  He's probably going to have to evict her, although if he can get her arrested, he might be able to just move all her stuff out (illegally) while she's at the police station, change the locks, and if she shows up afterwards, call the cops, show the restraining order, lie through his teeth that she never lived there, and the cops will probably tell her to go away quietly, or get arrested again for violating the restraining order.

Other option is to just legally evict her, which is going to take time.

DON'T!  If you want to do this (and I agree, it's probably a good idea), YOU get the money together and buy it from them, now, at a discount.  I'm sure that whatever they want for it is probably significantly less than it would bring on the open market.  Then YOU do whatever YOU want with YOUR property.

Being an absentee landlord is tremendously high risk for any newbie, not to mention someone who just wants to move on to the downsizing, retirement stage of life.  You're young, you have energy.  Get a homeowner's loan, buy it, move into it, househack it to pay the mortgage, and start renovating.

Awww, darn, I tried to post a link of that classic video from SNL of Eddie Murphy as convict Tyrone Greene reading his original poem, "Cill My Landlord".  You can look it up on youtube, "Kill My Landlord".

We have an excellent relationship with our tenants, and it's shown - all of them are up to date, despite the eviction moratorium.  But the fact is, we still wind up having to evict now and then, for non-payment of rent.  The fact is that people seem to feel that they have a right to free housing, and that we're just in it for they joy of it.  How dare we expect to be paid for letting them live in our property!

If you are at all inclined, consider going for trade, like plumbing or electrical.  You can probably go to the trade high school in your area.  You can make 200K eventually in those trades, and you also can do a lot of your own work on properties.  Eventually, you will grow your real estate farm so big that you won't have to work as a tradesperson - but maybe you'll have your own plumbing or electrical company, and real estate too.