All Forum Posts by: Karen F.

If you're going to live in the unit, you want to be on good terms with that person.  You also want them to notify you if something needs repair.  So I would advise that you go by, knock on the door, introduce yourself as the new owner.  If there was a lease in place, you respect the terms of that lease for the rest of the lease period, and in the appropriate time before it expires, give them your lease, along with a rent increase if indicated.   If there was no lease in place, you give them your lease, ask them to slip it back under your door signed by the next day.  If they refuse to sign it, begin the process to get rid of them.

Make sure you do the eviction correctly, or it can wind up a bigger mess than ever.  And don't think that every real estate lawyer knows how to do evictions.  You need to ask someone who knows, meaning a court worker, or a marshal, who does a TON of evictions.  That lawyer should know how to do it right.

We do our own when we can, but you have to know a lot to do it yourself.  You didn't know that the first thing to do was to begin the eviction process the first day possible after they missed rent.  So I think you should hire a lawyer to do it for you.

I use it to rent my properties.  I used to use Craigslist, but too much trouble, too many scam responses.  Zillow syndicates to Trulia and Hotpads, too.  It works.  I've tried Facebook, it doesn't work.

Any conditions you put on your lease makes it more difficult to find a tenant.  I think 90 days is excessive, but in my area 30 days is standard.  However, I agree - a tenant who is trying to dictate terms to you, is going to probably continue to be difficult.  We've seen this happen.  So if you like your 90 days, and want to keep it consistent across all your leases, just reply that this is how all your leases are done (and they can take it or leave it).

We learned the hard way to make sure that all our buildings' units are set up so that the utilities do NOT automatically go into our names if a tenant turns them off.  That way, the tenant cannot take them out of their own name, and continue living there with us paying the utilities.  You see, the utility companies won't shut off utilities in the LL's name if they know a tenant is living there, although they WILL shut them off if the tenant requests it.  Of course, since we live near by, we know if there is a problem going on with the tenant and the building's utilities.  And there's usually enough heat from the other units to keep the pipes from freezing if one tenant shuts off the utilities.

Lots of luck getting the tenant to pay any future judgement you get against her in small claims court.  In cases like these, your best bet is to offer the tenant a month or two worth of rent to LEAVE.  You're gonna lose at least that much, maybe more, in the amount of time it takes to evict her, depending upon what State you're in.  In some States, it can take a YEAR to get a non-paying tenant out.  In some, it's just a few weeks.

Michael P, "Ragged Dick" was the first of a series of books written in the 19th century in the USA by a man named Horatio Alger.  They featured an attractive street urchin shoe shine boy, "Ragged Dick", who decided to work hard, save his money, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a highly successful businessman.  They were sort of morality tales for young boys, to encourage them to work hard and save, and that by doing this they would become rich important business leaders some day.  I don't know how realistic it was back then, but they were very popular, and made their author a ton of money.  Sort of like the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad!

OP, Joe Splitrock is right.  You're in luck.  Everyone and his brother wants to buy multifamily units now.  So you should be able to sell them easily.  So many people are paying to take classes on learning smoke and mirror concepts (many of which I'm seeing people echo in these comments) about how to refinance or consolidate and pay down mortgages to yield positive cash flow, or that you're just not managing  these likely Class C multis right from a thousand miles away. "Make a trip out there and get it all straightened out!"  (For another several thousand dollars in flights, hotels, and car rental on a complex that's not producing, change the management to another charlatan property management firm, and nothing changes except you're out a few thousand dollars and some vacation days from your real job.)  It's all total BS.  Say you have a property that's worth 500K, that you are into for 100K with a 400K mortgage.  It's not "cash flowing"; in fact, it's losing money.  So you put in another 100K to pay down the mortgage.  Now it's neutral - neither losing nor "cash flowing".  So you put in another 100K, and now it only has a 200K mortgage.  Voila!  It now "cash flows", although very little.  But it cash flows!  Success!  You're into the property for 300K, and it's making you a pittance a year.  But that's okay, it cash flows, and someone else is paying your mortgage!  Success!  In 30 years you will own that building outright!  And it is costing you nothing!

BS.  It's costing you the 300K in capitol that you're into it, that's producing almost nothing.  If you had bought a three family building near home outright for 300K, that brought in 3000 a month in rent, it would likely have produced 25K/yr in PROFIT, with you managing it yourself.  Or if you had bought three buildings like that, each for 100K down with 200K mortgages, and managed them yourself, the three would have brought in 60K/yr in PROFIT, with you managing them yourself.  Point is, "cash flow" is a BS concept, smoke and mirrors, that these charlatans running expensive courses teach you.  What matters is return on investment, meaning how much money is your money making for you?  And of course, we should all buy property in areas which are going to experience high and rapid appreciation, so it doesn't really matter if you aren't making money on your investments, because you chose them so carefully that while they're "cash flowing", they're also going to increase in value!  The corollary to that is to be sure to buy your stock investments right before they're going to go up, so that you'll make lots of money!  (And there are expensive courses to teach you how to do that as a day trader in stocks with your own money, too, that are worth just as much as these real estate investment courses.)  Idiot schnooks like us know how to time a real estate market about as well as we know how to time the stock market - meaning, not at all!

Take advantage of the fact that the bottom hasn't yet fallen out of this "Florida land rush" current fascination with multifamilies and apartment complexes, and SELL them!  Then look into investing in real estate very, very close to home, that you can manage yourself while still holding down your day job.

Grrrrr. We do Class C rentals in a mostly Hispanic slum town, that is moving more toward AA slum.  We make a living at it, but they require a lot of attention.  I'm about to lose two marginal tenants.  They happen to be in the same two family building.  Both have been with us for years.  They both pay their rent, although sometimes late, and both are late this month.  Each now has a son with multiple felony convictions (one TWICE convicted for drug dealing with gun in car, the other TWICE convicted of violent assault while committing a mugging) coming out of prison, and each just assumed that they could bring their little darling "home".  They each mentioned to us that the son was coming up for release, but neither got permission from us for them to move in.  One was released to mom's custody and moved in, without us knowing.  When I found out a few days later, I finally was able to get sonny boy's full name, looked up his crimes, and called his parole officer and said, "Get him out!  We never gave permission for him to move in, you never contacted us, and now get him out!"  Mom is of course furious, hasn't paid rent yet this month, and now we'll have to give her a notice to quit.  She's been with us for 5 years - always paid, although sometimes late.  The other one, with the propensity to beat his mugging victims to a pulp in (probably) a bipolar rage, since Mom has bipolar disorder, has not yet been released.  Mom wasn't sure they would release sonny boy to her, because of her own bipolar history, but when we told her, sorry, but he cannot move into our unit, she went nuts, hasn't paid us, and now we've got to give her a notice to quit too.  It's not anything we could have screened for, either, since neither son lived with them anytime since they've been with us.  It sucks.  I wish the parole office would call the LL, rather than just assume that the LL is fine with having violent criminals released to live in the LL's unit.  But the parole officer told me they just take the word of the relative that the LL has agreed to accept the released felon as a tenant.  These moms see it as their right to move their adult criminal sons in, who we are appropriately terrified of. 

I know, it's probably just best to be rid of them.   But these are both women whom we have helped along through the years, who we tried to view as good people, without stereotyping them, and now we have to evict them, because they're pissed off that we won't allow their little darling felons to come "home", since we're rightly scared to death of their little violent darlings.  At best, we will have turnover and lose about a month's rent on each unit, even with keeping their security deposit to cover the non-payment of rent for the minimum of two months, probably three that it's going to take to get them out.  At worst, we will lose about three months of rent on each unit, if they effectively fight the evictions.  The funny thing is that they each said, "Well, if I cannot bring my son 'home', then I'm moving!"  But of course they won't move, they'll just sit there not paying rent until they get evicted!  And there was no way for me to have known before they moved in, since they were "away on vacation" when their moms rented the units, years ago.

What we really need is a single internet "bad tenant" list to warn each other.

Our online court records in CT are now automatically dropping tenants' evictions fro the record after 3 yrs, or even less.  It sucks for us LLs, because if the tenant is poor, LL won't go to small claims to get award, too, and then there's eventually no record.

It depends upon how hungry you are for the tenant, what your market is like.  In the worst slum area, this guy is a prince.  But think of it this way - this tenant has already demonstrated that he thinks he has a right to stay in an apartment where he is not paying rent, while the LL runs an eviction.  That mindset doesn't change.  Look up the court filing.  If the situation was that he was living with roommates, and he vacated at the end of the lease but a roommate stayed, and the LL had to run an eviction on all of them to regain possession, MAYBE.  But not if he was the one in there being evicted, and you can tell because if he filed a response, and/or made an appearance, he was in there.