All Forum Posts by: Ryan Dossey

My guess is that one of the 4 college students is wanting to have a S/O move in. Is that correct? 

Honestly I think it's stellar on their part that they reached out and are letting you know that they want to add a 5th person. Most would just move the friend in. 

@Cramer Guzaldo We send them a 30 day notice by mail that rent will be increasing. Most tenants don't realistically want to move over $25. What I'd recommend is setting proper expectations. At move in... We tell them that we will most likely be raising the rent by something small like $25 the following year. 

Their thought is why would they pay $25 a month more for no added value? This is part of where maintaining your properties really well comes in. 

We get the same thing when they're late... Well it needs XYZ.... Awesome! We have a fabulous maintenance staff and any issues will be addressed promptly. This is where we kindly remind them to notify us immediately of any issues and then remind them of their late fee per the lease. 

If you're really particular about your screening I would also recommend skip tracing them. Common providers are Lexis Nexis, TLOXp, IDI Core, Etc. 

This will give you all of their past addresses and even tell you things like who they lived with. We've had more than a few potential tenants leave off the place they just bailed on 2 weeks ago. Or the house they trashed. Etc. 

@Account Closed I would gladly help you with it free of charge. Drop me a PM. 

@Allison Massey LS can be dirt cheap if you do volume or know someone who does. We pay next to nothing for lists. Drop me a PM if you need help with this. 

I would recommend potentially taking an unconventional route... That is.. Building a Niche' list. So many people put zero time into their list and all of their time into the other pieces. 

Do you have public record access online in your town? Can you build a list of folks behind on their taxes? Dealing with code enforcement? Headed to jail? Etc. 

I have my license for the exact reason you describe as well as MLS access for comps. If you're not planning on doing anything with it for several years... I would wait and save yourself the $1,000 or so a year it's going to run you. However, if you think you can help friends buy/sell and pick up a few listings on the side.... You could absolutely do "agent work" part time.

General college advice: Make sure your major is something you enjoy. It's way easier to get mortgages with a w2 income. 

We tend to look at anyone over a 500. What we look at are what have they been late or delinquent on? How long ago? Is there car current? Most folks will pay their rent/mortgage (to avoid being homeless) before just about any other bills. So if they're late on a store card to Macy's we try to be understanding. 

We do look at job history and prior landlord experience. 

I would suggest running a skip trace on all of your applicants that will also pull where they've lived. I'd rather have the tenant who's been somewhere 8 years than the one who moves every 6 months. 

Just my $0.02

We just inherited a tenant with a very similar mindset. He was "in charge" in his book. He was complaining about a litany of issues that were not existent. Literally one of them was the AC running constantly... Which he had set to On not Auto... 

Anyway... To keep things from getting personal you need to stick to your guns. If you say you're increasing rent... They're either paying more or leaving. They don't get to decide what/how you manage the property. 

This isn't "first come first serve" it's all about placing the best tenant for the property into the property. We like to set our residents up for success. 

We had a potential tenant who was late on multiple things and was wanting to increase her rent from $800 to $1300 to move into our place. I wouldn't be ethically setting her up for success in life if I treated her like a "warm body" to just fill the vacancy. We waited and got a great tenant. 

I would get tenant 2 in there for a showing. 

@Joshua Howaniec Drop me a PM. I'm local but we can chat about how you're presenting your offers, asking for the close, handling objections, and following up. 

Plus if you come up with any decent rentals I'll buy them!