All Forum Posts by: Patti Robertson

Give a default notice the day rent is late.  Then set a policy as to how much late rent is enough to ignore vs filing a unlawful detainer (or whatever your state calls it.) We start the process in my organization at a $250 default. Anything less than that we let ride.  Over that we send a default and start the court process if they don't pay.  If they pay before the court date, they reimburse you for the cost of taking them to court anyways, so you lose nothing but are training the behavior. Tenants will prioritize their debts based on reprocutions.  If you let them go, they will pay you last.

Hampton Roads landlord & PM here. This is a tough time of year to find a tenant, especially in a low income neighborhood where military doesn’t want to rent. Essentially the only people who CHOOSE to move in the winter months are getting evicted from other people’s houses. I would say you have a screening issue of your first batch of tenants had to be evicted. Rather than use credit score as a criteria, I reject for consumer accounts in collections and unpaid civil judgments. The judgments have to be looked up manually, because screening software only looks for unlawful detainers and the Virginia court records don’t feed consistently accurate to the other programs. I rely on SEC 8 for these neighborhoods in the winter months. They will be your most reliable tenant. I also think $1250 is too high for a 2 bed/1 bath in PTown. Feel free to send me the address if you want specific feedback on the location. 

The mistake you are making is it looks like you think you can use the number on the HUD website as your rent amount. You can't. That's just the max they will pay for rent plus utilities. There are other factors that determine what they will pay for your unit and the family who applies. It depends on non-SEC 8 market rents for similar properties, the utility estimate for your property, and the tenant's income. They may pay 10% above market rent, but it won't be the higher amount you used above.

I use the exact same criteria for a voucher holder as a non-voucher holder except for income.  I require they have at least one times the rent in income vs the three times I require of non-voucher holders.  

I just had a HA approve a $300 rent increase for one of our units.  Submit it!

Welcome to BP!

We advertise on the official military housing website homes.mil.  It is a bit of a pain to go through the approval process to become an allowed advertisor, so it may not be worth it for a single unit owner.  

She wants to know what the others rent for because those are her best non-SEC 8 rented comps.  Take the smaller increase for now.  Increase the other units either by raising their rent or moving them out and getting new tenants.  Next year submit a new increase.  You get top SEC 8 rents over time, with regular annual increases.  I manage 120 SEC 8 units and have been working the program for over 15 years.  I am giving you reliable advice.

In case you are not aware, Marco filed a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and wiped out over $5K of debt.  Here is a link to a copy of the filing that includes the creditors that were wiped out.  Marco's Bankruptcy Filing - 2008

Hi there. There are SO many posts about SEC 8 on BP. I've been working the program for 15+ years and currently manage 120ish SEC 8 leases.  To save my figers from typing, I wrote a blog on BP. Here is a link where you can check it out.  https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/9232/55313-intro-...