All Forum Posts by: Rick Bassett

I showed a house this weekend to a prospective tenant who receives S8. Our market rent is below the allowable S8 limit in our area.

These prospective tenants tried very hard to negotiate the rent down below our advertised price, they really wanted a deal but I refused budge so they tried a 2nd time and then a 3rd time until I finally said to them "why the F#$@ do you care what the rental price is anyway, the government is paying for it and it's not like it's coming out of your pocket?"

I could only imagine how difficult they would be to deal with if we actually let them into our place, which of course we won't do. Weeding out potential PIA's is an important part of our screening process.

Rick

A young family looks at our rental house today with 2 of their kids dressed in Halloween costumes. One kid is wearing one of those skeleton costumes where fake blood courses through the chest when you push a button, very cool.....until he sprung a leak and the fake blood went everywhere in our freshly cleaned property, what a mess. 

Showed one of our rental properties to prospective tenants today, there were three adults and I told them that each of them would have to be on the lease and each would have to pay an application fee of $35.  They were highly insulted by the 'rip off' application fee and the fact that for three people it would cost them nearly $80. 

I'd like to blame their poor math skills on the common core as it's always my favorite whipping boy but the reality is they're old enough to have been taught in the era of 'the new math'.

Yes indeed

She's out. The six week journey has cost about 5,200.

Steve Babiak - good news of sort, the tenant vacated yesterday and left her keys. We started the eviction process on 9/12 and she left on 10/16. We were due to go to court on 10/25 and she probably would've been shown out on 10/31. She left the place filthy and managed to damage many of our hardwood floors with black stains which I assume is water damage. I estimate that this eviction action cost us about $5,200 but it had to be done with her at some point or another. We started advertising yesterday, will clean up and repair over the next few days and hopefully will get this rerented soon. Rick

I would first suggest just copping the key. If they didn't feel good about that then I'd probably just go over and swap the locksets out as we keep spares for when people move.

It doesn't cost much for the locksets, 30 bucks for handle/deadbolt combo, but I'd rather have the tenants calling when there are issues and not feeling like they can't call if something major were to happen because they felt like they would be blamed for it (nickled and dimed).

 Swapping out the locks is inexpensive but it buys a lot of goodwill .

@Thomas Williamson that sounds like an Ok  plan unless you have mortgages that are due at the same time of the month or until you get a tenant that comes off the rails.  With the evictions taking 2 to 3 months here in Connecticut we wouldn't want to lose that much time in the court calendar if somebody stop paying. it seems like it be hard to prove to the court that somebody was late if you're not defining what late is.

One of our couple tenants recently asked to get out their lease early as they split up. They kept the house nice and allowed us to ample access to show the home. This is what our prospective tenants witnessed when touring the living room. Funny & Sad at the same time.

@JR T - she's not out yet. The lease is clear on abandonment, the State of CT isn't as landlord friendly on that topic, they still require the eviction to go forward.