All Forum Posts by: Rick Bassett

When faced with the  of dilemma of a risky tenant that I kinda like,  I generally offer them: 6 month lease max (renewable) if everything goes well and either 2 months sec deposit plus 1st month rent -or- 1 month sec deposit plus 1st and last rent. Generally it's the move-in money that makes the decision for you at that point. 

Personally, I'm not about giving chances as another poster indicated. I'm about 3 things when it comes to my properties:

1) Pay the rent on time every month (by the first)

2) Not wrecking my property, treat it like a home and with respect

3) No Meth Labs (really no drama of any type, especially police drama)

Rick

Offer them a $25 or $50 gift card at a local restaurant for every showing, they'll bite (p). Give it to them at the end of each showing.

Rick

During evictions In Connecticut the judge (or mediator) will tell the tenants being evicted, if we ask them to, that they need to leave the place as they rented it in broom swept condition with no intentional damage or theft. They will also let them know that intentional damage or theft rises to the level of criminal activity.

It's worked pretty well for us as it seems to keep the soon to be departed in line.

Any prospective tenant that uses the words 'mold' and 'slumlord' to describe their former rental unit and landlord is automatically disqualified. I don't need that kind of drama in my life.

For fun I usually follow up with this question: When did you stop paying your rent? Once I hear those two disqualifiers. The answer is almost always that rent for some period was withheld.

Rick

 Marcia,

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll be happy to share the form when it's completed.

We had so many false starts/stops with applicants who qualify for assistance as either their impression of what is going to happen is totally wrong or they've been downright dishonest on things like # bedrooms authorized or % of the assistance they will have to pay. Some clients think that they can easily talk the housing authority (HA) into authorizing another bedroom, while the HA caseworkers that I've talked to say that it isn't that simple. 

It's difficult for us to determine a HA Client  can afford to be in one of our properties (qualifying them on income sources) without knowing how much they have to pay towards their rent, utilities etc. While it's very easy for us to determine that info on the Fair Market Prospects.

We really don't want to take our property off the market and move forward with someone if they can't afford to be in there, only to start over again/

We may lose prospective tenants on assistance by requiring this info but with the absence of data we can't approve them away. A conundrum indeed.

Rick

I'm trying to streamline our screening and application process. 

Typically 50% of our applicants have vouchers or some sort of public assistance and it tends get very time consuming trying to figure out exactly what benefits the applicants actually are entitled to as many of them aren't especially clear. 

I put together the draft form below as an addendum to our application.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Rick 

An update on this tenant - Instead of her moving out by 11:59pm on the 30th as agreed, she dragged it out for another 24 hours until 11:59pm on the 31st which prevented our team from getting in there yesterday to make turnover repairs. She left a giant pile of trash / furniture on the street, which she was told not to do, the Town will likely cite us for this today or tomorrow.

She's been obsessing about getting her security deposit back on the spot, we told her that we don't do that as we have up to 30 days to mail it to her after move out. Today I will let her know that we will paying someone to remove her trash mountain out of her security deposit...just a tiny bit of Karma.

I didn't expect her to go out easily but at least she's gone and the house is in OK shape, bittersweet.

Rick

Yes really, she's a terrible tenant who got great service from us and who moved into our freshly rehabbed home that was in perfect brand new condition.

We go the extra mile to provide a top notch product and service but there are limits on how much time can be spent on a passive investment. That's our business model.

The issues she reported (dozens of them) weren't real issues, she just wanted to be constantly serviced so she felt that she was getting her monies worth. 

Read the posts Art, most of the others on this thread understand this type of toxic tenant.

Rick

Ironically this is a $250k house that is 3/4 mile from my home in a B neighborhood that commands $1,700 mo rent. 

It's a small town. They were/are happy to respond to real emergencies but not nuisance calls that have nothing to do with them.  Property owner gets fined for too many 'false alarms' not the tenant.