All Forum Posts by: Robert Steele

Myself and everyone else I know.

My agent and every other agent I have worked with and every other agent everyone else I know has worked with.

Any lender I have used and every lender anyone I know has ever used.

I guess us we are not as professional as you Marie. And I suspect a hell of a lot more landlords are not either.

Rent an industrial strength ozone generator from a hardware store and run it in the apartment for a couple of days.

Ozone is an unstable molecule that attacks hydrocarbon molecules, breaking them down into harmless substances like carbon dioxide, oxygen and trace amounts of water.

Just make sure you follow the precautions and if you overdo it let the apartment air out for a day.

Excerpts below.

Texas Property Code - Section 92.052. Landlord's Duty To Repair Or Remedy

(d) The tenant's notice under Subsection (a) must be in writing only if the tenant's lease is in writing and requires written notice.

§ 92.053. BURDEN OF PROOF. (a) Except as provided by this section, the tenant has the burden of proof in a judicial action to enforce a right resulting from the landlord's failure to repair or remedy a condition under Section 92.052.

§ 92.056. LANDLORD LIABILITY AND TENANT REMEDIES; NOTICE AND TIME FOR REPAIR.

(e) Except as provided in Subsection (f), a tenant to whom a landlord is liable under Subsection (b) of this section may:

(1) terminate the lease;

(4) obtain judicial remedies according to Section 92.0563.

(f) A tenant who elects to terminate the lease under Subsection (e) is:

(2) entitled to deduct the tenant's security deposit from the tenant's rent without necessity of lawsuit or obtain a refund of the tenant's security deposit according to law; and

§ 92.0563. TENANT'S JUDICIAL REMEDIES. (a) A tenant's judicial remedies under Section 92.056 shall include:

(3) a judgment against the landlord for a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500;

(4) a judgment against the landlord for the amount of the tenant's actual damages; and

(5) court costs and attorney's fees, excluding any attorney's fees for a cause of action for damages relating to a personal injury.

I agree with @Account Closed and @Joel Owens

Where you made the mistake was by not taking care of the water intrusion immediately.

She could be BS'ing you. She could be right. Seeing that you dropped the ball I would just pay her the security deposit amount for a release of liability and learn from it.

Joe, please don't think I was impugning you. Thanks for the clarification. I have asked the HOA secretary for the names and contact details of all board members so that I can return the favor and perform background checks on them on behalf of my tenants. I will also follow through on my promise. We will see where it goes.

Yes they do. We are grandfathered in. But as soon as our current tenant leaves we have to start jumping through the hoops.

Thankfully they don't know when the lease ends as they do not have a copy of it. Unfortunately they wont give us access to the pool without providing them with a copy of the lease, background checks and all the other personal tenant details. The tenant doesn't want to give up those details.

I don't even know how they figured out there was a tenant living there. Maybe they troll the MLS.

Joe, being local you should know that Texas has maybe the most HOAs in the country. I cannot buy a newer property without it being in a HOA and I don't like buying older properties (I still have a few) because they require more maintenance.

I do like your suggestion. Do you actually do the background check and then use any dirt you find to get your way or just the threat of a background check and the hope that one or more of the board members have a shady past? Unfortunately blackmail is typically illegal so maybe a better approach would simply to make the dirt public and take over their position on the board :)

@Brie Schmidt Wow! Really? I have rentals in several HOAs and this is the only one I have seen making this change. Maybe it's the wave front? Maybe I need to go back and read all the CC&Rs.

On a side note I don't see what damn business it is of theirs. Sometimes I really wonder who owns my private property - the county? (taxes) the city? (rental inspections) the HOA? (rent restrictions) or me? (holds title)

I have a rental property in a nice neighborhood with a HOA that I picked up in two years ago. The HOA just adopted some new rules that make it difficult to be a landlord.

First of all any prospective tenant and lease must both be approved by the HOA. They also want private tenant information such as phone numbers, emails, drivers licenses. I'm not sure how my prospective tenants would feel about sharing this with a HOA.

I also wonder what their turn around time is? Hours, days, weeks? I'm betting it will be the latter. So now my rental sits on the market waiting for the HOA to approve a tenant and 2 weeks later when they say no I have paid 2 weeks holding costs. I might try again, and again, and again. At what point, 2 months holding costs?, do I give up and sell the property.

They also reserve the right to evict your tenant for whatever reason. I wonder how this would fly in court? I know I certainly cannot evict my tenant without cause.

There are many more little dictatorial rules but the one that I found most egregious is that when you purchase a property in this neighborhood you cannot lease it out for a period of 12 months!

That is going to stop any landlord from buying there. Or more likely it will screw any landlord that does buy there because how many investors actually demand a copy of the HOAs CC&Rs during their due diligence period.

The HOA is making bad policy in my opinion for two reasons. One, you cannot keep out sex offenders and criminals from buying a property (unless of course that is in their CC&R's too?) and any landlord worth their salt does these checks themselves. But two, and most importantly, when the housing market turns down and the neighborhood starts filling up with foreclosures who is going to swoop in to put a floor under the market prices in that neighborhood? Typically this would be investors and unless the properties are distressed more likely they would be buy and hold landlords.

I don't allow satellite dishes unless they are on a pole next to the house. But even still the tenants go ahead and install them on the roof. Holes in my brand new roof makes me mad. I just hit them up for the repair cost when they move out.

Yes, in some cities around here the cable provider requires landlord permission, others don't.

I had a 4-plex once that the tenant want Verizon FIOS Internet installed. The installer literally ran the cable through the back courtyard and draped it over a fence then ran it across the lawn to the curbside hookup. I kid you not. I had to ***** at them for weeks to do something about it.