If you’ve been a landlord long enough, you’ve had a nightmare tenant. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they cost thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, property damage, legal bills, court fees, and pulled-out hair. I’d just as soon keep those thousands of dollars and not have a conniving professional tenant or charismatic... Continue Reading →
Why Not Sticking to Your Late Fees is Hurting Your Landlording Business
A grace period is additional time given to the tenant to pay their rent before they will be charged a late fee or given eviction notice. For example, rent may be due on the 1st of every month, but the tenant has until, say, the 5th to make their payment. Grace periods can be anywhere... Continue Reading →
Communicating with Contractors: How to Start the Relationship Off Right
Like most property management companies in our area, we don’t have a stable of permanent contractors that work for us. What we do is deal with a relatively short list of contractors with whom we’ve established relatively mutual trust. Over time, we’ve learned the hard way that nothing is ever 100 percent in the property... Continue Reading →
8 Reasons to Be Nicer to Your Landlord, Starting Now
Why should I be nice to my landlord? Gosh, that is a good question. Isn’t my landlord just a greedy slumlord? Shouldn’t I expect an adversarial relationship? No, not at all. In fact, being nice (or nicer) to your landlord may reap you many benefits Being nice can be difficult if you rent from a large... Continue Reading →
How I Was Almost Fooled by Evicted Tenants (& What I Learned)
The top thing in every landlord’s mind is to ensure that you don’t recruit a tenant who will only result in an eviction notice. After all, having a troubled tenant can lead to cash flow problems, which is obviously bad. On that same note, not only can this lead to financial distress, but it can be time consuming... Continue Reading →