Question for experienced landlords or Realtors?

Question

I am in the process of aquiring my first multi unit property. What advive can you give relative to the property purchase or landlord/tenant relations. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Most cities or counties have an Apartment Association located somewhere. Look in the telephone book for the one in your city or county.

They have all the local forms for your area as well as provide credit reports for it's members in some cases. If not they can and will tell you how you will be able to obtain an agency that will provide you with credit reports for your tenants.

They also will be able to provide or offer software to keep track of your tenants. I use my spread sheet, though there is a program you might be interested in check out this site www.z-law.com

I find that once I have an application and I have narrowed the applications down to 1 or 2 persons I plan to rent to I make an unannounced visit to their current place where they stay. I ask some question as to my reason for being there about the application or how many do they plan to live in my place. While there I ask if I can use the bathroom, while inside the house I check as to how it is maintained.

You can not depend on other landlords to provide good information, though normally they do, but if they are trying to get rid of a tenant they will give you a rosy picture of this individual.

Keep accurate record for check in on your walk through as well as on their exit, so as you can be fair on returning security deposits.

Make sure that you have the real tenants signing the rental agreement. Though leases might sound like a grand idea, I normally don't offer a lease until after the tenant has been there for at least 6 months. This will give you some idea as to how they live and their social habits.

Decide it you want to have section 8 tenants, because there are certain inspections that are required. I find them to be very good tenants, but you must screen them as any tenant you have.

Find you a very good handyman or several handmen to come to your rescue even if it is the middle of the night.

Last night one of my good tenants had a water back up in the bathroom, with the water running all the way into other parts of the unit.

Don't expect this to be a I will get the tenants in and everything will be rosy. Always expect the unexpected, treat your tenants with dignity and respect. You will find somethings with great humor and others will be confounding. Keep your head up, always be positive and attend your Appartment Association meetings there are always things new and exciting that you can learn.

Also there several books on landlording you might either check out at the library or purchase for your library.

As to the purchase price you should check and see what other like units are going for in that area. You should also see what the rental income is in the area. See if the property is located in a rent control area.

Find out if it is located in a nice part of the city. Where ever if is located, make sure you have the best kept place in the area. So ensure that you have a good landscaping crew, make sure the outside has a good paint job,no unauthorized vehicles illegally parked or is being worked on on or near your property. Anything that need repairing take care if immediately. Remove any and all grafitti from all walls and surrrounding structures and walls.

I hope this has been of some use to you, good luck.

"FIGHT ON"

Answer 2

I am a real estate paralegal in an office with a thriving landlord/tenant practice and the best advice I can give you is to not try and get cheap advice or free advice on such an important matter. Pay for a sit-down consultation with a lawyer who specializes in landlord/tenant law in your state AND city, not someone who does it on the side. Have him or her draw up a lease for your specific property and situation. Find out what your rights and responsibilities are. A lawyer who specializes in landlord/tenant law will have knowledge of case law that could affect your specific situation and can advise you correctly. They will also be aware of any local ordinances that will affect you.

I could tell you horror story after horror story of people who didn't know what they were doing when they became landlords and paid dearly for it.

This weeks horror story involves a landlord who purchased a lease for $9.99 from one of those forms for landlords sites and unfortunately for her, the lease did not contain certain clauses that were unique and necessary in her situation. She wants to sell her condo and evict her tenants, but because she felt that free advice from her friends and a $9.99 lease was the way to go, it is now going to cost her close to $20,000 to get the tenants out voluntarily.

Paying a couple of hundred dollars now could save you thousands of dollars in the future.

Answer 3

Find out everything about the tenant/landlord law in your area!!!
YOU follow this law to the letter!!!
You can be a nice guy once in awhile but do not be surprised if it comes back to bite you. So don't complain about it. If you cannot let a lot of stuff just roll off your ego, then step back and let a manager do the day to day stuff.

Answer 4

In order to be a landlord you have to do your job first as a landlord ,not bs ( which means if you are doing illegal things ) like not fixing things when they are supposed be (doesn't necessarily mean that landlords are experienced). Secondly when you let another tenant use another tenants electricity( which is very illegal) . Do you think you should be a landlord at all.?Works both ways

Answer 5

Get a service that allows you to check their credit. I had tenants that had no credit history, and I was not going to rent to them, but they had their father co-sign on the lease, and guarantee the lease in case they didn't pay. I made sure the father knew that if they didn't pay, I would kick them out and keep the security deposit.

Well, I ended up kicking them out and keeping the security deposit.

The moral: check their credit first.

Answer 6

Be able to collect 1% of the property value per month in rents.
Never....Never rent to friends or relatives.

Answer 7

this is going to sound sexist, but if you rent out to guys you'll probably won't get many complaints to fix things, cause guys will just take care of it themselves,woman called for every little thing..

Answer 8

I was evicted once, does that count as experiance ?

Answer 9

Congratulations..

Just be nice to your tenents