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How to Get the Best Tenants into Your Rental Property

for-rent-148891_1280-PDWhen you have a vacant rental, you will inevitable have to advertise and fill it. And, you want the best tenants you can find.  Unless you are extremely lucky, you will not rent to the first person who inquires on your rental — or at least the first person will not likely be qualified to live in it.

At some point, you will need to decline a rental applicant. This is one of the main problems landlords have: being unable to decline a tenant.

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Best Home Improvements to Increase the Value of Your Home

It’s the question that nearly every landlord wants the answer to: What are the best home improvements to make that increase the value of my home?

Ultimately, you aren’t just embarking on your improvement project to increase your standard of living, you’d hope that there would be some return on your investment as well in terms of an appreciation in the value of your home.

Unfortunately, the question of which are the best home improvements is one where there is no one size fits all answer, and it would be foolish for us to assume that. It will depend on many factors such as the location of your home, preferences of the local market, the state of the economy, interest rates, and you could probably come up with a list the size of the Empire State Building listing numerous other examples!

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Month to Month vs Annual Lease: Which Protects Landlords?

hand-376212_1280-PDWhat are the advantages of a Month to Month vs Annual Lease?

When renting out property, many landlords want to lock in a new tenant as soon as possible, and they want to lock them in for as long as possible. It makes sense — until you begin to look at all of the commitments that you are making and how little of a commitment the tenant is making.

As soon as you know you are going to have a vacancy, you want to begin marketing. If your existing tenant is a slob, a hoarder, or being evicted, it is extremely difficult to attempt any turnover until you have a vacant unit. With a long term tenant, you just need to factor in a bit of vacancy time to clean up and repair, as well as some down time until you find a tenant.

Worst case, it was a one year (or less) tenant and you have to wait for the tenant to move out to show it, you can look in the mirror for your issue. You should have bypassed this tenant.

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October – November 2014 Rental Cash Flow

cash flowThe rent collections were stellar as always, and the rental cash flow is solid.  All 24 of 24 rents were in the bank by 11/3, which was the first Monday in November.  If you look back at my previous reports, you will see this is typical for me.  I can attribute it to having the ability to screen tenants and use credit score to my advantage.  I have solid units, and they are priced right.  Landlords that do not use credit score as a screening tool, and do not understand the significance of it, are fooling themselves.  They are either working too hard, or not making as money.

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Smoking in a Rental Property

no-smoking-145888_1280-PDAre you aware of the expenses associated with allowing a smoking in a rental property?  If not, you need to understand that a smoker will cost you at least 10% of your profits due to increased turnover costs and additional vacancy. That is an unscientific number, and I may venture to guess it may be much higher.

Smoking in a rental property will cost you plenty in term of lost profitability.

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How to Make Money Traveling

100-PDMany of us had the desire to make money traveling the globe.  Most of us had had menial jobs in the past.  Working for minimum wage, or doing a hard job for not much money.  This post is about saving money, which in effect is actually earning it.  Here is a recent example of how you can pick a cheaper way of traveling and you can actually get ‘paid’ for your time traveling.

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Common Tenant Issues and How to Handle Them

Section 8 renterAs a landlord, you want the best tenants for your properties: people who pay rent on time every month, won’t give your property a bad reputation in the surrounding community, and are clean and courteous neighbors. Being a good landlord means listening to your tenants’ complaints and concerns and responding to common tenant issues appropriately. At times, knowing the right way to respond to an issue can be tough. Read on for advice for some of the most common issues landlords face with tenants.

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How to Approve Tenants Without Meeting Them

approved-29149_1280-PDI screen hundreds of renters every year for an apartment complex.

I see lots of background checks.  I am going to show you how to approve tenants without ever meeting them.  I have approved hundreds of renters without ever seeing them.  Are you still stuck on seeing and meeting renters?  Give it up, it is not necessary.  I cleaned up a 120 unit apartment complex by creating criteria that keeps most bad tenants out, without ever even seeing a tenant.

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Disadvantages of Being a Long Distance Landlord

Maytag Laundry MachinesIf you are a long distance landlord, minor maintenance issues can become an expensive repair.   It is near impossible maximize your revenue if you are paying for every thing the tenants complain about.  And to make things worse, lower quality tenants complain more.  When they are going to be late on their rent, complaints become almost non-stop.

It always helps if you can do some simple maintenance on your rental properties.  If you are able to troubleshoot simple issues, you can save a lot of money.  Often, just being able to look at the problem, and making a simple precursory look, you can even fix the issue.

Here is an example that I came across recently.  I could have handled it from a distance, but it would have been much more expensive and taken longer to resolve.

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Should you allow a renter to paint?

sherwin williamsThe topic of this post is should you allow a renter to paint?  With 24 units, I come in contact with many renters.  They all have their ideas of what a great place to rent looks like.  They might want their boy’s room to be blue, and their girl’s room to be pink.  I get asked all the time, “What do you feel about painting the bedrooms?”

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