The Successful Landlord Blog

One of our rentals has been vacant for two months now and not for lack of showings. Potential tenants seem to be super picky now probably due to the huge inventory of rental units in our area. I’ve been showing it and agents have been showing it since we listed it in the local Multiple Listing Service.

Some of the people I’ve showed it to seem to think that it would “hurt my feelings” if, after seeing the property, decide that the place is not for them. What-ever. I swear, I’ve gotten more comments like, “Ok, we’ll be calling you” or “We have one more place to see which we have to go to (and get this) out of respect” than I can shake the proverbial stick at. Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon, I received a phone call from an ex-tenant who mentioned that he needed to come to my office and pay some money he owed and get a receipt.

The background of this story is that this joker mailed me a worthless check for the last month’s rent and about 20-days worth of late fees then proceeded to disappear leaving the house a total mess. And all this after I offered to let him out of his lease. Read the rest of this entry »

So, here’s a good one. I’ve had these tenants who for the third time in a year, yesterday called me at 8:30pm (no less) to say that their toilets were backing up (again). I know, a landlord’s dream, right?

The last time they called about this, I had to make an emergency (read: $$$) call to a plumber to come and snake the waste line from the roof because there was no (visible) clean-out installed. The plumber who came out reported that when he brought the snake back up out of the line, a bunch of tampons came up with it. (nice) Read the rest of this entry »

So, the other day I got a call from one of my better tenants letting me know that he and his wife would be moving out at the end of the month. This call is two weeks notice, mind you. <sarcasm>It’s a good thing that the lease states TWO MONTHS notice.</sarcasm>

Anyway, this tenant said that he lost his job and that he has applied all over town with no luck. He is a medical technician with many years experience and said that the only reason he could think why he could not get another job is that he has too much experience and none of the businesses in his field wanted to pay for his experience. Read the rest of this entry »

So this weekend I had occasion to talk with an attorney friend of mine about the usefulness of using essentially a shell corporation as a barrier to deflect a liability lawsuit.

As we all know, the United States is the home of the liability lawsuit. It reminds me of a routine by The Jerky Boys where one of their characters calls a lawyers office to say that he’s “hurt” and wants to sue. It turns out that his feelings were hurt and was advised by the lawyer that he can’t sue on those grounds. Ok, so it was funny at the time. Read the rest of this entry »