The Successful Landlord Blog

After reading this post over at RSS Pieces.com, it reminded me of why I really don’t like dealing with Realtors. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that Realtors are not all bad and I understand that they do add value to a real estate transaction when they know what they’re doing.

Personally I believe that the bar for entry into the profession is set way too low by the state. In Florida, as long as you can pass the test, you can get a license. The state department of professional business regulation makes a lame attempt to weed out the clearly mentally ill-equipped applicants by copiously littering the test with trick questions. This, however, does not limit the morally corrupt applicants.

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As any seasoned landlord knows, it is important to perform tenant background checks before signing a lease. This will inevitably prevent you from having to deal with a hardened criminal, sex offender or, for lack of a better term, a problem child who is now an adult.

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Recently, I was introduced to Buildium while searching for a method to accept electronic rent payments from my tenants. I signed up for the 15-day free trial and here is my experience:

Buildium’s product is a pretty slick web-based application which can be used to manage properties of any size. There are basically three editions; The Landlord Edition for smaller operations where a landlord/manager can manage a few single-family rental houses or apartment units, The Property Manager Edition which is designed to manage multiple apartment complexes, and The Association Edition which is set up to facilitate management of condominium associations.

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So yesterday, I executed a lease on our last vacant rental house. F-I-N-A-L-L-Y !!

This rental house wasn’t actually vacant for very long but the previous tenants moved into another house of ours that was vacant for close to 8 months (!!!)

The tenants (a boyfriend/girlfriend team) are young but look good on paper. Yesterday, when I met them, they kind of reminded me of this guy but not as bad. But I guess this IS central Florida. I’m sure it’s not like some parts of the state (I’ve always said that north Florida is actually south Georgia) but the percentage of rednecks here is pretty high for where it is in Florida.

Anyway, time will tell whether these people will work out. For now, I’m just happy that we now have no vacancies.