The Successful Landlord Blog

A couple of weekends ago I had the good fortune to talk with a friend’s dad who is a veteran of the landlord business. This guy owns 175 units in Lake Worth, Florida and has been a landlord, as well as being in other businesses he started, for many years.

The conversation started out with me lamenting the fact that the economy is totally putting a damper on my rental business and that I thought that with scale (more rental units) things would be better. It turns out that his vacancy rate is not much different than mine which was kind of comforting. By the way, another landlord friend in West Palm Beach, FL also mentioned that her vacancy rate was lower but said that hardly any of her tenants were paying on time and in short, she is having to do a lot more work to maintain her business. Also comforting to know that I’m not alone.

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Just a short post today. So, we now have a vacant rental house on the market, finally. We haven’t gotten any inquiries this week except for one. Some lady called and asked if we accept pets in our rentals. “Sure, what kind of pet?”, I asked. “An American Staffordshire Terrier”, she said.

I should mention that a while back I did write a post about this exact thing but I think that it bears repeating. I should also mention that over time, the hate mail (in the comments of that post) from Pit Bull owners was amazing. Well, here’s a quote from the famous store of all knowledge, Wikipedia:

The American Staffordshire Terrier is a breed of dog. The breed is a relative of the American Pit Bull Terrier. Early Bulldog–Terrier crosses were brought to the US with the British and Irish settlers, especially after the Civil War, where they were mainly used as fighting dogs, but also as hunting dogs and farm and guard dogs.

You just know that lady spent all day combing the “for rent” ads systematically calling each landlord hoping to find one green enough that they would sign a lease with her.

Lady, my answer is the same as last time. “Thanks but no thanks.”

This past week I had a situation where a relatively new tenant was again late with the rent. The last time this happened, last month, I ended up posting a three-day notice which, in Florida, is the first stage of the eviction process.

This month, the last day of the grace period was on a Saturday, so on Monday I posted a three-day notice. Later that day I got a call from the tenant’s neighbor telling me that the tenant was really upset and that the tenant’s husband had gone to the hospital earlier in the week with a suspected heart attack. The neighbor mentioned that the tenants were really good neighbors, the whole neighborhood likes them and she would appreciate it if I could “find it in my heart” to give them a break.

After the call from the neighbor, I got a call from the tenant, probably when she got the three-day notice, telling me that I would have the check the next day but to please not deposit it until the end of the week as the funds wouldn’t be available.

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Usually Friday is a good day. You know, end of the week, impending weekend, rest, relaxation, etc?  I have to say when I saw this lovely headline on Friday, it pretty much blew the previous sentiment about the weekend clear out of the water.

I can not think of a worse occurrence than for Wells Fargo to purchase Wachovia, and here’s why:

A few years back I had a very bad experience with Bank of America where for some years prior their credit card department was completely abusive and refused to provide any semblance of customer service. They were rude, unresponsive and pretty predatory with their credit card policies to the point that I vowed never to use another Bank of America credit card.

At the same time, I had personal and business bank accounts with Bank of America only because there was a branch two blocks from my home. Well, that experience was another “worst.” The tellers would yell (and I’m not exaggerating here) at me through the drive through when the DEPOSIT slip was not “in order.” When I went in to get some extra deposit slips, I was told that, “We don’t do that,” among other rudeness.

Fast forward a couple of years down the road: I sold a property in Singer Island, FL at the start of the big housing bubble run-up, paid off the credit card and transferred about $150K through Bank of America to my new smaller, regional bank.

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So one of the rentals has been vacant for two months now as mentioned in this post. The main reason for the delay has been a shower stall repair that was just going awry. I almost had it completed myself but then I stopped and called in a professional for the following reasons:

• The repair looked like complete crap (for lack of a better term)
• It would have to be repaired again in a couple years
• Apparently the construction of the shower stall was unusual (according to my tile guy)
• The third remaining wall will need to be repaired sooner than a couple years time

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