The Successful Landlord Blog

In one of my units there are a trio of younger (22-ish) girls who generally are good tenants.

Recently, on a Sunday, I received a call at 8:30pm saying that they have a “real emergency” and to please call them back ASAP.

The “real emergency” turned out to be that they had locked their keys in their car and on that keyring was the key to the house.

They wanted me to drive 45 minutes round-trip to let them into their house. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent note by a reader inspired this post about the role of technology in the landlord business.

When I started in this business I had every intention of leveraging available technology to make the job easier for me and the operation more efficient. I wanted to set up a web site where tenants could communicate with me about maintenance issues and also be able to pay their rent online.

Being that I have a technology background (software engineer) I made certain assumptions about tenants and banks in general which turned out to be wrong. They are listed below:

• Tenants use the internet
• Tenants use banking services
• Tenants WANT an efficient exchange of money and communication
• Banks want to electronically process all transactions

I should say that not all of the above are true all the time but such is the case most of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

Interestingly, Amazon.com recently started offering blog subscriptions on their Kindle reader device. This is potentially a great thing for both blog owners and Kindle users but there is one drawback as I see it. Amazon will be charging for access to blog content which is otherwise free on the internet. I’m not sure how successful this effort will be especially if some other company (Sony maybe?) comes out with their own reader that does this for free.

For now, if you have a Kindle and are so inclined, you will be able to read Landlord-Success.com on it. Here’s a link showing the Landlord-Success.com for Kindle product page on Amazon.com.

Just recently I received three emails, in quick succession, from smaller landlords, like myself, asking various questions about dealing with tenants in general.

One question was from a landlord who asked what they should do with a HEAP of stuff being removed from one of their units after their pack-rat tenant moved out.

Another question was from a landlord who asked what they should do about a tenant who was demanding that the landlord return their security deposit the day they moved out of the unit they were renting.

My response to all the landlords’ questions was that they should consult the appropriate state law where the property is located. Tenants can scream and threaten all they want about what the landlord should or should not do but when it comes down to it, the state law spells out pretty much everything to do with the landlord/tenant relationship. Read the rest of this entry »