The Successful Landlord Blog

So I recently ran upon this article about some local landlord/tenant shenanigans. In short, the article is a story about a software engineer who worked at NASA and used his work computer to fill out online loan applications in the name of an ex-tenant who owed him all of $200 in back rent thereby trying to temporarily ruin his credit.

I mean, come on! You use you WORK computer at NASA to do a dirty deed on the INTERNET??!! At what point did you not think you’d be found out? I think this guy is the first software engineer who does not understand how the internet works.

In the course of taking on a lease with a tenant there is a lot of personal information gathered from the tenant and I think it goes without saying that the landlord has a responsibility to protect that information.

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An interesting event happened recently which inspired this post. In general, I try to treat my tenants the way I would like to be treated as a tenant. I try to be respectful of their privacy, financial situation, family situation, etc. This is not to say that if they abuse this trust I won’t come down on them like a ton of bricks. Read the rest of this entry »

So this is just a quick note to say that the eviction process that started in this post, has STILL not resolved itself. Some 50 days later, the deadbeat tenant is STILL occupying the property. I decided to not make another post about this situation until it’s resolved.

The bad thing is that I’m on my way out of town to do some work for my day job. Because my name is on all the eviction papers, I’m pretty sure that I have to be on-site at the rental to actually take back possession. So that’ll have to wait until I return.

Stay tuned for a complete post including the letter I had to write to the judge all but pleading (no pun intended) him to uphold my rights as a landlord.

…and I thought this business was going to be cut-and-dry because the behavior of all parties involved is written in the state law. Ya. No!

Well, the hearing was definitely interesting. It was nothing like I had experienced before. It just goes to show that county court judges have all kinds of latitude when it comes to how they conduct the court’s business. For the record, I have never been before this judge prior to today.

Once the judge called roll, he stipulated that what he usually does is assign a mediator to the two parties to see if things can be worked out without the need for his ruling. In my opinion, this is a great way to handle things because, from my experience, when a situation between landlord and tenant gets to the point that communication breaks down, that’s when an eviction suit is filed or the tenant stops paying rent. Read the rest of this entry »