OK, just so you know, this isn’t even an eviction. I had a tenant “allegedly” steal a vehicle from another tenant last year at knife point. I know, I get to deal with great people.
Worse yet, this was part of my pilot project to help young kids get off the street by putting them in some of my shared accommodation properties. Now just to add some perspective to this, I am not Mother Teresa, or even close!, part of this was to help fill rooms and some was indeed to try and help people who needed it.
Quick recap on the project, out of 11 tenants, I evicted or assisted nine of them to leave, the other two will never be allowed back. These were 18-24 year old kids who wanted financial assistance, housing assistance and typically had problems at home. The problem with the system I see is they were never made accountable.
They didn’t have to work for their money, they didn’t have to show up for job interviews, they didn’t have to get up in the morning. Also since they didn’t pay for anything and new housing would be found for them, they also weren’t responsible for anything. No smoking, sure, whenever Bill wasn’t around, no overnight visitors, sure whenever Bill wasn’t around. Anyway you get the idea.
Anyway, I will post more either late tonight or tomorrow as the story unfolds!!!
If you follow the Real Estate markets or own rental property it is incredibly easy to get depressed about the current market situation. As you scan the Real Estate headlines and find out sales have dropped 41% from the last year. Or as you can talk to Realtors, who will tell you about the huge amount of inventory currently for sale or you can even talk to your tenants about how they feel you need to lower rents because there are so many vacancies out there. The last trap was the one I fell into with my tenants help.
With this many options and this many negatives, it’s easy to get worried and it’s important to understand where your sources of information come from. My mistake began with talking to a tenant of mine, who was requesting a rent reduction due to the changing market. I am aware there are more vacancies and I know the market is a bit more competitive, I also know what a headache it can be to move. But they were good people so I caved in and ended up offering her a $75 reduction, which wasn’t good enough for her. So I agreed to switch to month to month while they explored their options, without doing any rent reduction!!.So now, here is how the trap unfolded.
When I collected the last monthly rent check, I listened to her story about how she felt bad for landlords like me, since there were so many vacancies out there and so many choices for renters, I may be vacant for quite a while. It was all rather depressing really.
To help elevate the potential depression, I also had another property that was just getting some renovations completed and was currently vacant, plus two more vacancies coming up. It all looked rather glum.
Next, came the reality versus what I had been told by the wrong source, or at least a source with a different agenda. Late one evening as I stressed about how long I would have empty properties, I finally had my ads all written and proceeded to post them online with less than stellar expectations. Much to my surprise by mid morning, I already had my first viewing booked for that day. Then another one came for the following day. Then two more for the other property, then a friend’s son came out of the woodwork interested in the third.
The response took me off guard as I was expecting a disappointing response, but it quickly became better and better. Now the key from my viewpoint is as follows, we like to keep our properties well maintained and updated and this is an example of this tactic paying off. Here we are not even a week later and I have all three properties lined up with new tenants. One will be vacant for less than 24 hours!
When chatting with the actual tenants looking for new places, the real view of the market emerged versus the one I was fed by the current tenant. Yes, there are a significant amount of rental properties out there, many at very low monthly rates. However, it appears there is a reason many of them are languishing on the market and steadily reducing rates and it has nothing to do with an over abundance of vacancies. Rather it has to do with tenants having options of where they want to live and they don’t want to live in dumps!
Resoundingly the tenants informed me that a majority of the “cost effective” properties were not places they would choose to live if they had options. During the economic boom earlier in the decade, people took what they could get, now the landlord and property owners that took advantage of tenants and just pocketed all the profits are feeling the results of their decisions.
So the real message behind this article? You really need to talk to the right people to get the real answers. The neighbour, or the tenant or the Realtor may have an opinion, but you have to do your own research to find out how valid their opinion really is and what is actually happening in the market.
It seems like wingnuts are flying off the shelf these days and I am receiving even more content for a potential book about tenant stories. Here is the email I received the other day in response to one of my weekly rental ads on Kijiji;
I want your condo for 2 days, i m planing on having a party. It’s going to be my Birthday Bash so yeup
let me know if you agree, also let me know how much for a day & i’ll let you know when i want it.
email me asap Please and thank you
So, what do you think, should I contact the person? Seem like a winning solution? Just to show how confounding this is,below is a section from my ad,
To ensure a great experience for our residents the property has the following rules in place;
no smoking in the home
no drugs
no overnight visitors
treat the other guests with respect
no parties
These rules help create a safe quiet environment and also discourage the types of roommates we are sure you do not want to share a place with.
I highlighted a couple spots the potential short term tenant appears to have glossed over! Bottom line, I think I will take a pass and not bother to reply, I know, I could be throwing away money, but sometimes you just have to take a chance and pass on an exceptional offer!
Hi! I am very interested in renting from you. How long wouldI be able to stay? And what are the monthly rates?
You can respond to “sleaze.queen@h******.com” by replying to this email.
So what do you think? Should I rent to her? People, take a minute to think about how your email address represents you! Hopefully it’s just a prank email, but unfortunately it probably isn’t. On the positive, my book of landlord/tenants stories grows a page a day lately!
For those looking for a picture for the post, sorry, everything I found wasn’t appropriate!! This is the best I could come up with.
Just so you know, you the readers are my best source of topics and posts. So if you have a question about Real Estate, being a landlord or wondering what the hell I do, send me an email or post a comment. That is where today’s Landlord Tip came from.
A reader emailed me and asked if it was better to show his property before prospective tenants viewed other properties or after. The context was whether it’s better to be the 6:00 appointment after work or the 8:00 after they have viewed three or four other places.
I have two components to this answer. The first one is, I love to have tenants see my property and allow me to set the bar higher than the average rental property out there. Due to our standards we strive to have rental properties that are in the top 25% of the properties out there. If you are going to do something do it right. By being in the top 25% we know a) we stand out from the crowd, b) people automatically prefer our properties to 75% of the places out there and c) we can charge a premium for a better product!
By talking to prospective tenants you get a pretty good picture of what they have already seen (you are talking to your tenants about other places aren’t you?). Typically in our area if they have looked at three properties there are two they have deemed unsuitable already. 50% of the properties for rent these days are for rent because the tenants have more choices and are able to move out of places that landlords don’t maintain. So if 50% are essentially crap, I’m only competing with one other, so it’s perfect they see mine first.
The other component is, if they view mine last, they know what property they like best. I can control the situation better by getting the application filled out on the spot and pointing out the best features of my property to reinforce how great it is. If I was the first property they saw, they would either have had to fill out the application with you already, or taken it with them to fax back. This takes a bit of the control away from you if they have to fax it back, or you have to follow up with them to see what is going on. Plus it takes more time!
One other thought to throw in. If your property has huge windows, great views and really shines when the sun is out, make sure the sun is out when you show it. If that is the biggest selling point it doesn’t make sense to show the property at 8:00 when the sun is down.
If however the property may be a bit lower than your standards, by all means who it at night where the lighting is worse. Just remember you want to strive to be in the top tier to be really successful, this means great properties, not substandard.
I will ask this in a separate post, but did anyone listen to the audio stream on the previous post? Would love to get some feedback about it!
The problem with the majority of these tips is that they are all common sense, after the fact. When you are busy rushing to fill a vacancy with everything else going through your mind it’s just natural to miss something.
A sub tip of this set of landlord tips is to prepare cheat sheets for yourself where you can have a checklist of items you need to be on top of. I am in the process of turning these tips into a pdf format for you to download (it’s just taking me longer than thought, sorry Deb!), so maybe I should include checklists in there as well. Would that interest you?
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I recently upgraded the blog to the latest version of the software so sorry for playing with all the new add-ins like polls!
Anyway off to the final tip in this series (although I have a follow up bonus tip ready for tomorrow!).
Prepare in Advance
If you want to treat Real Estate like a business, you need to separate yourself from the regular landlords. You already have some systems in place if you have been following along, but here are some extra landlord tips and thoughts.
Prepare some info sheets on the property that you can hand out to the tenants as they go through. Most tenants have multiple properties they are trying to choose from, if you provide them with a handout that has large color pictures captured in the best possible way, details on the neighborhoods schools, shopping, bus information and everything else you can think of, who will they remember the most? Especially when they compare your information to their vague recollection they have of the other properties.
If you don’t think this would be effective, why do you think realtors have all those color info sheets at homes they sell? This also is a good exercise for you to become familiar with the area and enables you to answer many questions that can pop up out of the blue.
By being prepared you will put yourself head and shoulders above other landlords. If this takes landlord checklists, sheer repetition or just making mistakes until you figure it out it’s up to you.
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