My Tenants Have Piercings, Tattoos, Blue Hair & Great Credit!
(I also rent to some really hot bachelors – in case some of you ladies want to get on my waiting list!) 😉
Some landlords shoot themselves in the foot by trying to prejudge which prospective tenants will be good, based on physical characteristics. This will get you into discrimination trouble, and it’s unproductive.
I remember many years ago, when my Mom managed a 90-unit complex that my Dad built. There was a club-house with an office. I think the statute of limitations has run out now so I can tell you that once my Mom locked the door and hid under her desk when a “skuzmobile” full of smokers pulled into the parking lot. This is not advised!!! (But it is a pretty funny family story.)
I have a system (for apartments) where I don’t even meet my prospective tenants until I’m there to sign the lease. So I have various funny stories about that.
One day, a few years ago, I arrived to sign a lease. There was a girl with blue hair and her hippy boyfriend waiting at the door. I said, “Wow! You have blue hair……but I could care less because I’ve seen your awesome credit reports so you can have any color hair you want.” They were my great tenants for about 3.5 years.
(I asked her what was up with the blue hair, and she said she was just trying to freak out her parents. She also worked in the prop department at the University Theater so it was part of her shtick. The hippy boyfriend was a registered nurse.)
I fell in love with them on paper (good credit, good rental history, good employment, no criminals or sex offenders). We don’t have a hair color requirement! More…
2012 started with a fish taco attack in San Diego…
I had a fish taco attack when our plane landed in San Diego at noon on Christmas eve. Josh and Hillary gave me a new iPhone 4S, so we asked Siri for the best fish taco place in San Diego. She gave us the top 14 fish taco restaurants in order of popularity by customer ratings, and we spent the next ten days in search of the perfect fish taco. It was a great and tasty adventure! We had my little grandkids Zander and Aria with us, so we relaxed and did lots of kid stuff and lots of walking. We hit the zoo twice, the wild animal park, Sea World, the beach, fabulous sunsets, the works.
2011 was our best year ever! We worked smarter, and got leaner and meaner. We think 2012 will be a great year to increase and add cash flows. We have several plans in the works and will keep you informed as we pull them off. The landlording business is a ton of fun and a great retirement gig. I hope you have as much fun this year as I’m having!
Negative Equity by State
Thanks to our friends at the KCM Blog for this InfoGraphic. Note: This only applies to single family residences. Apartments and multi-family properties are doing terrific, because their values are determined by the income stream which they produce (not comps).
Robert Kiyosaki on Entrepreneurs
Robert KiyosakiEntrepreneurs need to work 24/7 during the start-up phase, often working for free for months and even years. It's the number of hours worked for free that defines entrepreneurs and separates them from employees.
MIDAS TOUCH – Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich and Why Most Don’t
How to get the gov’t to pay you $1,250 every month
Here’s a terrific article from Mark Ford in DailyWealth:
“Every month, the government deposits $1,250 into my bank account. But I’m not collecting Social Security. And I’m not talking about tax refunds or municipal bonds.
I’m talking about Section 8 housing.
Section 8 housing (officially Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937) is the government program that helps about 3.1 million low-income families pay rent. It operates through several programs, the largest of which is the Housing Choice Voucher program. It was meant to pay for “a portion” of the rents and utilities of those in its care. But often, as you will see, payments are greater than competitive rental prices.
Here’s a real-life example…
Peter, my partner in local real estate ventures, recently bought a house in a working-class neighborhood. In 2008, the house sold for $500,000. Three years later, we bought it for $80,000 and renovated it for another $15,000. It’s a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a fenced-in yard, new appliances, and tile floors.
Instead of renting it on the open market, Peter offered it to the local Section 8 housing authorities. They found a young lady with three children to take it. She seems to be an upstanding citizen – she is clean and sober and holds down a steady job. Her only “issue” is that she’s had three kids from different men who don’t feel it’s their job to provide for their children.
The Section 8 people offered to pay us $1,500 a month for this property, which is about $300 more than it’s worth. After Peter and I cover the monthly expenses – the mortgage, maintenance, and taxes – we are netting more than 12% on our cash. That’s darn good money in today’s world. So there must be a catch, right?
I figured the catch would be…”
How to Write Killer Rental Ads
My son and I are about to close out our best year ever.
[Gasp!]
Yep, right in the middle of a bad recession.
So it occurred to me, while I was perusing Craigslist for rent ads today, that I might have a few secret weapons that would be of help to other landlords.
Try this exercise: Go to Craigslist and check out the ads in some rent range that is
applicable to your rental units. Below are a few of the headings I saw listed. Hover your mouse over each one and see which one makes your finger WANT to CLICK:
HOME FOR RENT
Single Family Home for Rent
Just Painted – Nice Floorplan
2 Rooms Nice Location
Large Condominium
Clean 1 bdrm apt – Downtown
Nice Apartment Available
BOOYA!! Classy 1BR + Cozy Gas Fireplace
The last one is my ad, of course 😉 Hey, I was excited to see some great headlines too, some I wish I had written! But most were yawners.
Your prospective tenants will never see your ad if the headline doesn’t make them CLICK. The headline is the Ad for your Ad. Work it! More…
ONE COURT WIN FOR THE LANDLORDS
Landlords Claim Discrimination, Judge Agrees
Landlords were handed a victory by an appeals court in Minnesota that determined a city’s aggressive rental housing inspection program may be discriminatory.
The landlords filed a lawsuit earlier over the onerous building inspection program that forced some of them out of business, and made affordable housing in St. Paul a thing of the past. To read the complete details and history behind this court ruling, go to: http://bbs2.mrlandlord.com/display.php?id=13968733.
Pride of Ownership
This morning I rented a house to a cute trio of roommates in a popular area.
This evening, on my way to pick up my dog at doggie-day-care, I happened to drive by the house again. The new tenants were out in the front yard playing football.
I wanted to cry. It was the cutest darn thing I ever saw.
We took the house back a couple of weeks ago, when the last tenancy ended.
My great handyman prepped and painted the interior, power washed the exterior (hey it’s white!), painted the front deck, repaired the fence, pulled the basement carpet, repaired the swamp cooler, changed the locks, plus a few other odds and ends.
My great landscape contractors cleaned up the yard and upgraded the entry landscaping to give the house better curb appeal. When they finished, the landscape contractor texted me “now this house will sell itself.” He was right. More…
How Landlords Get a Bad Rap
You’re a good landlord. You’re out there working your tail off trying to provide a nice product to your great tenants.
Then wham! Along comes some tenants that have been trained how to be bad tenants by bad landlords. They’ve been taught that it’s okay to pay the rent late. It’s okay to party and disregard the quiet enjoyment of their neighbors, etc. Heck, that bad landlord might even have paid the bad tenants cash to get out of the last apartment instead of doing an eviction. The bad tenant has been rewarded for his bad behavior by bad landlords, and thinks bad behavior is the way to get ahead. [You always get what you reward!]
Here’s an example: I recently got some great new tenants that moved to one of my apartments because their last landlord would not take action to stop the all-night-long heavy traffic and partying going on in the apartment upstairs from them. Their last landlord just let my new tenants out of their lease instead. Now that former landlord has bad tenants upstairs from a vacant apartment he’s trying to rent! Where’s the logic in that?
I don’t have any of that kind of crap going on in my units. All of my tenants know that I have an evil twin…and none of them want to meet her. 😉 There’s a sort of “ethics presence” in knowing that I have the will to confront bad tenants if I have to, and that I intend to protect the quiet enjoyment of my good tenants. Consequently, I rarely have to bring out my evil twin. [Perish the thought!] More…
“For Landlords, This Could Be The Perfect Storm”
My son and investment partner, Josh Mettle, publishes an exceptional Mortgage Blog as well as a print newsletter. In the Spring issue of his print newsletter, he said something very important for landlords that I want to share here:
“…I should mention that rental properties are about as good a hedge against inflation as you can possibly get. I’m personally getting pretty nervous about the money printing and inflationary actions of the Federal Reserve. One of the first things that goes up in an inflationary environment is rent and, as a landlord, you have the benefit of making your fixed mortgage payment as you steadily keep raising rents to keep up with inflation.
We also have a very unique and pro-landlord situation brewing today as many people’s credit has been damaged and many others have just been convinced by the media that it might just be better to rent. I personally think that is a bad decision, but for landlords this could be the perfect storm. More…