Any One Landlords-Vent
 

Just wondering if any one is landlords on the forum? We moved last year to a larger property in the same town and rented the old house out. Actually the person rented from me off this board. The house was appraised last year for $130,000. All we wanted was someone that would apprecaite all the work we had put into the property [new horse barn, new pastures, professionally landscaped property, wood burning stove,gardens, etc.]

We gave this person a 5 year lease with option to purchase but had a verbal aggreement that she would try to get financing on a yearly basis. Selling price was $124,900 more then $5000 off the appraised value. We also charged her $875 rent and our mortgage payment was $950 so we were covering the additional $75.00 a month out of our own pocket.

The person listed one creditor [I did a credit check last year] and this was confirmed. She was lare on payments but told me husband had left and she fell behind but was now caught up. Also checked with the landlord and confirmed the rent was paid on time.

Well after a year goes by I ask why she hasnt showed me proof of financing and I find out they are going to file bankruptcy. Her husband [dead beat] reconcilled and he is now leaving in the house with her and the kids. This entire year she has assured me that finncing would be done and they would have the house bought and now this. We had overlooked numerous lease violations as I thought they were buying this house and it wouldnt be are problem. Did another credit check [diffrent credit bureau] and this one shows numerous accounts all unpaid and all opened before the rental application was filled out. Specifically states on the applicattion that if any information is inaccurate that this is immediate grounds to terminate lease.

Also lease states they have to give us access to property with a 24 hour notice. Twice now I have served notice and both times they would not be present to allow us in. The front mud room is destoyed, the smell is gross and this is from the outside. How can people live like pigs? At this point we are going to court to have them evicted. They were served already with a 30 day notice to vacate and they sent me a letter saying they have no intentions of leaving! Now it is up to a judge. Problem is if they file bankruptcy we could be screwed thousands of dollars. I would guess right now property would only appraise at $115,000. They do pay the rent but that is the only thing on the lease they actually have done.

House is up for sale as soon as we have eviction papers and I am done being a landlord! :( :(

ah aint people sweet?
I had a nice family of 5 fill the bathtub with poop because they didnt feel it neccisarry to tell me the toilet ewas clogged.

Just becuuse they pay up regularly doesnt mean they cant be tossed... if they lied and the application was proven falsified and they are destroying the property, most any judge will consider that a breach and issue an eviction notice.
you cant be nice... when the eviction notice expires, you go get the sherrif and the goon squad and remove them. A lot of local LEO's do not want to get into it and will tell you they cant, but they must if the evection notice has expired. once the 30 days or so has passed, you can break in YOUR house and begin tossing stuff in a dumpster, they have no recorse, no LEO's will defend them....
you just have to be an total Ahole..... the only way to do it.
I would rent again, but with very very very detailed and restrictive lease, and a very very large security deposit and a very extensive financial screening.
dont like it? keep walking. My "new lease" would state 30 days after an eviction notice is served, the tennant agrees to forfiet ALL CONTENTS of the house.

see thats the beauty of private contracts... you can make them say any crazy thing you like as long as both parties agree to it openly.

I think I would be hard pressed to find a tennant.

I have ONE now, I got desperate and walled off half my house and rented it to my nephew, who works 18 hr days and is hardly ever here. When he leaves I will try to find a new tennant, but the lease will be pretty draconian....
my nephew doesnt have a lease.... he knows his uncle isnt quite right in the head... and he enjoys living where no one knows where he is.
and I have a shovel...
:haha:

:haha: Ok, thanks for the laugh. I'm also a landlord and I am AMAZED that some people do this and make a living at it. Because as Comfortably said, you've got to be a total A** to make any money at this.

We've had tenants: set fire to the house, tear out perennial gardens that took 50 years to establish, also not flush and wreck the plumbing, freeze pipes and fail to mention the leaks, fail to mention roof leaks ("why is that bucket there?" "oh the roof leaks.."), and the topper of them all? Decide that their "lease" included everything they could see from their windows... and that we weren't welcome on our own property unless we'd given them 48 hours notice.

However, we have discovered the secret to survival... draconian leases, HUGE damage deposits, and... jacking up the rent. People who are paying big rents are generally older, more established, and not broke.

But oh yea.. done the sherriff thing. Amazing how once she realized the sherriff really was coming to throw her lazy ass into the snow she managed to get all her stuff out of the house in under 4 hours.

I have several people encouraging me to rent this place out and start on a new one, once I get finished with all my work here.

The bunch of you have just reminded me why I would NEVER consider doing it! :no: Mmmm-mmm, no way! :no:

Been there! We rented our place out when DH and I went overseas for a few years. They had good references from people they had rented on 2 homes back. I didn't ask the guy they had rented on before me as I figured he'd say anything to get rid of them if they were bad. In one year he sold my electric fence and fencer, took out all the metal fenceposts and buried them in a flower bed :confused:and opened up a car repair business mostly in the livivng room. He also put a big hole in the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to accomodate a dishwasher hose through the hole. Luckily we had planned on remodeling when we got back. After a year he was arrested for robbing a lady at an ATM machine. He got 10 years and the family left, we let my son have it for the rest of the time so we could start work on it. Never again, I'd sell up first. Although, he did pay the rent. :rolleyes:

Guess I am not the only one :no:

I guess I figured that a rent/option to buy would motivitate them to keep things up to par as they had an intrest in the proprety. This person posts on the forum and I hope she reads this.

I am done trying to be nice. I have given her every oppertunity to work this out and she will not return my calls. Actually when it was her and the kids [before dead beat husband moved in] things were good but this guy is a fruitcake. He is not the one that signed the lease [she did list him as a possible tenant on the application] and he wants to call the shots. I dont think so. As far as I am concerned his wife signed the lease and she is the one that needs to address the issues. I do not want to deal with him at all. Also when we go to court Tuesday he will not be permitted in the room except to testify since he is not the lease signer. That is really going to **** him off!

I actually wonder if there is some abuse going on? Feel sorry for her and the kids but I cant have this property destroyed. Last time we went there to inspect the property we brought the constable with us. No one answered the door and the constable said we should not enter the house. I walked around to the back of the house and all of a sudden the fruitcake husband appears out of the blue. We thnk he was hiding in the horse trailer taking pictures. Says the wife took the kids to the park. Now this is a rural area [4 acre home with 2000 acres of State game lands next to the property]. Dont know to many people that live in a rural area that would drive 40 miles to go to a park. Constable adviside us not to enter property till the wife was there as she was the lease holder. A couple days later I get a letter saying these days they will be available to let us in, a Tuesday or Thursday and it has to fit their schedule. Lease says 24 hour notice.Nothing to do with fitting their schedule let alone she works as a RN 3 rd shift, 3 12 hour days. The house is probably so trashed they need a week to clean it before they will let us in.

Lease violations,
Landsacpeing destroyed, they let the goats free range and they have destoyed all the plants as well as everything is so overgrown.

They put up a room addition with out written permission [lease states all work must have written permission] they disconnected the central air conditioning and put other windows in the basement whent he ones that were there was perfectly fine.

Will not supply me with proof of renters insurance with the livestock being listed.

Animals on premise that were not listed on application. They listed 3 cats and I counted 20. They also cut a hole in the storm door so now all the cats come in and out as they please. Wonder were the smell is coming from?

Barn gate destroyed and never replaced [this has been over a year]

Intercom system in barn destyoyed and never replaced.

And this is only what I have observed from the outside, God knows what will be inside.

Rentals can be tough. I have many of them and its how I make my living. If you get really good tenents and paid off rentals, you dont need a day job. Personally, I have a tough time working for other people because I am a bullheaded stubborn person so the rental thing works out for me. I have had my share of idiots and no, I cant believe how some people live either. One of them was so bad, oh I could hardly walk in the door. I used to let people have animals on the property but now I really dont after that experience. They lived in the house with like 8 or 9 dogs, umpteen cats that reproduced wildly and still live around the neighborhood there, pigs, goats, birds, rabbits. They used that house like a damned barn. Then there was the lady that used a mobile home I rented her as a dog kennel....... but now all my places are fixed up and I really am lucky to have some good people renting them long term. No troubles for years now. Its all luck though with rentals. Everyone has references and they all look good but you never know. I just make sure my rental agreements spell out that if the place is showing damages, I can evict them. Of course, when you evict them, they break your windows and all. Never rent out anything that expensive to fix up. Mine are all older type mobile homes and my husband and I are adept at fixing most anything they can throw at us ourselves.
The bad part is really that you cant recover your losses because those types of people can barely survive on their incomes, let alone have assets or extra income you can attach to.

Lately, I have taken to renting out just plain old lots with a well and septic to people who live in travel trailers and RVs. One ding dong cut down a beautiful old tree he felt was going to fall on his RV. Ok, why didnt he just cut off a branch. Old shady trees are hard to come by in Nevada.

I have had one experience with a house I sold to a couple and I carried a second mortgage on it. They never paid the first or the me, the second. I advise anyone to never ever carry a second mortgage for anyone unless you are prepared to start paying the first mortgage. They did the whole bankruptcy trick on me filing one chapter 13 then trying to switch to a 7 when their time on the 13 and they had to pay or go. It cost me a fortune in lawyer fees, equity, I eventually lost the house and everything I had in it. It was a disaster and you would cringe to hear how much money I lost in that deal. I am cringing right now remembering it.

So yeah, you have to be prepared for the worst in the rental business and know the state and local laws well and have iron clad contracts drawn by a local real estate attorney to protect yourself as well as you can. Get the best cleaning deposit you can get and really really screen your rental applications. Go with your gut too. If something tells you not to rent to that person, dont do it. Try to drive by the place they are currently living to see what condition it is in. Dont go against your gut feelings on people and never get emotionally involved with them. You cant. It is better to leave the place empty a month or two than have to spend money getting some ding a lings out and fixing up their wreckage. I am not saying I havent worked with people who have fallen on hard times. Sometimes its good to do that too if they were good in the past and are taking care of the place.

It can be a lucrutive business and has many benefits. When you have good people renting, you can own property and have someone else making the payments while you benefit from the equity, if your rentals are paid off, you have a very good income and dont have to go to an office or construction site or whatever 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, you dont have a boss hanging over your head or even very much stress.

Anyways, I am sorry to hear about your evil renters. I can certainly sympathize and I wish you the best of luck. Make sure when you sell your property, you look out for your interests and to heck with everyone else.

Traci

So, glad you've all confirmed what I decided about 2 years ago.
We bought some land down the road to increase our acreage and it included an older 2 bedroom MH that needs work (which 2 kids tried to live primitively in). He wanted to fix it up and rent it out, I told him he was on his own. I'm not putting up with cr*p like this. I told him to go get some more cows, at least they earn their keep!

this is why I only lease mobile home slips.

Rough dirty business
 

Hi Y'all,
Nope, I've never owned any property, to rent to
"Nice Folks".
However, when I was a few years younger, the young
man who owned a house next door to my house was a Uniform
Constable for the Township.A few times he needed
another "big body" to go along on an "Eviction".
I'm big and there Always were three of us.

You have to have a stern demeanor & a hard heart, to pack
peoples' furniture & things out the door, amid the "tears &
crying". It is necessary sometimes, though
I went with him to a couple places that I almost gagged at
the smell. I don't see how Folks can live like that.
Some of them just destroy a Rental property.

There are, of course, two sides to every story.
Glad I'm NOT in the business.

I got out of the residential renting business years ago. I'd rather burn my house down than rent it out.

I have supplemented my income for years from rental property. I know the rental laws of my state and I apply them. Being in the rental business is a good application of the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the renters are good people and 20 percent create all the problems. I ride herd the 20 percent hard. I am a sob if I have to be. That is not a "sweet old Bob". I never socialize with the renters; everything is ALL BUSINESS with them. Over time, I have purchased a lot of other properties from the income of the rentals. Being a landlord is a difficult position and not everyone is able to take the hassel but the end rewards are good.

If you're close enough to a city, a property management company can usually be hired for 10-15% of the take. I use one and am very satisfied. They're experts at this game and they make sure they get good tenants and they don't give the bad ones the opportunity to do much harm. If your properties are paid off or at least reasonably in the money, it can be a good option.

When I did it on my own, I always made sure I had a monthly inspection clause in my leases and did a walkthrough every month without fail. It keeps the borderline tenants on their toes and allows you to catch the bad ones before things get out of control.

-Bill

Ugh -- and all these stories are why I said no way when dh wanted to start buying up houses to lease. :(

He has been dealing with his mother's rental since then, and gotten to see firsthand what kind of damage people do to the houses. People really can be pigs. We had to haul off 5 truckloads of garbage from the first renter, and the last one apparently had pot growing in the closets and bathrooms! :eek:

I kind of wondered why our last landlord just about cried when we finally bought a place and moved <G> His wife was flabbergasted when she walked through -- ready to see what she would need to clean when we left. The answer was -- nothing. It was spotless when we left, and the new people moved right in :)

Tracy

Man I miss my old landlord. No lease, let me keep whatever animals I wanted, & only charged us $50 a month! :D All we had to do was mow his grass across the road. He had another house up in the woods where he would come & stay & put out a garden. He lived in the city. We have always treated this place as if it were our own. Made lots of improvements, including painting the house & all outbuildings. He paid for materials, we did the labor. He died in 1998. His daughter inheirited the place. We rented from her until 2003, when she finally decided to sell us the house, buildings, & 3 1/2 acres. We gave about $15,000 less than it appraised for. So, all the hard work all these years paid off. It is now ours to do with as we want. I moved in here in October of 1989. I lived here almost a year alone until we got married.
I feel for you guys & your tenants from h**l. We were so grateful for the cheap rent that we went out of our way to help him out & keep him happy with us. With no lease, he could have thrown us out for any reason. I don't understand how people can do that to someone else. Just remember though, not all tenants are bad! :)

Yeah…I currently have a “verbal” lease with mine. I believe I told the whole story in another thread but yeah…a shake of the hand and that was it.

Now don’t laugh…although, my friends and I are his first tenants…college age no less.

From my standpoint, he can kick us out at any time. He can also come into the property at any time…I don’t care, it is his place. From my standpoint, there is no security deposit held over my head and shady grounds for both of us to go to court for any reason.

I have a feeling a lot of this money is taking up refuge under the table…o-well, don’t ask don’t tell policy. We get unbeatable accommodations at an unbeatable price, and he produces no paper trail for the entire venture.



Seriously, I wonder what the laws would be for such an arrangement.

I have 2 houses and 2 trailers that we rent. We have had problems in the past with a couple renters. Cost quite a bit at the lawyers office to get rid of them. Hopefully the ones we have now will be ok. So far so good.

One house we bought and the tenant continued living there. She moved last month. We spent 3 weeks redoing it. Of course, we hadn't done anything to it inside, before except, put in a new stove. Outside we had redone the siding, had the house totally painted and repaired the well.

We once rented out the house we live in. We had plans of building a new one when we returned. We returned before scheduled and had to redo the whole house. I will never rent out a house I am going to have to live in again. They just don't take care of it like you do.

You do have to be a real SOB if you have renters that don't pay or don't take care of the place or both.

In my latest rental agreement, I listed that they could have an outside contained pet for $10.00 each a month and an inside pet for $25.00 a month. They do not have any pets so am hoping that this will deter them from getting any, since they did ask. It also states that I have to agree to the pet.

Being a landlord is a gamble. Just like raising cattle is a gamble. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose.

Just keep a close eye on your property. Mine are all located where I can drive by them each day. I noticed one yesterday had the meter pulled. By evening it was reinstalled. I am going to have to go check that one and see how the inside is being treated. The outside is looking great. You just never know if you don't check.

I sure hope the judge feels that you the landlord needs compensated [sp?] and you get your house back.

We have a good friend that we've known forever. He and another man own all kinds of rental properties, from apartments to houses. My husband is a licensed electrician and a handyman. He is all the time being called to fix something in one of the houses or apartments that the tenants tore up while living there or tore up when they left....

I just don't think I'd put up with the hassle of it all. Too many people just don't have any respect for others' property or even their own selves anymore!

Well the only thing I discovered out of the rental property issue is that we as landlords make the bad assumption that folks will value our property as much as we do. WRONG. They figure thay are temporary and dont worry about it. I had nine of them and after about five years I sold them all for the profit in the accrued value of the prices due to the market. One thing you can check into in your state is what they can do as far as not paying. I started putting that if they ever got more than two payments behind I held the right to terminate the lease at my convenience. I charged my rent by the week. Miss two weeks and your out. I wasnt at all a bad person as I know everyone has hard times from time to time. But I had that for the continual deadbeats. My rental contract was eleven pages long. All I really wanted was my rent and for them to keep the yard mowed and dont do any serious damage to the house. I understand children are gonna spill Kool Aid and Crayon a wall. that I can accept because it just happens. But I cannot take filth. Or holes knocked in walls and broken windows. Had one single mom I really tried to help. I replaced five windows in two years. I have never broken a window in my life lol. At the end of my experiment in being a landlord I figured out these things.

Often a poor family in a piece of junk car and dirty kids will treat your property better than a yuppie with two kids and a 100,000 plus a year job.

Men will let their wives do all their dirty work. I had one man out of fifteen or sixteen total occupants that came to me and told me he had been laid off and asked me to let them catch the rent up when he got back to work. I let him stay five months for free. he found a job finally and doubled his rent and paid me off. The ones hiding behind their wives would be allowed to get behind one. then I would go to the house and ask for him. If he hid he was homeless.

NEVER put a woodburning heater in your houses. I did thinking it would come in handy if we were poweless for a while in the winter after bad storms etc. I had about ninety acres of woods and I told several folks renting that they were welcome to use my saws and tractor to cut any wood they needed should they need it. i wanted the land cleared for pasture anyway. We had bad winterstorm. I cut wood for two single moms and stocked them up for the next few days of being without power. I told the other families that the woods was theirs go cut what they needed. They used my cherry wood mouldings,baseboards and one even ended up usng three of my solid wood interior doors.

Never ever try to befriend a tennant. they will use emotional blackmail to sponge off of you.

One guy stole the freon out of his central ac unit three times and sold it before I finally figured out where it was going or what was wrong with the unit. This guy made a good living. No excuses. He just figured out a cannister of coolant would get him a couple hundred bucks

The two families that did me right got to lease to own their houses at 3 percent interest and no down payment from me and as of this month I have had zero problems with them. the rest were evicted and houses sold.

Good lord, how can people be like that? I dont understand it. :confused: Id NEVER do these things to someone elses house.

I manage a aparment build with 55 units. The tenants have all the rights you have nun. The olny way you can get some one out is by getting a lawer . If I where you I would call my lawer and ask what you can do. You may have to take it to court. And they can live there rent free until it is settled. Then to get the money after it is over can be a pain to.

Tiny,
We have a lawyer and the court date is Tuesday. It already has cost me attorney fees, court costs, etc. The lease states they are responsible for all costs but fat chance I will ever see it.

Also they were serbved with lease violation notices and had 30 day to fix and then the penalty was $20 per day per violation. At this point the lease violation fees are over $3,000.

i have been tenant and land lord, both , currently , i am a tenant , because our land needs work before we move in there ...

being a tenant , i respect my lease, i pay my pet deposit, every month , though it kills me, i dont have goats cows or chickens ( they were specificly forbidden) i board my horses elsewhere, i just got rabbits, but i had asked before hand , and it was okayed .

the fact is, when a person rents they need to think of it like living in the inlaws home, dont rock the boat, follow the rules, respect the property, and report any repairs ...

many tenants dont report repairs because of fear that the landlord will say its thier fault ...I haveheard this time and again from tenenats

ah well...

as for me, i am sick of paying priviledge(rent) to live in a house i dont like ! i cant wait till we get the land ready to move onto it !
i want chickens i want goats !!!! i want to not have to pay someone else to board my horses !!!
i want to be able to walk out my door and see my animals !
but i digress....

i have had draconioan leases, i had one lease where i wasnt allowed to fix faulty faucet, because that would be "unaurthorized repair" and so , i called him , his "workman" would get to it ....
the next month , with the higher water bill in hand, i showed him , and asked him about it , can i fix it, its just an o ring ... no , ill call the workman again ,,,, finally the last week of the second month it was done, i asked about renumeration for the additional 2 months worth of 20.00 extra on the water bill....
oh take half of it off this months rent .... then 2 weeks later i get a notice telling me my 20.00 is late, and late fees on that portion of the rent equals $70.00+ the 20.00
:rolleyes:

I rent .. first weekend in the place we removed nearly a ton (2000 lbs) of garbage.... not including broken appliances .... as we started get the jungle trimmed over the next few months and gradually met the neighbors we find out that it's been the only serious work done to the place in years. The roof leaks in several spots. Termites have devastated the place. I removed some damaged plaster to actually fix an interior support wall and the little bugs have eaten everything down to the foundation... I can't even find a piece of wood in the wall that will hold a screw ... I can push a nail down to the head with my thumb... the house is pretty much a candidate for a bulldozer and the owners live about 75 feet away. These people have really offended my sensabilities. Part of me wants to call the local housing inspector and risk it being condemned.. (I'm sure the neighbors wouldn't mind). The owner didn't require a lease (liked to do everything on a handshake, yeah right) Is he attempting to remove any liability from himself ? The area is very nice, all large lots $260,000 and up. This place is really an eyesore. I'd like to paint but I hate to do it over rotten wood and can't get much cooperation from the owners.

They will "pay me" 5.15 an hour for my services but given the type of work that needs done here.. I don't get real excited for that rate.

Tracy,

You're not alone as landlords go. I'm planning to get into residential landlording myself, but would not even consider it were it not for the fact that I have a legal background and can deal with these kinds of problems myself. I can't give advice about the legal issues you're facing, and obviously have no knowledge of the content of your lease or of your state's law, but you may want to consider the following:

(1) More likely than not, the "oral agreement" to use best efforts to obtain financing is unenforceable under your state's statute of frauds. The statute of frauds generally provides that a signed writing is required to create an enforceable contract in certain situations--most notably contracts involving the purchase and sale of real estate and contracts extending for more than one year.

(2) Your statement that you historically overlooked many lease violations raises the issue of waiver. You can waive your right to enforce a lease provision by conduct inconsistent with the intention to enforce it.

(3) It is not clear what, exactly, the lessee misrepresented on his lease application. Keep in mind that only substantial, material misrepresentations are likely to carry the day.

(4) It sounds like you're ultimately going to be relying upon the commission of waste (legal jargon for trashing a property) as the basis for terminating the lease. Because you will bear the burden of proof in this regard, you should concentrate on the amassing of evidence in the form of photographs and otherwise.

(5) The option element of this contract raises additional legal issues. Are you intending to terminate the option as well, and on what grounds? A legal issue arises as to whether the option is severable from the lease obligation and might survive termination of the lease. This question can only be answered by reference to the terms of the lease agreement and by analysis of your state's law. One thing is for sure: There's a well-entrenched doctrine in law which states that "the law abhors a forfeiture." Your attempt to terminate the option element of this contract might well be viewed by a court as causing forfeiture of the lessee's monthly investment in equity, although the below-market rent payments would tend to argue otherwise. Point is, I would be very careful about how you go about this.

(6) Bankruptcy is a perpetual problem, which goes to emphasize the importance of security in the form of advance payments and deposits. Is there an "insolvency" clause in your contract? Irrespective of an insolvency clause, it might be argued that the lessee's affirmative statement to you that he is on the brink of bankruptcy amounts to what is known as an "anticipatory repudiation" of the lease. The idea is that if a party to a contract unmistakeably indicates through words or conduct his intent to breach, the non-breaching party need not stand by and incur additional losses while waiting for the hammer to drop, but may go ahead and enforce his remedies.

I hope you have a lawyer helping you out, because you're facing some squirrelly legal issues that will require a close reading of the lease and a knowledge of your state's law. This does not sound like the kind of scenario in which you could get away with representing yourself.

Hope that helps. ~Amelia

I'm a landlord in Michigan and in 97 our governor gave us our rights back.I handle all the eviction paperwork except the final stuff that I pay to have served. I have carried peoples stuff to the curb a few times and lots of people won't rent from me. Must work at the same place for at least a year. NO ONE on fixed income they are the worst. State aid is fina as long as I get the check. No checks only money orders. 10 days late you get served an eviction no exceptions. Threaten me your out junk cars your out the list goes on.


mikell

I own rental property and managed it myself for several years and got tired of the crap from deadbeat tenants. I did have some great tenants too. I finally hired a management company to run things for me. It was a great decision. I'd never go back to doing it the other way again. The management co i hired knows their stuff and gets things done. I dont have to worry about the properties anymore, or stress about getting a phone call at 2am.. He has been managing my places for almost a year. All of the tenants he has found have been good tenants, we have not had any problems with them and they pay their rent.

not all of us tennants are bad, some landlords are to, when we lived in ocean springs, ms. we rented a house that was 925.00 (good ol'e days) and since we move alot we always have it in our lease that it can be broken (time wise ) if my husband is transferred, well he was, so we called the landlady and she said fine, but could we be out 2 weeks earlier than we planned, because they were going on a cruise and wanted to paint the outside before they left, we said fine, which put me in over-drive, jerry was already at his new job, the 3 year old had salmonela poisoning (from turtles) bloody bowels for 4 days. the land lady asked if i would paint the inside, just some touch-ups, i agreed, well she bought the wrong dye lot, so i wound up repainting the entire interior, i always scrub the whole house from top to bottom, windows inside and out, clean the stove, and refrigerater, shampooed the carpet, myself, cleaned the mini- blinds, mowed the yard, you name it i did it. when we finally moved the whole family to vicksburg,we kept waiting on our deposit, she recainted and kept it all, she even charged us .50 cents for a potatoe to get a broken light bulb out of the socket,(some light outside), we didn't even know there was one. i have never received a deposit back on a house, but i have always received one back on a apartment, so here is another side to the story. we are not all bad, i have loved every single house we have lived in and do everything to take care of it, the right way.

there was one house we looked at in ocean springs the owners had just finished remodeling and doing repairs and had the central air unit replaced. there former tenants stole the whole unit.

There's a good messageboard at www.mrlandlord.com - you might seek advice there.

I was a landlord for 2.5 years. Fortunately I had a good tenant. I'm sorry to hear that these people are causing you so much stress.

Sorry to hear you are having troubles like that Tracy.....poop sandwich!We have been renting apts. for about 25 years. The 1st 10 years were stormy, until we got smart about it. FIRST - it should be run like a bizness.You run proper ads, have them fill out proper leases (no verbal stuff)and do proper credit checks. There is no exceptions for anything, & I will not rush thru any steps because they are in a hurry. Everything is spelled out in the tenants agreement - all costs,obligations,payments etc.You must learn how to "chat" with them during the application, so that you can find out if they will be trouble.< Oh, you mean you do a credit check...cause so & so , did ? so I have a bad rating....your flag should go up> TWO -Never, ever rent to family,friends, or anyone else you know! When it comes time to get dirty on them, it is harder if you know them. I never make an exception to this rule....before someone gets the question out of their mouth, I have explained the golden rule. THIRD-No funny biz deals. If you are Selling the house--Sell it outright & get a good down payment.( Better to lower your price if needed, than hold out for an inflated price with a small downpayment. You want as much $ in your hand, so they are less likely to walk.) Do Not rent a house for less than Your payment. If you have to suppliment the rent, why bother keeping the house? Never expect anyone to treat the house as you would. If they do ,it's a bonus. I always plan that when a tenant leaves, I will have to paint,scrub,fix everything....& that is factored into the rent. When a tenant phones with a problem,we are there within 2 days...max. FOURTH -recognize Before you get an ulcer, if you are made to be a Landlord.It is a tough job, but can be learned if you have the stomach for it. There is many a time that I have had to put it in it's place....like the back of my mind. You WILL have good,bad & ugly tenants-it comes with the territory. As with any biz, you cannot take it home with you. Try to chalk it up as a learning experience & go on from there.( I hope I don't sound too harsh, I am trying to get you to see the big picture. Next year @ this time you will be in a better place!) GOOD LUCK & best wishes for a speedy resolution :D

Just out of curiosity... would you landlords say that renting an apartment is less hassle than renting a house? If you had multiple apartments in the same building, would there be any advantage to living in one of them?

cheers,

I rented a triplex years ago out to three different familes, it was a pain.
When I evicted one family I moved into the house, things got suddenly a lot better, your presence on site is priceless.
Besides if you rent out a house, it has property, somewhere to bury the bodies ;)

We've rented an apartment over our garage for four years. We've had no real issues. I think having a rental in your backyard is pretty easy since you can keep an eye on things (I don't spy, really!). Since we are in the process of moving, DH has suggested renting the "front house" but I don't like that idea at all. Firstly, we have too much of our hearts invested in the house and secondly, we will be 400 miles away and I don't want to be a long-distance landlord. The house (and apartment with a tenant with a 6 month lease) are currently for sale.

:( I have been having a real poopy day.........thank you herefordman for making me laugh :haha: :haha: :haha: < I gotta get me a bigger property!>