I see this happen to new landlords often. A tenant moves in and asks if they can paint a room or wall. Unfortunately, the new landlord agrees and 90% of the time, the tenant does a terrible job or choses a bad color. Now you are in a tough spot. Legally, because the landlord agreed and probably nothing was in writing regarding colors or workmanship, the landlord can NOT take any money from the damage deposit.

I rarely get this request from my tenants because I maintain my investment properties well and most are repainted prior to the new tenant moving in. When I do get the request, I turn the tenant down, unless they have professional painting experience (which is almost never).

Every December, I see the past due rent amounts on my investment properties increase. Tenants will call and say that they are going to be short for some reason or another. The honest ones tell me they are going to be paying only part of the rent as they need the rest for Christmas presents. If they are a long time tenant and pay rent on-time (and in full) typically I will give them some latitude.

Now that we are in the new year and April 15 (tax time) is nearing, here is your chance to reduced or eliminate your past due rent balances. Many of your tenants will be getting tax refunds. In fact, some of my tenants filed their taxes in January and have already received their refunds.

Here is my suggestion: Start pressing your tenants more often to pay off any past due amounts in full (figuring that they are getting a refund). I actually started pressing my tenants at the beginning of the year. It was one of my investment property new year’s resolutions. You can suggest (strongly) that they use their refund to pay off their balance. You will be surprised how many times the tenant already has that refund spent on some new toy instead of on the rent they owe you!

Need help figuring out where to start? Don’t Wait! Get Started now.

When I get asked what I do for a living I tell people that I am a real estate agent and I own Investment Property. Probably 50% of the time the listener (trying to be funny), makes some joke about me being a “slumlord”. Truthfully, I can’t stand that term. I believe I am a responsible and conscientious landlord and rental property owner. I also never use that term to refer to my peers (no matter how bad they are).

Well, I have to say that after reading the article in City Pages about this Minneapolis Investment Property owner, I am making an exception. In my opinion, this guy is a slumlord. It is amazing that he can continue to fill his apartments and has not lost all his rental licenses. I suppose, in a way, he actually makes the rest of us hard working, normal landlords look fantastic to tenants. Read the full article about The Slumlord of South Minneapolis.

Are you an accidental Landlord and want to expand your portfolio? Don’t Wait! Get Started now.

You may have read the Carnival of Real Estate where Trevor Mauch reviewed Quicken Rental Property software. Well, Trevor has done it again. Where the Quicken product is for users with smaller real estate investment, Landlord Max is designed for users with more than 20 investment property units.

The cost of this product is $60 more than the Quicken software, but Trevor believes “this software is a good hybrid between a commercial rental property management software“. See his full review at the REIBrain.com.

Do you wonder what it would be like to own 20 investment property units? Don’t Wait! Get Started now.

Tenants and Toilets are the two key complaints that most landlords talk about. I believe that having a dependable, thorough, and honest handyman that has good workmanship is an absolute must whether you own 2 or 20 investment properties.

1. Your handyman should be able to fix most items in your properties. Maybe just as important, he should admit when a project is not his specialty and should be outsourced. Build trust where you can rely on his judgement on what needs to be fixed and how it should get done.
2. Find a handyman that lives near your properties. You will be very thankful for this when your tenant calls at 7:00 at night about a plugged toilet or a furnace not running or any other number of issues that require immediate response. It is great to be able to simply call your handyman and ask him to swing over and take care of the problem.
3. Give him enough work that he sees you as his primary customer. This should keep him wanting to please you by taking those 7:00 pm calls to unplug a toilet! Conversely, unless you can sustain him 100% indefinitely, make sure that he does not rely on your work alone as when you slow down, he will be concerned about putting food on the table.
4. If your volume warrants it, negotiate a reduced per hour rate. Discuss eliminating trip and overtime charges.
5. When you go on vacation, consider paying your handyman to be your vacation buddy. You should decide if you will give the handyman the keys to the properties. When I go on vacation, I like to keep all the keys in my garage. In an event that he absolutely needs keys, I will then tell him where they are and give him the combo to my garage door.
6. Find your handyman through referrals with your real estate agent, check the hardware store bulletin boards, and scan Craig’s (or Angie’s) List.

Having a consistent handyman can be a crucial addition to your investment property team. He should free you up from having to do all your maintenance and potentially save you money instead of having to call a trade person (ie: plumber, carpenter) to fix something small.

At the end of October, I wrote a post about how I cut a corner in my tenant screening process and that mistake was probably going to cost me $2000 in lost rent and/or advertising/placement fees. You can read the full article here, but in summary I failed to connect with the prospective tenant’s Section 8 coordinator on the phone. If I had, I would have learned that the prospective tenant’s voucher had been changed from three bedrooms to two bedrooms. Consequently, she could now not afford the apartment and had to move out 3 weeks after she moved in. I was left with 1 week to rent a 3 bedroom apartment for $1000 per month at one of the tougher times of the year (November).

Quickly I put my standard advertising plan into action including posting the apartment on Craig’s List, taking out an ad in the Star Tribune, putting a sign in the yard, and even reverse prospecting on Craig’s List. I then took extra steps including: calling my current tenants and offering them an incentive to refer a new tenant, agreeing to pay a leasing company the first month’s rent to find a tenant, and posting signs at some of my other buildings that are on busy roads.

All this activity did produce some showings and some no shows. I quickly had two roommates ready to sign a lease, but because I had learned my lesson, I quizzed them hard only to find out that they did not have the security deposit and were hoping to get the first month’s rent from emergency assistance. I explained that having both the security deposit and first month’s rent was a requirement to signing the lease and that I would rent the apartment to the first party that had those and an approved application.

A friend of mine (who owns about 60 rental units) called and said he had an extra tenant that he did not have an apartment for. We set up a time to show her the apartment the next day. The prospective tenant arrive early, she walked through the apartment and liked the updates that we recently did. I quizzed her looking for any red flags and she filled out an application on the spot.

I processed her application and signed a lease with her 2 days later, on October 30. She went to emergency assistance with the new lease the next day, the coordinator called when while the tenant was in her office and confirmed they would pay her security deposit and first month’s rent. I met the tenant and gave her the keys on the November 1.

Despite costing me some money to run the ad in the Star Tribune and beating myself up for my mistake, the situation worked out. In fact, I leased the apartment for $50 more per month to this new tenant than the 3 week tenant. It is a happy ending!