Tricky Tenants
Landlords Beware
Evictions can be a tricky task. You may have tricky tenants. Not all renters abide by the laws or pay on time or keep a tidy home. Being a landlord is not something that is as easy as it sounds and if you recently bought a rental property, you’ll understand what we mean. We’ll show you the different kind of tenants and the nightmares that can ensue with each.
But first off, let’s talk dollars and cents. There is a high cost to getting your property in suitable condition to rent out in the first place. You may have to spend a month or two or even three without any income while you fix up the place as most renters won’t be okay with living in an unfinished rehabbed house. All repairs and renovations usually take 25 to 50% longer to finish than originally expected so don’t get your hopes up when a contractor says it will take 2 weeks. Plan ahead.
Time. It takes time to renovate and fix up a place and most people have day jobs in which spending hours upon hours at their “project” home just isn’t feasible. Also, it takes a good amount of time to screen and find a good renter. Someone with good credit, a steady job and a suitable lifestyle in which you will feel comfortable with them living in your house. It could take a good month or two just to find the right tenants.
There are several ‘types’ of tricky tenants out there, but here are a few to watch out for.
- The “Entitled” Tenant: This type will call you for everything and harass you for every repair. They can’t take it upon themselves to do anything and expect you to come running at the drop of a hat because they are “entitled” to your services since they are paying rent and most likely have a chip on their shoulder about it. Perhaps they are recently divorced or just lost a good paying job, so paying rent in beneath them and you, unfortunately, feel the wrath with their constant nagging about repair needs.
- The “Flaky” Tenant: This type may have a perfect credit score and impeccable references and good paying job, but they are irresponsible with their money and time. Making it nearly impossible to get your rent on time each month. There’s always an excuse with this one and it will wear you down.
- The “Self Proclaimed Civil Rights Attorney” Tenant: This tenant can be the worst. Similar to the Entitled tenant, this one will nag about repairs, maintenance and issues by threatening legal action at every term. They will look up landlord laws, quote bylaws and civil cases. Even if you think your house is in rentable condition, they will not stop until everything is perfect and to their satisfaction.
- The “Cheap and Lazy” Tenant: This tenant just doesn’t care, mostly about anything as you can see when you do a yearly walk-through. They don’t care about keeping their space clean or keeping up your investment house with even little things like light bulbs and batteries for smoke detectors because why should they when it’s “Not their house” These tenants will leave things broken and unusable, dirty and unkempt.
These are just a few of the worse case scenario tenants and again, evictions can be no fun. You can hope to get a good tenant who will sign a longer term lease, but those are few and far between.
So do your homework and really think about whether or not you want to take on the headaches of a rental.
If you have a rental you are no longer happy with or you are just ready to be free, give us a call today and we can do a quick assessment and give you some good options.
